The video game industry is facing a growing crisis, with frequent waves of layoffs and job cuts. While employees suffer from job instability, top company executives, such as Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, continue to make huge profits and receive significant increases in their salaries.
This increasing gap between company profits and the struggles of workers raises questions about wealth distribution in this industry and the leaders’ concern for the conditions of the workers who directly contribute to the success of their companies.
Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, will receive a massive salary of 79.1 million dollars, equivalent to 60.9 million pounds sterling, in this fiscal year, a 63% increase from his compensation for 2023. The substantial increase in Nadella’s compensation, whether in cash or stocks, announced by Microsoft last night, comes after a generally positive year for the company’s financial revenues, but also after 12 turbulent months for its employees.
The year 2024 saw two rounds of layoffs at Microsoft, with 1900 employees laid off in January earlier this year, followed by another 650 layoffs in Xbox in September. However, Microsoft’s stocks and market value are now over 3 trillion dollars, as the company leverages the rise of artificial intelligence.
Microsoft closed three game studios owned by the acquired publisher Bethesda in June, including Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and Alpha Dog. Xbox head Phil Spencer discussed the overall lack of growth in the home console market, but Nadella painted a more optimistic picture in the company’s 2024 annual report, stating:
“We are delivering great games to more people on more devices. With our acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, which closed in October 2023, we added hundreds of millions of players to our ecosystem. We now have 20 franchises that have generated over a billion dollars in lifetime revenue – from Candy Crush and Diablo and Halo to Warcraft and Elder Scrolls and Gears of War.”
“With Xbox Cloud Gaming, we continue to innovate to provide more ways for players to enjoy the games they love – wherever, whenever, and however they want. And finally, we released four of our fan-favorite titles on Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation for the first time, as we continue to expand our content reach to new platforms.”
The cross-platform publishing program will continue in the coming months with the anticipated adventure game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle arriving on PC and Xbox in December, and on PlayStation 5 in February 2025, with the possibility of more Microsoft-owned games to follow.
