'The industry's in a really horrible place,' Brenda Romero says: 'We were there in the '80s for the crash, and this is definitely crashier'

Things are not great in the videogame industry right now. It seems like no matter what you do—make a hit, make a flop, don't make anything at all—there's a good likelihood that you're going to end up out of work. For people who've been around long enough, it brings back memories of the game industry crash of the early 1980s, when the fledgling business suffered a massive contraction driven by oversaturation, external competition, and executive mismanagement. But industry veterans Brenda and John Romero, who were there for that very rough patch, told GamesIndustry that the current situation seems even worse.

"I feel like the industry's in a really horrible place," Brenda Romero said. "I mean, we were there in the '80s for the crash, and this is definitely crashier. 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."

The Romeros themselves, and many of the employees at their Romero Games studio, were impacted by the game industry's slow-motion train wreck in 2025, when a new shooter the studio had in development lost its funding without warning. They managed to keep the studio open with a "micro team," as Brenda described it, and work on the game continues, although "it will not be what it was going to be."

2025 was indeed a bad year, but the game industry's problems go back much further. Layoffs have always been a problem in game dev, but the situation seemed to come to a head in 2023, when more than 16,000 people were let go as the Covid-driven boom wore off. But 2024 was another bloodbath, as was 2025, and 2026 isn't shaping up to be any better.

It's getting ugly on the consumer side too, as the relentless pursuit of AI has led to component shortages, skyrocketing prices, and the inevitable slide in sales. (Just today, in fact, Sony announced major price hikes to PlayStation 5 hardware due to "continued pressures in the global economic landscape.")

Where all of this is headed, and how it will be resolved, the Romeros—like the rest of us—do not know: John noted that Battlefield 6 was one of the biggest games of 2025, and Electronic Arts imposed sweeping layoffs among its development teams anyway. "I don't understand what that's all about," he said.

"This is really one of those times where I don't know," Brenda said. "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.

"I know that we're going to be OK for the next little bit. And if something falls over sideways, and 2027 is another 'exciting' year, we've both had a good run."

The only certainty is that John Romero says he's "not going to stop making games," a point with which Brenda agreed: "I say that for him, a win would be he's found dead in his chair coding."