Geoff Keighley briefly, and barely, addressed the recent, historic number of layoffs that have hit the video game industry already this year, after failing to do so for months. But before I could even give the guy some credit for doing the bare minimum, he turned around and started advertising his next big video game event, seemingly revealing the true reason he finally decided to tweet about layoffs at all.
I don’t need to explain who Geoff Keighley is in 2024. If you are reading Kotaku or any other gaming news website, you know. He has become, for better or for worse, the unofficial spokesperson of the video game industry. Keighley’s annual events often feature big announcements of new games from small and large developers. He loves to talk about how gaming is so great whenever he is given the chance, which is far more often than any one person deserves.
Yet, Keighley is also seemingly unwilling or unable to address any serious problems in the video game industry. Recently, Keighley angered many people when he took to Twitter to hawk an AI-powered scent machine in the middle of catastrophic developer layoffs.
I’m fine with people posting dumb shit and advertising weird stuff all they want. It was the fact that he decided to tweet about AI scent machines at the worst possible time. He hadn’t said anything about greedy execs ruining people’s lives in order to make the numbers go up and make a few rich people even richer. He was rightly called out for this horrible blunder and afterwards mostly tweeted big, generic news about video games.
Keighley talks about layoffs, finally
But then, something happened! On March 12, at around 10 p.m. EST, Keighley actually tweeted about the layoffs happening in the video game industry. In fact, he posted two tweets about it!
I was happy to see him say anything at all about the 8,000+ layoffs that have hit the game industry this year alone. However, about 13 hours later, on March 13, Keighley tweeted about Summer Games Fest 2024, announcing dates and times for the upcoming showcase. This happened at the same time press releases were sent out and outlets, including Kotaku, began covering the news.
“Ahh,” I thought to myself, “So that’s why you tweeted about layoffs last night.”
When I first saw his layoff tweets, I thought they were pretty dang weak. Neither directly addressed any company, executive, or reasons for why layoffs were happening. He just referred to a “heartbreaking time” for developers and signaled boosted a website that has some resources for finding game industry jobs. It felt very calculated.
The tweets felt like his way of barely recognizing that layoffs are bad, while sidestepping the risk of souring his relationships with the publishers he relies on for big exclusive trailers. And the tweet made it clear that making games is great, in fact, here’s a link to getting back into the industry. What’s wrong with it? Why are so many people getting laid off over and over again? Don’t worry about that! Get back to work making shiny toys for me to sell!
At the time, I didn’t say anything because I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he’d say more. Perhaps he’d do more. These tweets weren’t great, but the figurehead of gaming addressing, even tepidly, how bad layoffs are in 2024 was something to celebrate. This might just be the start and he could help steer the conversation and make this a bigger, more public issue.
Nope! That’s not the case. Instead, it was clearly just him preemptively addressing the elephant in the room so he didn’t look too horrible when he announced his big new gaming event less than a day later.
And so, here we are. Keighley was able to do the bare minimum and use it as a smokescreen while he prepares to get everyone excited about more trailers for more games made by people who are overworked, underpaid, and facing endless layoffs. Last night, following those layoff tweets, I wondered if he’d address the issue head-on during his next show. Now, I know: Don’t bet on it.
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