Amir Satvat, the game job champion, estimated recently that about 230,000 people work in the game industry. That sounded low to Kenn White, one of the leaders of the Game Industry Coffee Chat. So White’s crew dug into the numbers on their own and came up with their own defensible estimate of 740,000 to 900,000. White, a longtime game developer, said in a LinkedIn post that the median number of their estimates (ranging from low end to high end) is 833,000 game industry employees across more than 25,000 companies. That sounds a lot more impressive, but it’s such a wide variation compared to Satvat’s bottoms-up estimate. Satvat raised his estimate to about 350,000, based on his own analysis of White’s information, but the two sides still remain pretty far apart for people directly employed in games. White said in his post that this estimate this includes developers and publishers working in PC, Console, Mobile, AR/VR, as well as external developers and outsourcers. It includes functions like art, engineering, production, management, marketing, sales, and other SG&A and Admin functions. It is not meant to include (and we tried to ensure we did not include) headcount and companies whose primary competency is NOT developing or publishing games. “When we were working on this list (Kenn White, Brandon Hagerman, and others still), we got to collaborate with Amir Satvat in a very open, honest, top-down methodology, and kept asking ourselves: Why has no one done this work before to figure this out?” said Neil Haldar, a game industry veteran.Haldar added, “This is meant to be an answer for a snapshot in time. We might go back and re-run the research at some point, but it’s not meant to be a forever-updating body of work that many others will work on ad infinitum.” He said the group is open to feedback and will continue to work on the accuracy of the estimate and the assumptions. The group has estimates for each country in terms of low and high estimates of the game industry employee population. Satvat said in a message to GamesBeat that he is supportive of the group’s exercise and they deserve credit for doing their numbers with realistic information to back it up. He acknowledges that the Game Industry Coffee Chat, which is a descendent of a group I used to frequent on Clubhouse, deserves credit for their research. Satvat’s own estimates come from a bottoms-up approach to counting. “For context, the 230,000 figure I had been using focused specifically on game developers, based on aggregating open role data and estimating headcount for studios without public numbers. That worked reasonably well for regions like North America — for example, my 104,000 U.S. estimate closely matches theirs — but I now realize it likely undercounted large markets like China and India, where data isn’t easily available in English,” Satvat said.That’s why he upped his estimate to 350,000. Savat added, “But the really interesting shift comes from reframing the definition — not just counting game developers, but all people working in the games industry. That broader framing is what could push the number to 600,000, 700,000, or even higher.” And he said, “While still relatively small compared to some industries, it’s much larger than anything I’ve seen cited before — most dev-only global estimates top out around 350,000. So I think this new framing will open up some healthy and important discussion.” Satvat counted developers tied to publicly visible job pages, live listings, and traceable hiring activity. “That’s still how I do it. If someone believes the real number is higher – and I am increasingly convinced it is much higher – I always ask: What company, with current open roles, are we missing? I want to know so we can put those jobs in front of real people looking for work,” he said. “That’s the entire reason my estimate exists. At any moment, folks like Mayank Grover and I only ever see about 10,000 to 15,000 open games roles globally.” He noted the Games Industry Coffee Chat researchers aren’t disputing that data point. “But here’s where things get fascinating – and why I’ve been so inspired by the GICC community’s work. They’re tackling the same question from a completely different angle: A top-down model pulling from global census data, labor bureau reports, and academic pipelines. That broader lens could land their estimate at 1 million+ people in or adjacent to the industry,” Satvat said. “I admire and love this exercise.The rigor, the effort, the transparency – it’s everything data work should be. Allow me, however, also to explain why reconciling that number is hard and why I still have many open questions, intended in a cooperative and inquisitive frame.”He noted that even if a top-down figure is directionally correct, it needs to pass other sniff tests – and that’s where things start to stretch and we need to answer tough questions. Unemployment math is one way to cross check the data. “If we believe in 240,000 workers and see 10,000 to 15,000 open jobs, that’s about 20% unemployment. But if there are a million