Hitmarker Highlights

Hello there ??

It's Thursday, which means another edition of Hitmarker Highlights!

Unfortunately, we're landing in your inbox with yet more bad news, with the cancellation of E3 now confirmed and significant layoffs at both Counter Logic Gaming and Amazon Games.

Thankfully, there is plenty of positivity elsewhere this week, including rumors of a new PlayStation handheld, along with our usual data insights and career tips. ??

Let's get started by diving straight into the 10 hottest jobs in gaming over the past week!

Hot jobs ??

These were the 10 most popular vacancies on our platform this week:

You can find another 100+ vacancies that have been posted in the last seven days here . ??

Big news ??

?? E3 has been officially canceled

• In case you missed it, E3's attempted return to in-person events has been officially canceled. The decision came after several major gaming companies announced their intention to skip the trade show for a variety of reasons.
• Some companies, such as Ubisoft, Xbox, and PlayStation, have announced that they will instead host their own, smaller events. Nintendo, on the other hand, is likely to skip any events until later this year or even 2024 after stating that it did not have anything noteworthy to reveal at E3.
• Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest kicks off on June 8 and is being seen as a replacement for E3, with many of E3's non-attendees, such as Devolver Digital, attending the show.

Other news ???

As well as reports about the layoffs at CLG and Amazon Games, we have some exciting rumors to share with you this week. Sony appears to be gearing up for some big announcements at its upcoming showcase, which is expected to take place before Summer Game Fest, including a brand new streaming handheld. ??

?? Counter Logic Gaming reportedly sold with mass layoffs

?? Amazon Games lay off over 100 employees

?? PlayStation showcase rumored to be held before June 8

?? Sony rumored to be working on a new handheld

We publish 3–4 stories every weekday covering all aspects of the gaming industry. You can see all of our recent articles here .

Hiring insights ??

We're keeping it simple again this week by looking at the contract types that have been offered by the thousands of video game industry jobs posted on Hitmarker so far in 2023:

What do we learn from this, though? ??

Well, you may have heard gaming described as an "all or nothing" industry before, and we believe the data above shows this to be true. Almost 90% of all opportunities that have been advertised in the industry so far this year have had full-time contracts attached, which means a full commitment to the hiring company in return for a set salary, benefits, and more.

At the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of volume, we find part-time opportunities, which account for less than 0.5% of the total. It's incredibly rare to find part-time employment opportunities in our industry, which is in complete contrast to an industry like traditional sport, which relies heavily on part-time, contracted workers to help run live events, and more.

Digging deeper, we've talked about how rare video game internships are before, but it hasn't been the worst start to the year in that regard with "Internship" being our second most popular contract type at ~6%. Still a small number, of course, but better than we've seen in the past! In the same period of 2022, for instance, just 4.2% of our vacancies were paid internships.

Then we have the non-employee contract types: "Contract", "Freelance", and "Temp", which collectively account for about 8% of all opportunities. It's natural that this number is low on Hitmarker, of course, as these sorts of opportunities are less likely to be advertised on a job platform like ours and perhaps more likely to be found on social media or by networking.

Getting social ??

We're still going strong on our Twitter and LinkedIn pages, where we post everything from job search advice to gaming news to data insights every weekday! ??

Here are a couple of highlights from the past week:

After you've applied to a dozen jobs and have to keep track of the stage each application is at, as well as who you're in contact with at each company, and more, the job search process can get incredibly difficult to manage.

That's why, this week on LinkedIn , we shared Javiera Cordero 's fantastic free Notion template, which allows you to keep track of all of your job applications in one place and keep tabs on which companies you've applied to during your job search!

If you're ready to put it to good use, you can check out over 2,000+ gaming jobs here . ??

One of the worst feelings during a job search is discovering what appears to be the right job for you, taking the time to apply, and then receiving the dreaded rejection email in your inbox.

As such, we thought it would be best to remind everyone on Twitter this week that rejection isn't the end of the world and that there are still many things you can improve to help you land a future opportunity.

Keep in mind that many positions are extremely competitive, so if you don't get the job, keep looking and keep learning! ??

The end ??

Thanks for reading this week's Hitmarker Highlights. Be sure to join us again next week!

Best wishes from us all here,

Danny and the gang at Hitmarker