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Chris Deering, former President of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, has said that games industry employees affected by mass layoffs should “drive an Uber” or “get off to the beach,” reminding us that tech entrepreneurs and executives are far disconnected from reality.
In a podcast interview with Simon Parkin focused on Deering’s time at Sony, the conversation wavered between the PlayStation’s initial launch, to his time at Atari, before concluding on mass layoffs in the games industry. “How would you answer the accusation that some are putting greed in front of creativity?” Parkin asked.
As pointed out by the interviewer, Deering had attended with no “PR chaperone”, nor had he worked at Sony for decades. The interviewer said that he thinks “it was in a broader context of saying, ‘look, this is the natural ebb and flow of the video game industry’.”
Deering said that there are always going to be greedy people in the industry, “But there’s a passion in the games industry that goes beyond just business.” He explains the industry’s current “deflationary period” as a result of post-pandemic overhiring, before saying that was something he always strived to avoid while in charge.
“I think it’s probably very painful for the managers, but I don’t think that having skill in this area is going to be a lifetime of poverty or of limitation. It’s still where the action is, and it’s like the pandemic, but now you’re going to have to take a few to figure out how to get through it. Drive an Uber, or whatever. Go off to the beach. Find a little cheap place to live and go to the beach for a year, but keep up with your news because once you get off the train, it’s much harder.”
On a matter of sheer principle, Deering is offering fairly sound advice: seek an alternative industry while gaming recovers. It’s not an alien concept – In the past few months, I’ve seen countless industry peers and colleagues laid off. The general sentiment is that now is the time to leave the video game industry behind, and take those skills elsewhere. Unfortunately, Deering’s words are sharp and glib, pointing games industry talent in the direction of a company which the US Supreme Court had to order to recognise its staff as employees deserving of the minimum wage.
Furthermore, telling laid off employees, many of whom may have had to relocate for a specific role, to “[f]ind a little cheap place to live and go to the beach for a year,” is totally out of touch with the reality of not being a millionaire executive. For example, earlier this year Bungie laid off an employee just days before her maternity leave was due to begin. The issue that needs interrogating is not how can we help affected workers after they have been laid off, but rather how can we design a system that doesn’t require mass layoffs to begin with.
Deering did offer some semblance of an answer to this in relation to the overhiring, but that only scratches the surface. It’s the six and seven figure salaries of the executives and the greedy entrepreneurs demanding studios develop sloppy live-service products that need to be held culpable – and to finally answer the accusation that their greed is to blame.
It shouldn’t be the case that we need to accept the ‘ebbs and flows of the video game industry’, as Parkin suggested as what Deering was saying. Instead, perhaps we need to accept that shareholders and C-Suites need to accept devastating profit loss if they’re so ‘passionate’ about the industry, and influential figures like Deering play a vital role in encouraging that.
Cover image via Chris Deering’s Tremr page.
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