workers, that drops to 5% unemployment — in line with general U.S. labor force averages. That doesn’t reflect the visible suffering and stagnation many in our field feel,” Satvat said. He noted that he tracks 3,000 game studios that hire with any regularity and don’t have dead websites. “Let’s say there 5,000 active studios worldwide and that many pass under our net. If there are a million people in games, the average headcount per studio would be 200, which doesn’t match the actual composition of an industry dominated by small and mid-sized teams,” Satvat said. “And it would mean, as opposed to the long-tail of most small and mid-sized teams that I track with less than 10 people, they would have to be 20 times bigger on average.” Satvat noted that every major aggregator — LinkedIn, Hitmarker, Work With Indies, etc. — surfaces a consistent number of open jobs. If we were dealing with a million-person industry, we’d expect far greater hiring activity across every region and platform, Satvat said. And if the headcount were that large, Satvat said we would see heavy hiring in emerging markets. Instead, most high-skill, high-compensation roles are still concentrated in North America, Europe, and select parts of Asia. If you extrapolate a million workers to about $185 billion in global games revenue, the revenue-per-employee math begins to break — especially when adjusting for roles in lower-cost regions or sectors with lower margins (QA, community, etc.), Satvat said. Satvat said that both his numbers and GICC’s numbers both matter — because they measure very different things. “Mine reflects the ‘hiring-visible’ active core of the industry — and is built to support people looking for work today. My original estimate of about 240,000 came from counting only companies with public job pages and listings. But even knowing what I do now, I believe the ratio analysis I used to account for studios I couldn’t see was too conservative,” he said. With the benefit of hindsight – and after seeing how the GICC team has surfaced global teams, regional directories, and indirect contributors — Satvat said he would up his estimate to 350,000. That is because he now appreciates the volume of studios and teams that don’t post jobs in the usual places but still employ staff. “I underestimated adjacent or support functions (QA, tools, operations, localization) that are part of internal teams but don’t always show up in job boards,” he said. “And I didn’t factor in as much of the Asia-Pacific and MENA ecosystems, where hiring is often harder to surface with standard scraping or tracking methods, often because of where roles are listed or language issues.” That said, Satvat argued that even 350,000 is still a focused count of the structured, salaried, and generally visible part of the global games labor force — not the entire orbit of talent with transferable skills or aspirational ties to games. Satvat believes GICC explores the broader career and skills ecosystem and represents the scale of where games touch the wider economy. “I don’t doubt that many of these roles exist – there’s strong top-down data suggesting they do – but I still struggle to see how or where to map them from a bottom-up perspective. That’s what makes it feel so murky to me,” Satvat. “In short, this is a very hard number to pin down – and even if we do, it’s equally hard to ringfence it with a consistent definition.” Still, Satvat said, “If you ask me which figure I’ll point people to going forward, I’ll reference the GICC work. I strongly encourage everyone to review their estimate and the methodology behind it – it’s thoughtful, transparent, and offers a critical top-down view of the industry’s broader footprint.” He added, “That said, for my own modeling – especially when tying estimates to the 10,000–15,000 open roles we see at any given moment – I’ll continue to use a more conservative 350,000 estimate. That reflects what I consider the hiring-visible, active core of the video games industry that I can reconcile at an individual company and role level.” Satvat said he could be convinced to increase his estimate if someone shows him studios with live job openings that aren’t yet in the games jobs workbook. That’s how he will reconcile the gap between the bottom-up and top-down – one real opportunity at a time. He said whatever the number winds up being, his goal is to put more real jobs in front of real people, understand where the gaps are, and help every developer, artist, and dreamer find their way. He thanked GICC for their efforts. For my own part, I think the game engine makers have more data that is worth cross checking and I would love to see them weigh in. Unity, Epic Games’ Unreal and even Godot could help us understand how many engines are out there being used on a regular basis, and where they are. I would encourage them to join this conversation. I have brought it up with them in the past. GB Daily Stay in the know! Get the latest news in your inbox daily Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. An error occured.

