“I think it was super optimism of the time during Covid-19,” he explained. “The industry grew so much because [people] had to stay at home, and video games were the easiest and cheaper way to be entertained. So they saw this huge increase in growth of the industry, and many investors poured money into the sector, so these publishers over-hired, over-invested. They hired too many people. They invested in projects that they shouldn’t have.”

“And when that additional demand subsided after Covid, the people running these companies saw the reality, that the industry went back to the original steady growth cog, that means that the growth became flat after a couple of years.”

He went on to note how the sheer number of people being laid off has been “really sad.” Despite this, however, Yoshida remains optimistic about the health of the industry in the future.

“People don’t talk about the number of people hired into the industry,” he said. “When you look at the number of people working at these companies even after layoffs, you might see the number of people is still growing. Meaning that these companies tend to hire when things are good.”

While it’s difficult to gauge whether Yoshida’s thoughts have much merit to them, many studios have announced new rounds of layoffs in the last month alone. Among these have been Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive, Iron Galaxy Studios, and Moss developer Polyarc Games. Epic Games also saw major layoffs affecting over 1,000 of its workers thanks to declining interest in Fortnite.

An industry veteran, Yoshida had worked for Sony since 1993, when he joined the initial PlayStation team under Ken Kutaragi. While he spent much of his time at the company working with first-party development teams, he would eventually move over to handling the company’s indie development support teams – a move which he noted was due to his disagreements with at-the-time Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan. Yoshida ultimately left the company in January 2025.

The American studio joins a long list of its peers from the industry, with an unspecified number of employees losing their jobs thanks to funding issues arising from the cancellation of a major project at the studio. It seems the decision wasn’t taken lightly, as announced on the developer’s LinkedIn feed.

“We had to make the decision to significantly reduce the size of the company. This means we’re saying goodbye to many talented people who have been a meaningful part of what we’ve built. We want to thank everyone impacted. Your work, creativity, and care mattered. We made wonderful games together, and we would not have made it this far without you. Your contributions will continue to shape our culture and the games we make.”

For those of you unaware of the studio, it was founded by former members of Bungie and Rockstar. Moss was a widely acclaimed first entry that was followed by Moss: Book 2. A third game in the franchise might have been the cancelled project that triggered the unfortunate loss of its team members, joining Epic Games and Eidos Montreal as the latest example of a gaming industry that faces several challenges in changing times.

Polyarc has yet to announce its plans at this time, but you can be sure we’re going to be here to tell you about it when it does, so stay tuned for updates.