In this article, we will analyze how the war has affected the games industry job market in Ukraine Russia, and Belarus.
The research was conducted by Values Value, the recruiting company, and InGame Job, the job platform for the gaming industry.
In the first quarter of 2022, 20,186 vacancies were posted on industrial job portals. Yes, this is more than in the fourth quarter of 2021 (16,505), but we can already predict a decrease in this number in the next quarter. Already in March 2022, the number of vacancies decreased sharply by almost 18% compared to February.
The charts by country are more revealing. They better show what exactly is happening with game development: the vacancy market in Ukraine has collapsed by 65%, in Russia – by almost 40%, in Belarus, where there has already been a decrease in the number of vacancies from month to month – by 45%. (This does not include vacancies for remote workers).
The number of vacancies with a remote work format has almost not decreased (before we saw growth in this chart). However, it is worth to note that now the head offices of companies offering a remote format of cooperation are located not only and not so much in home locations (Russian Federation, Belarus and Ukraine) – now the geography is wider: Armenia, Georgia, Cyprus, Poland, the Baltic countries and so on.
The geography of the search for game development specialists looked familiar back in February: Kyiv was the leader in terms of the number of vacancies with the office format, followed by Moscow, St. Petersburg and Minsk.
In March, the world changed. This you can see in the chart below. In all cities, the demand for specialists has sharply decreased. Except that this does not apply to Lviv, where many Ukrainian companies from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro and so on relocated.
Brief conclusions
- Back in January and February 2022, the industry had a strong tendency to grow, but the war made its adjustments, collapsing the Ukrainian labor market by 65%, the Belarusian market by 45%, and Russia by 40%.
- Relocating companies continue to hire specialists remotely, albeit slightly less than in the pre-war months.
- The professions in demand have not changed: most often (albeit in smaller numbers) companies are looking for Unity and C ++ developers, Manual QA engineers, game designers, and 3D artists.
Ukrainian Games Industry in The Times of War / Tanja Loktionova on DevGAMM stream
