A GDC report was published recently which saw the results of its annual State of the Industry survey. Given the last year saw some pretty trying conditions for developing games with the pandemic, the findings of this survey proved to be pretty interesting.
We had the chance to interview several developers earlier this month asking about the biggest challenges they faced with supporting their online games during the pandemic. We interviewed people from across the world, leading to some pretty diverse responses.
For example, while some studios initially faced quite a challenge getting their team up and running from home, others EVE Online devs CCP were already looking into work from home policies,
“Luckily, we already started looking at some policies around flexibility working arrangements prior to lockdown. [S]o that really helped all our studios carry out a very quick shift to working from home. We doubled up on our tech set up by sending computer hardware and other necessary equipment to everyone’s homes so we could replicate our studio workstations.”
Naturally, several games suffered delays. According to this GDC 2021 State of the Industry survey, 44% of developers polled said that their games suffered from a delay directly attributable to the pandemic. However, studios actually grew during the pandemic, with 47% of those polled stating that their staff expanded, and 35% stating their size remained the same.
PC continued to be the most popular platform on which to develop games, followed by PS5. Additionally, only 3% of those developers polled said they think the current 30/70 revenue split is justified.
Source: GDC press release
