Brenda and John Romero: The industry is in a ‘horrible place’

“I feel like the industry’s in a really horrible place,” Romero Games studio CEO Brenda Romero said.

The conversation took place ahead of Game Republic’s Dark and Doomy event last week. Speaking to GamesIndustry.Biz alongside Romero Games game director and id Software co-founder John Romero, Brenda reminisced about the US video game crash of 1983, which was a large-scale recession that took place until 1985.

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“I mean, we were there in the ’80s for the crash, and this is definitely crashier,” she said. “There are so few people that have not been affected, or their partner’s affected, or they’re worried about being affected. It’s a really difficult time right now.”

Romero’s comments follow years of debilitating layoffs and studio closures. These include recent job cuts at EA, PlayStation, and Epic Games—the latter of which made over 1,000 workers redundant while admitting that Fortnite remains a huge success.

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John Romero made a comment about the EA layoffs, too, pointing out that Battlefield 6 did “really, really well,” only for EA to cut jobs either way. The game sold 7 million units in its first three days after launch. “I don’t understand what that’s all about.”

The conversation comes a year after Romero Games underwent its own round of redundancies after a yet-to-be-named publisher pulled funding for a project in development. At the time, multiple developers who were laid off claimed that Microsoft was the publisher responsible for yanking the rug out from under the studio. The studio didn’t confirm those statements due to a confidentiality agreement, but the news of the studio making layoffs coincided with Microsoft making significant cuts across its video game division.

Romero Games has remained active since, but the staff impact has been severe. Brenda told GamesIndustry.Biz that around 110 people were working at the studio last summer. Now, the number is down to nine.

“It was really hard because a lot of us had been working together for ten years,” she continued. “I mean, it was obviously hardest on the people who were ultimately made redundant. But yeah, it sucked. It’s the worst. There’s nothing worse than that.”

In addition, Brenda remains confident that people will continue to play games, but struggles to comprehend how the industry will swing back from its current crisis. Not only around the rampant layoffs, but also the push for AI—a technology that has garnered a largely negative reception from developers in recent years, with many arguing that it is having a corrosive effect on the industry.

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“This is really one of those times where I don’t know. And you hear behind the scenes, there’s tremendous push toward teams using generative AI, there’s tremendous pushback from teams and from gamers about using generative AI… And before you ask, we’re not using generative AI. So I don’t know.”