Over the past week, Twitch, the streaming giant, has laid off another 400 employees. Funko essentially shuttered Mondo, the media poster business, firing its founders and majority of its staff just a year after acquisition. And there were an unfortunate, to say the least, series of criminal incidents at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) where several women were roofied at after events and parties. Thankfully, there have yet to be any further claims as those who were drugged were helped and protected by close friends. These were the most telegraphed and discussed, but there were, most likely, also other lay offs and events that probably soured people on continuing future creative prospects and endeavors.

Now, obviously there is a vast chasm of difference in the previously mentioned events and their ultimate consequences. I am not trying to make a direct connection between them, but more trying to show how they will have similar impacts. Because they will. Beyond the immediate downturn of the companies output and usability, there is a significant loss of institutional knowledge and relationships with these people leaving the industry. For example, how many artists are no longer working with the shuttering of Mondo? Or more significantly, how many relationships with artists, producers, studios, and companies built over time and effort are just gone with this move? Or trust with customers and consumer bases? Because that is also being lost.

Which honestly is an unseen and under discussed consequence. These fledgling and burgeoning industries are losing decades of progress and goodwill because a handful of assholes want to retain their supposed power or keep their stock options above the line at the cost of the actual business they are in charge of. It is a death by a thousand cuts as experience and talent are removed bit by bit. And it is not as though the executives making these decisions consider the impact their choices will have on these industries. All they are concerned with is making sure the line on the sheet does not go down, only up. A course of action that gets us to what Twitter has become. Wish there was an actual solution to this, but unfortunately there is not a magic wand to be waved to do away with all this and make it better.

So, we keep on. Help one another to continue and spread the knowledge and experience we have gained out to more people to try to make something worthwhile from the dust. To better days.