وأفاد التقرير، نقلا عن مصادر مطلعة، بأن حوالي 300 موظف من "غوغل ديب مايند" في لندن يسعون منذ أسابيع للانضمام إلى نقابة عمال الاتصالات. وتتبع "غوغل ديب مايند" شركة "ألفابت"، المالكة لـ"غوغل". ولم ترد "غوغل" و"غوغل ديب مايند" ونقابة عمال الاتصالات، على طلبات "رويترز" للتعليق حتى الآن.  وذكرت الصحيفة أن التقارير الإعلامية التي تشير إلى أن "غوغل" تبيع خدماتها السحابية وتقنياتها للذكاء الاصطناعي لوزارة الدفاع الإسرائيلية أثارت قلق الموظفين. وكانت "غوغل" قد واجهت مشاكل في السابق فيما يتعلق بعلاقاتها مع إسرائيل، عندما فصلت 28 موظفا العام الماضي بعد احتجاجهم على صفقة خدمات سحابية أبرمتها الشركة الأميركية مع الحكومة الإسرائيلية.

Are you also curious about the word Rosewary in Blue Prince? This particular term found in a document might be one of the strangest tidbits in the entire game. While it does point you toward a certain location, it seems that there's nothing that you could do, at least for now. In any case, we'd like to remind you that this article contains major spoilers for the late-game stage.What is Rosewary in Blue Prince - The Rosewary mystery guideThe clues and hints pertaining to Rosewary can be found in a couple of locations. However, you must complete several tasks before you can reach these areas:Numeric Cores and Still Water - The Numeric Cores from the Wine Cellar/Vault Puzzle result in a clear phrase. From this point, you have to collect Still Water so you can reveal the hidden contents of blank books.Atelier/Mount Holly Blueprints - Eventually, you'll enter the Atelier Maze, a discombobulating area filled with lanterns, winding passageways, and Mora Jai boxes. Rosewary in the blank bookThe first clue pertaining to Rosewary in Blue Prince comes from a blank book in the Library. When you pour Still Water on it, it reveals a letter from Baroness Auravei addressed to one of her sons. In it, Auravei says: "The end of the spiral is near! Stay vigilant and rosewary, for the thorns we discover are twice as sharp at the conclusion of each of our journeys."Here's the kicker: Rosewary isn't an actual word. Initially, we thought this might refer to Mary/Marigold, your character's mother, but it seems like a stretch. It also doesn't translate into a clear Erajan phrase that we know of. Rosewary in the AtelierWhile mulling over the meaning of the word, we then took a long and hard look at the Atelier door--i.e. the one that had the names of several rooms placed akin to the manor's grid-like structure. Then, when we checked the letters from the painting pairs in the Atelier, we were surprised upon noticing that they formed a word: ROSEWARY.The Foundation: RBallroom: OMusic Room: SCorridor: EGallery: WSolarium: AKitchen: RThe Pool: Y The T-shade in the SolariumNext, if you check the words from the Mora Jai boxes in the aforementioned rooms, you'll be able to rearrange them to form this phrase: "SEEK A SHADE TO PASS THROUGH THE A."At a glance, it seems that this is just a means of nudging you to pass through the Atelier. However, upon looking at the room with the corresponding letter "A," we saw that it was the Solarium. It just so happens that the Solarium in the manor has a shade--i.e. dark-shaded windows in the shape of the letter "T."Granted, we've done several tests that have proven inconclusive:We've tried using Shrine blessings to spawn the Solarium as an outer room at different days and times.We've drafted various rooms adjacent to or leading to the Solarium.We've brought various items, including those that belonged to Auravei in the past.We've even plopped down the Solarium in specific areas in the manor.As of the time of this writing, we can't tell if the Blue Prince Rosewary term and Solarium actually lead somewhere, or if this "shade" is just a rendering issue. Other discoveries in the Atelier: The Gallery PuzzleThe good news is that several players in the Discord server have managed to make a huge discovery. Led by Cogito Ergo Sum, users Toka, Sfayne, Swerds, and Soulflarz were able to decipher the word puzzle in the Atelier's version of the Gallery:The four words consist of one letter and several spaces that are left blank: _ M _ _ __ O _ _ _ _O _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ N _While the words spell out "MOON," there's a deeper mystery to it. The group found the hidden words by including the letters from the rooms, which are seen when you trace the four paths through the Atelier--i.e. red, orange, purple, and blue/true path. EMPTYMOTHERONESELFSWANSONGWe've yet to find out what these words mean. In fact, we can't confirm if the Blue Prince Rosewary lead is part of an elaborate puzzle or if it's just another red herring. That said, once you reach this part of the game, perhaps you'd like to join the hunt in the Discord channel as well.A surreal adventure filled with wonders and mysteries awaits you in Blue Prince. If ever you feel stuck or lost at any point in time in your playthrough, don't forget to check our Blue Prince guides hub.

The Sims 4 will be launching three new kits for players to enjoy starting on May 1. The arrival of the Restoration Workshop, Golden Years, and Kitchen Clutter kits in The Sims 4 will likely provide a lot more official pieces of furniture and Create-a-Sim items that players can use to spruce up their living spaces and custom characters.

