I remember when working at a big-name game studio was the dream. When getting hired at BioWare, Blizzard, or Ubisoft meant you’d finally made it. Like, you did it. You fought your way through the indie scene, survived the crunch, put up with all the unpaid internships and bottom-tier QA gigs, and now you were at a real AAA studio making the kind of massive, industry-changing games you grew up playing.
That dream is dead.
These days, when I see a developer announce they’re leaving a major studio, my first thought isn’t, Damn, that sucks. It’s Yeah, that makes sense.
Because the people who actually make games—the designers, the writers, the artists, the engineers—are bailing. Leaving the big studios behind, starting their own indie companies, or getting out of game development entirely.
Not because they hate making games. But because AAA has made it impossible to keep doing it.
Why Are Devs Jumping Ship?
It’s a mix of everything—layoffs, creative burnout, corporate greed. The entire system is pushing talent out instead of keeping them in.
- AAA Studios Are a Nightmare to Work At
Crunch has been part of the industry forever, but it’s worse now. Devs work insane hours, sometimes for years, only for the game to get delayed, reworked, or flat-out canceled. Or worse—it launches as a disaster because the publisher refused to delay it, and now the devs are the ones getting blamed for the mess.
It happened with Cyberpunk 2077. It happened with Redfall. It happened with Battlefield 2042.
People put years of their lives into making these games, and what do they get? Executives throwing them under the bus when the launch goes badly.
- Layoffs Are Inevitable—Even if You Work on a Hit Game
You can’t “crunch your way to job security” anymore. It doesn’t matter if the game you worked on is a massive success—you’re still at risk of getting fired the second the project is over.
- Destiny 2 is a billion-dollar franchise. Bungie still laid off 100+ employees.
- Fortnite prints money. Epic still fired 900 people.
- Microsoft owns some of the biggest studios in the world. They still cut nearly 2,000 devs after acquiring Activision Blizzard.
You work yourself to death, and then when the game ships? You’re disposable.
- Indie Development Is Finally Viable
For years, going indie meant gambling everything. If you left a big studio to make your own game, you were either insanely lucky or completely out of your mind.
Now? It’s different.
- Baldur’s Gate 3 just proved a small, independent studio can make a better RPG than most AAA companies.
- Unreal Engine 5 lets small teams make games that look as good as AAA titles.
- Crowdfunding and Steam Early Access let devs sell games before they’re finished, instead of begging publishers for money.
The old barriers are gone. Devs don’t need corporate overlords anymore. And they’re realizing that they’re better off without them.
So Where Are These Devs Going?
A lot of them are starting indie studios—or joining ones where they can actually make the kinds of games they want.
- Former BioWare devs left to form Yellow Brick Games—because they were sick of corporate interference ruining RPGs.
- Ex-CD Projekt Red developers formed Rebel Wolves—because they wanted to make RPGs “the way they used to be made.”
- Ex-Arkane devs formed WOLFeye Studios—because they wanted to escape the mess that was Redfall and get back to making immersive sims.
These aren’t random people quitting the industry. These are the best devs in the world, the people who made some of our favorite games—and they’re leaving AAA behind because the system is broken.
AAA Is Losing Its Best Talent—And It’s Their Own Fault
Publishers will keep pretending everything’s fine. They’ll hire younger, cheaper workers, replace veteran devs with outsourced contractors, keep cutting costs while shoveling out unfinished live service garbage.
But you can already see the cracks forming.
- Bethesda can’t make a game without it launching half-broken.
- Ubisoft is stuck making the same open-world formula over and over because all their original talent left.
- Rockstar is moving at a snail’s pace because their best people quit after GTA V turned into an endless live service money machine.
Meanwhile, indie studios are making the kinds of games we actually want to play.
This isn’t just some temporary phase. It’s the beginning of a shift.
AAA is burning itself down. And indie devs? They’re the ones building the future of gaming.