Kind of a tough one to call really.
Any "Creative" industry is going to have signficiant ups and downs in the employment range, because very few are capable of a full-time job over multiple years of creative endeavours.
To continue keeping a large staff of game makers employed, if you're not actively making a game, is going to be a near impossibility (unless you have the royalties of some mega hit or a secondary actual treadmill like Steam/GoG/Epic/etc store. It'd be like trying to run a band with salaries, if they aren't actively recording/touring.
And if you just pump out whatever half-brained thing, your rep goes into the ditch and you're likely to start losing money even moreso.
Which is what led to a lot of middlish studios getting bought up (or just contract hopping), particularly in the mid-late 2010s. Where in between actual games the studio would just be doing mercenary work with an MP mode here, a DLC there, etc
Any "Creative" industry is going to have signficiant ups and downs in the employment range, because very few are capable of a full-time job over multiple years of creative endeavours.
To continue keeping a large staff of game makers employed, if you're not actively making a game, is going to be a near impossibility (unless you have the royalties of some mega hit or a secondary actual treadmill like Steam/GoG/Epic/etc store. It'd be like trying to run a band with salaries, if they aren't actively recording/touring.
And if you just pump out whatever half-brained thing, your rep goes into the ditch and you're likely to start losing money even moreso.
Which is what led to a lot of middlish studios getting bought up (or just contract hopping), particularly in the mid-late 2010s. Where in between actual games the studio would just be doing mercenary work with an MP mode here, a DLC there, etc