Friday, April 17th 2026 Game Industry Survey Highlights AI Concerns, Job Market Challenges by Cpt.Jank Today, 00:28 Discuss (0 ) The Skillsearch 2026 Games & Immersive Salary Report has been published, with the results of the survey revealing findings relating to AI, hiring, and game industry trends. While the data is impressively cohesive, there are a few main takeaways from the report that highlight both a pessimistic outlook on AI and the overall gaming industry. Despite many of the gaming industry's biggest game studios going all-in on AI, only 29% of respondents surveyed worked for companies that had policies or guidelines for ethical AI use. Of the game workers themselves, who consisted of a mix of everything from management, HR, and operations to art, programming, design, and writing, as many as 64% believe AI has a negative impact on creativity in the gaming industry, while 52% stated that they or their company have started using AI tools in their workflows. When asked about the game industry job market, responses varied greatly, likely in part because the survey targeted many different countries. When it came to finding a job, 56% of graduates who did not have a gaming-related degree took longer than a year to find a job in the industry, and even 25% of the respondents who had a degree in gaming said it took over a year. Meanwhile, 27% of graduates with a degree in gaming managed to land a job in the industry before even graduating. Meanwhile, 65% of respondents reported that they have been directly affected by layoffs or layoffs happened at the studio where they work, with 22% of workers saying they were made redundant within the last 12 months. Of those who were made redundant, 52% were "unsatisfied with their redundancy package." Only 45% of those made redundant have since gone on to find new jobs, and only 27% of those workers feel secure in their new positions. As many as 37% of those who were laid off have been unemployed for longer than seven months. The survey also reports that game 45% of game studios listed new games as their top priorities for 2026, while studio space, events, and recruitment were the least common priorities for the year. Of those respondents who reported being involved in the hiring process, 33% reported that the hiring process took two to four weeks, with another 33% reporting a hiring process as long as one to two months, with the biggest hiring challenges being skills and experience, out-of-budget salary expectations, and ensuring candidates align with the company culture and values. Source: Skillsearch Related News Tags: AI development Gaming Industry Layoffs Report Survey Mar 21st 2026 Microsoft Promises Slew of Windows 11 Changes in Response to "Microslop" Criticisms (207) Sep 29th 2025 EA's New Owner Plans AI Pivot 'To Significantly Cut Operating Costs'— Report (39) Feb 6th 2026 NVIDIA to Use SK hynix and Samsung HBM4 for "Vera Rubin" Without Micron (7) Feb 4th 2026 AMD Confirms Steam Machine in Early 2026, Xbox SoC Powered by RDNA 5 in 2027 (52) Oct 23rd 2025 Copilot for Gaming Screenshots Your Games, Uploads Them to MS, Enabled by Default (71) Jul 25th 2025 Intel CEO Confirms SMT To Return to Future CPUs (95) Feb 7th 2026 30,000 NVIDIA Engineers Use Generative AI for 3x Higher Code Output (147) Mar 18th 2026 Game Developers "Found Out At the Same Time as the Public" About NVIDIA DLSS 5 (50) Mar 6th 2026 Xbox Project Helix Officially Tipped As Next-Gen Console, Will "Play Your Xbox and PC Games" (47) Mar 14th 2026 Microsoft Will Add Gaming Copilot To Xbox Series Consoles in 2026 (60) Add your own on Game Industry Survey Highlights AI Concerns, Job Market Challenges There are no yet.