“Paranoia” is a side quest in The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered about a Wood Elf who’s paranoid about a series of maybe-maybe-not stalkers. There are multiple ways this quest can play out, and the reward is a variable amount of gold You can actually completed “Paranoia” almost as soon as it starts, but if you’d rather get involved with the suspicious Wood Elf, there’s an entertaining quest line to look forward to. This Oblivion Remastered guide includes a full “Paranoia” walkthrough, with where to start the quest and what happens if you accept the quest giver’s proposal, or not, and the rewards for completing it. ‘Paranoia’ walkthrough in Oblivion Remastered In Skingrad, you might come across a Wood Elf named Glarthir, whose appearance is immediately striking since he has yellow pupils. He’ll ask you to meet him Great Chapel of Julianos at midnight. If you haven’t come across him, go to the chapel around midnight anyway and he should be lurking around. Should you accuse Bernadette? After meeting up with him, he’ll tell you he thinks a woman named Bernadette Peneles is stalking him. He’ll ask you to help him out by meeting outside his house and then spying on Bernadette in return. Say yes and meet him outside of his house at 6 a.m.. Bernadette’s house is right across from his. You can either wait or rest to 6 a.m., and you’ll see Bernadette walking around (she’s wearing a red headband). Simply just follow her for an entire day. While Glarthir says to not let her see you, she just minds her own business as she goes to chapel, does some gardening work, and sits down at benches. After following her for an entire day, report back to Glarthir at midnight behind the chapel.. Whether you confirm or deny that Bernadette is spying on him, he’ll give you 150 gold as a reward. He’ll then ask you to spy on Toutius Sextius. Should you accuse Toutius? As with Bernadette, follow Toutius around. You can find him at his house, and he usually comes out around 10:30 a.m.. At midnight, report to Glarthir again. If you deem both Bernadette and Toutius innocent, he’ll give you another 150 gold. However, if you accuse both of them, he’ll give you 200 gold instead. Should you accuse Davide? Glarthir will then finally ask you to spy on Davide Surille. As with both Bernadette and Toutius, follow Davide around. He can be elusive, but I found him wandering around town in the early mornings near the West Gate at around 6:30 a.m.. Or you can wait outside the Surille brothers’ house.  If you accuse Davide, Glarthir will give you another 150 gold. If you’ve also accused at least Bernadette or Toutius, he’ll increase it to 200. Glarthir will then hand you a note asking you to kill the ones you’ve accused of spying on him, with the reward being 1,000 gold. All ‘Paranoia’ quest outcomes in Oblivion Remastered There are multiple different outcomes in “Paranoia” depending on what you choose to do. Here are the outcomes at a glance, followed by some extra details about how to see these through: If you choose not to kill the people you’ve accused, Glarthir will do it himself. If you choose to kill them, you’ll earn 1,000 gold. If you clear all three people, Glarthir will attack you. If you report Glarthir to a guard, the guard will kill him. If you don’t help Glarthir in the first place, he’ll kill Bernadette himself. In order to kill Bernadette or Davide, you can simply just lockpick into their houses at night and kill them in their sleep. Toutius tends to walk outside of town, where you can kill him without any guards nearby to see. When you’ve killed who Glarthir has asked, meet up with him again at midnight. He’ll breathe a sigh of relief, having his suspicions confirmed, and hand you the 1,000 gold. When reporting to Glarthir, if you clear Bernadette, Toutius, and Davide, he will get mad at you and attack you. After killing him, you can grab his house key off his body, enter his house, and loot all of his chests, which contain a large variety of different items. Alternatively, if you show the note Glarthir gave you to a guard, the guard will go kill him. You can grab the key to his house off his body then and loot the chests. At the beginning of the quest, if you refuse to help Glarthir, he’ll go and kill Bernadette himself. Shortly after your meeting with him, he’ll go to his house and grab an axe. He’ll then either enter Bernadette’s house at night or go to the chapel during the day and they’ll duke it out. Sometimes Bernadette actually wins. If Bernadette ends up running out of the building, the guards will attack Glarthir. In the event Glarthir succeeds, he’ll walk out of the building and the guards will attack him. Again, don’t forget to grab his keys! Regardless, “Paranoia” doesn’t end without at least one person dead! Just don’t let it be you. For more Oblivion Remastered walkthroughs, here’s how to join the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild, a quest guide for “Wisdom of Ages,” and solutions to Vilverin dungeon puzzles. Or see a list of all factions.

