Workiversaries in the game industry are bittersweet these days. It's tricky celebrating career milestones when it seems like every other week, hundreds of people lose their livelihoods all at once. For CD Projekt Red localization QA analyst Paula Mackiewicz-Armstrong, who recently hit eight years with the studio, it's simply a moment of gratitude for stability in a very unstable environment.
"It's quite strange reflecting on it, cause instead of celebrating achievements or releases, my thoughts turn to the situation in the industry," Mackiewicz-Armstrong writes in a recent Linkedin post. "Here I am, 8 years and counting, and over at Epic, 1000 people just lost their jobs."
Fortnite studio Epic Games is just the latest in a years-long industry reshuffling to undergo mass layoffs, letting go of more than 1,000 employees late last month. At the time, CEO Tim Sweeney attributed the cuts to "the downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025" and said "closing some open roles puts us in a more stable place."
Things might be more stable for Epic Games momentarily, but the industry at large is anything but. While there's hope that the wave of post-Covid layoffs that kicked off in 2022 is past its peak, 2026 has still been a comparatively volatile year for the industry, with Epic's latest downsizing following another big workforce reduction from the Embracer-owned Eidos Montreal, not to mention Highguard studio Wildlight Entertainment being stripped down to a skeleton crew.
"My main feelings are relief that I have a job that I enjoy, and that my company is stable, at least for now," says Mackiewicz-Armstrong. "I love my team, I love everything I've built here. I've seen some hard times and some remarkable changes and improvements that make CDPR a great place to be right now. I just wish others in the industry could have the same."
In Mackiewicz-Armstrong's view, employees aren't entirely helpless against corporate bodies desperate to please investors.
"If I can have one piece of advice for all of you out there, unionise," she says. "Collectively, we can influence things. Individually, we are at the mercy of the market." Mackiewicz-Armstrong specifically points to the Polish Gamedev Workers Union as a resource for Poland-based game industry workers. "Let's all look out for each other," she says.
While union contracts typically can't prevent an employer from laying off workers, they can stipulate how something like that is done. For example, union leadership can negotiate with employers to prevent layoffs due to AI, afford employees ample warning time in the event of layoffs, and ensure severance pay. That said, major studios including Ubisoft and Rockstar have been accused of union-busting in recent years, with Ubisoft shutting down Ubisoft Halifax in January just days after it announced the certification of its labor union.
Regardless, unionization is definitely one of the tools game devs have at their disposal that can help them regain some semblance of control amid ongoing turbulence. Unfortunately for all too many former employees now looking for work, that opportunity is taken from them before they can begin to organize.
