20 foolproof ways to get laid off in the videogame industry

In these trying economic times, it is tempting to visit the website LinkedIn.com in search of gainful employment in the videogame business. On that dread portal one can find an endless parade of hucksters and hustlers promising they're guarding [[link]] the secret to success: a guaranteed six-figure career is just one $299.99 seminar away!

Here on the trusty ship PC Gamer we make no such outlandish promises, instead offering more practical advice: How to get laid off from whatever games industry job you already have.

The array of techniques assembled below is so wide-ranging, we're confident that anyone—from an enthusiastic 23-year-old graduate just weeks into their dream role, to a 30-year veteran beloved for their unending willingness to share decades of accrued knowledge and experience—can find the path to joblessness that's just right for them.

With these tried and true methods, a little grit and plenty of hard work, you too will be able to join the ranks of the wondering if they'll be able to afford rent, provide for their families, or find fulfillment in their chosen craft, which generates well over $100 billion in revenue each year.

PC Gamer's definitive (but by no means exhaustive) list of ways to lose your job in the videogame industry—guaranteed!

1. Work at a company whose ""
2. Make a game that does so well that it's called a " by the company that hired you to make it
3. Work for a publisher that decides your game is dead after your boss insists "the game is absolutely not dying"
4. Follow up a critically acclaimed game about skateboarding with a critically acclaimed game about rollerblading before your publisher decides it needs to ""
5. Make a , probably because of decisions made by your boss, boss's boss, and/or boss's boss's boss
6. Help make a game as successful as Marvel Rivals, but as part of a team that does not fit into new plans for ""
7. Work at a studio that gets acquired for , none of which ends up in your pocket
8. that forces your studio into making a game it isn't well-suited to (it is then shut down)
9. Work at a studio that despite being founded by an industry veteran
10. Work at a company that needs to become more flexible/agile/versatile under these trying economic conditions. (Meanwhile, your CEO )
11. Have a boss who wears on stage
12. because your bosses want you to train your AI replacement
13. Fail to meet after your game has been and your studio
14. Get hoovered up by a company whose spending spree turns out to be forking out $2,000,000,000 (and then it doesn't do that)
15. Believe a tech company that it's serious about funding games for its new platform that no one wants. ( before you have enough time to finish a game)
16. Have a boss who declares that a leak of "" about your in-development game was so dire, the whole studio's gotta go
17. Uh oh, your CEO is ! Should've seen that coming
18. in a long-running and much beloved RPG series
19. Just, uh,
20. Have the hubris to try to make a videogame. What were you thinking?