I thought it was just me, a non-native English speaker, who loved watching everything with subtitles on. But clearly, it's not. Based on a recent survey, more than 50% of US viewers watch content with the subtitles on. And there are many reasons why. Sometimes you want to watch something on a low volume in bed, and sometimes it's just too hard to understand what a character is saying. Or, you could be watching with cheap TV speakers that make your audio hard to hear.Netflix is starting to understand this, and so for people who don't necessarily need to see sound effects in their subtitles, is adding a new dialogue-only subtitles mode. This mode removes text-descriptions for sound effects, speakers, and more.And don't worry: The CC or Closed Captions option will still be there, so you can pick that if you need subtitles for more than just dialogue. It will tell you when a song is playing, when someone makes some noise, or even if there's a change in setting.How to switch to dialogue-only subtitles on NetflixThis will be a gradual rollout, and Netflix is starting with the latest (and final) season of You, as well as the Tom Hardy film Havoc.We don't yet know if Netflix will go on to roll out dialogue-only subs for all existing content, but the company is promising that every new Netflix Original, in every language, will have dialogue-only subtitles. So Netflix isn't limiting this to only English. For example, you'll find dialogue-only subtitles in German as well. Credit: Netflix To switch over to dialogue only subs, start streaming your supported content, and then head over to the Subtitles section. Here, choose English (or your language of choice) in the Audio section, and then select English in the Subtitles section as well. To maintain subs for more than just dialogue, choose English (CC).And that's all there is to it. You're now watching with subtitles that only show the dialogue. It's just you and the characters.

The hit co-op adventure game Split Fiction is already headed for Hollywood with Sydney Sweeney in a starring role, according to Variety. Along with the Euphoria actor, the film adaptation welcomed Wicked’s Jon M. Chu as the project’s director and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who worked on Deadpool & Wolverine. Sweeney will also reportedly be an executive producer for the Split Fiction movie. Split Fiction features two authors named Mio and Zoe who get trapped in fictional worlds they penned up. It’s still unknown which of the two Split Fiction protagonists Sweeney will portray. Shortly after the video game’s release in March, Variety reported on a bidding war for a film adaptation of Split Fiction. Hazelight Studios, an indie video game developer out of Sweden, created the game that centers around split-screen combat and bounces between sci-fi and fantasy worlds. The game saw early success, selling two million copies in its first week, which may have led to the quick turnaround of a proposed Hollywood adaptation. It was picked up by Story Kitchen, a studio known for adaptations of franchises like Sonic the Hedgehog and Tomb Raider, but there’s no release window yet. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/split-fiction-movie-adaptation-lands-sydney-sweeney-as-star-180322064.html?src=rss

Chinese researchers claim to have developed the fastest non volatile flash memory to date, but it needs a better name than PoX.

Meta has laid off employees in the company's Reality Labs division that is tasked with developing virtual reality, augmented reality and wearable devices.

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Just because a home listing gets a price cut doesn’t necessarily indicate that the home actually sold for less than its comps. Some real estate agents use pricing strategies that intentionally list too high to test the market or create negotiation room. After all, even during the pandemic housing boom—when home prices were surging—18.7% of U.S. homes for sale in March 2021 still saw a price cut. That said, if the share of inventory receiving a price cut rises beyond typical seasonal patterns, it can suggest a market where homebuyers are gaining leverage. Conversely, if the share of inventory receiving a price cut falls beyond seasonality, it can indicate a market where home sellers are gaining leverage. Here’s how the percentage of U.S. active housing inventory receiving a price cut in March 2025 compared to the historical totals: March 2017: 25.6% March 2018: 26.6% March 2019: 26.4% March 2020: 22.8% March 2021: 18.7% March 2022: 21.3% March 2023: 29.4% March 2024: 31.7% March 2025: 33.9% How did ResiClub calculate this? We divided the number of U.S. homes for sale that received a price reduction in March by the total number of active U.S. home listings during that same month. The table below shows the raw data. (The Realtor.com data series we used for this analysis only goes back to July 2016.) Big picture: This data is just one more bit of evidence showing that the national housing market’s supply-demand equilibrium has begun shifting in homebuyers’ favor ever since mortgage rates spiked in late spring 2022 and the pandemic housing boom fizzled out. Of course, this all varies significantly across the country.  Some housing markets—particularly in parts of the Midwest and Northeast—remain relatively tight, with sellers still in control. Others markets have just shifted into balanced markets, while some pockets of the Sun Belt have turned into outright buyer’s markets.