Game studios deal with uncertainty by doing more with less | Unity

unified explain annual report Game developers facing uncertainty do more in terms of resources.

The past few years have been a difficult time in game development. unifiedthe manufacturer of Unity 6 game engine. The industry remains huge, with more than 3 billion active players worldwide. In 2024, the game’s box office revenue exceeded $184 billion, easily surpassing TV and movies. Yet there is a grim set of figures, with these layoffs, tailors and canceled projects all touching on the profound challenges facing the industry.

For studios, success lies in the strengths of the razor: bold enough to capture the mind of the player while staying safe to reduce risks, Unity said. Game developers need to use innovative technologies to save time, but they can’t waste their efforts to explore new tools and workflows that they don’t use.

They need to develop their team enough to leverage professional expertise to get gorgeous graphics, complex game mechanics and tricky network settings, but tilt enough to limit your exposure. And they need to remain independent so that they do not have to rely on external support or funds, but have large or risk ignored by the market.

Last year’s 2024 Unity Game Report Amplified this tension, emphasizing that the game has a greater cultural influence overall than ever before, but is still personal insecure. This year, Unity saw the same market power, but Studios’ strategy began to grow. To capture these emerging trends on the ground, Unity has changed research to embrace more data that reflects how the gaming industry is coping with this volatility and the strategies being deployed to survive and even thrive in this climate.

The current problem has become: How do game developers plan to succeed? What are the trade-offs for the studio and how can your team benefit from their insights?

The report draws on many polls and surveys conducted by third-party agencies and a unified team of major industry events such as GDC and Gamescom in 2024, as well as unique data from nearly 5 million Unity Engine Developers.

Trends to shape game development in 2025

Trend 1: Developers manage risks by reducing costs.

The studio faces uncertainty by doing less and more. This could mean expanding resources through innovative technologies, refusing to assume debt to limit exposure, investing in real-time operations or keeping the team lean — but over 60% of developers say their main strategy in the current industry climate is to squeeze more value out of every game they build.

Almost 70% of the developers we surveyed said they were trying to do more. and 45% say they use efficiency tools to increase productivity, while 24% squeeze out more ROI from monetization and real-time operational budgets.

One in five studios uniformly said they reportedly remained thin to limit their exposure, avoided expiration (10%) or refused to take debt (6%), while 4% said they were interested in limiting growth to reduce their vulnerability.

[Source: CintTM survey 2024, 300 respondents]

Trend 2: Studios are trying different multiplayer settings.

Developers are still very interested in building a web multiplayer experience – 64% say they are currently working on multiplayer or sofa co-op games. This year, many studios also reported exploring features in new media, formats, and multiplayer games.

Multiplayer still erodes other settings – 64% of developers report working on projects with multiplayer capabilities (including sofa co-ops), while another 32% are online single-player games.

Trend 3: Developers stick to trusting platforms.

Bringing games to as many platforms as possible is still a popular strategy for extending title coverage and ROI, but Studios is cautious about bringing their games to new venues. Although 90% of developers have launched their recent games on mobile devices (desktop lags behind 80%), web and social media games have only begun to gain traction as gaming platforms, totaling 11%.

This year’s data proves some shifts – developers are still doing the doubling form to expand the value of their hard work, but they are doing it Carefully. We’ve seen lag in the promise of leveraging fast-to-port, easy-to-install networks, with only 11% of developers saying they plan to release in this promising format, while phone numbers are still high, suggesting that the mobile live gaming market is still strong.

Mobile devices are popular in various studios. 90% of the developers surveyed said they launched games on mobile devices and were fairly stable between studio sizes.

The game console launches the same speed as the team size: only 19% of studios with less than 10 team members target these platforms, while 84% of corporate studios with more than 300 employees.

Trend 4: The game is getting bigger and bigger.

The video game market is competitive, and building large games (both reinforced by a vast world, many levels or uninterrupted updates) provides a clear way to convey the value of the game to players. And it’s working – 88% of developers say overall, game time is increasing.

The median build scale of Unity game manufacturing has been steadily increasing. While median gaming is only slightly above 100 MB in 2022, that number has grown nearly 67% in just two years.

Developers working in large games (open world, sandbox or large) say they target PC and console platforms, which suggests that they may not see mobile or web as a realistic platform for large games.

The open world is the most popular style in a cross-platform large-scale gaming environment, but it is worth noting that sandbox games account for 20% of large-scale games on PC, talking to Gamescom last year.

Trend No. 5: Developers are looking for technology to keep projects on track.

The survey found that 96% of the studios they talked to integrate AI tools into their workflows, but machine learning has not unleashed the full revolution that many in the industry think is coming. Instead, developers are making computational choices to find technical solutions to everyday problems, and in any workflow, less than half of DEVs use AI tools.

While headlines about the gaming industry economy are often stark, developers say their main challenge comes from within the House: internal organizational issues far outweigh the main concerns of the developers we surveyed.

About 21% of people determine that long-term exploration technology is the biggest blocker – the cruel irony of trying to keep the curve ahead is that you can waste a lot of time trying to find it, and long-term R&D time testing new technology can greatly drain the developer’s most valuable resource: time: time. Another 20% pointed out that obstacles keep the project scope within scope and on time. Meanwhile, difficult funding and marketing games hovered nearly 5-6% while finding unique game concepts lowered a little, with 18% of developers naming it as the main obstacle.

in conclusion

Last year’s report Shows how the studio can cope with economic headwinds by squeezing more value from work. Trend index developer strategies such as adopting AI tools to save time, diversify revenue strategies, delivering games to more platforms, prioritizing multiplayer games, and building stronger brands to expand player engagement and loyalty. With this blueprint, developers aim to scale resources and maximize ROI by finding new ways to save time and increase the scope of the game.

Many of the same market forces are at play this year, but the studio’s response to them has changed slightly. With cuts, layoffs and studio closures continuing, what we call developers seem to put security first in a strategy to limit their risk: they keep small and agile; diversify the genres of multiplayer they build; prioritize trusted platforms; bringing players a bigger world and more content; they are turning to time-saving tools—but be cautious.

These five trends provide a snapshot of what the studio is doing in 2025 – but of course, good plans require forward-looking. Then what will happen next?

Developers predict that live service games will continue to be increasingly popular. 42% of developers surveyed said they believe more games will adopt continuous update models as a competitive strategy, while 12% point out the potential of more network, mobile networks and online GPU games.

Responding to the first trend in this year’s report, 17% of developers predicted solo and small studio growth, although only a large number of respondents (1%) expected the gaming industry to continue signing and merge. Only 6% said they foresee signs of growth this year.

About the data

The data in this report comes from the Unity engine and portfolio of service products, including games made with Unity that are sending events through the platform. These solutions cover mobile, PC, XR, web, social and console games to provide a unique advanced overview of video game development trends.

Other data for this report came from a CINTTM CATI (Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview) survey of 300 game developers, with an error rate of +/- 5.66% and a confidence level of 95%. In addition, we include data from two face-to-face surveys conducted in industry activities. Unity employees interviewed 144 randomly selected studios with GDC in San Francisco, USA, and interviewed 231 studios with GDC in San Francisco, USA, from August 21 to 24, 2024.