In a rare piece of particularly feel-good news last week, it turns out thatLies of Pand its Overture expansion did so well financially that everyone on its development team wasrewarded with an extra two weeks of paid vacation, 10 million South Korean won, and a Nintendo Switch 2. Considering that games media is usually reportingstudio closuresandlayoffs, it’s quite nice to imagine that somewhere in the world, there are developers using their well-earned days off to playMario Kart Worldinstead of having to see their holding corporation eat all the profits.
The Stellar Blade developers, also Korean, likewisereceived PS5 Pros and a bonus last year.
However, because the internet is a vile and sad place, there are people in a specific corner of the gaming world trying to position this as an East versus West issue. The argument goes that developers in Asia are thriving because they’re ‘rejecting woke culture’, while developers in the West are getting laid off because their games are ‘embracing wokeness’ and failing to make as much money.
I Promise You It’s Got Nothing To Do With Woke
There are manyveryobvious refutations to this argument. Firstly, there’s the obvious problem of equivocating Asian games with being anti-woke. Looking at every game through a lens of woke or not-woke is a pointless exercise and even the thought of doing so rots one’s brain cells, but for the sake of this counterargument, we have to do just that.
Can anybody really argue thatLike a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, which deals heavily with helping former yakuza members find legitimate work andheavily emphasises principles of kindness and forgiveness, is anti-woke? Are theFinal FantasyandPersonagamesnot often explicitly political?
There’s also another obvious flaw in the argument: Asian developers are struggling with layoffs just as much as Western developers are. Sony (a Japanese company, lest we forget) has closed multiple studios (Firewalk StudiosandLondon Studio) and laid off developers at others, includingBungie,Ballistic Moon, andBend Studio.Square Enixrestructured in 2024and laid off employees across U.S. and Europe.
I can already hear you saying, ‘But those were all Western developers!’ Fine, let’s look at Korea specifically, since that’s where Lies of P developer Round8 (and its holding company Neowiz) is headquartered. NCSoft, which developedThrone and Liberty,restructured last year, laying off an unknown number of employees. Netmarble, the developer of Demis Re:Born, reportedlylaid off 20 employees, about 25 percent of its workforce, in January this year, afterlaying off 70 people the year before.
Behold – Economics
There are a lot of possible reasons why Lies of P did well enough to get all its employees bonuses and a Switch 2, and none of them have anything to do with wokeness. For one, development costs are lower in many parts of Asia. Outside of major cities, there are lower costs of living than in many parts of Europe and the U.S., meaning salary costs are lower, and currency conversions mean that revenues gained from foreign purchases can be stretched further.
And in Korea and China specifically, where live-service gacha games reign, the fact is that single-player, narrative-heavy games are a growing industry. There’s far less saturation in the genre for local audiences, and these players areexcitedto see experiences of this kind come out of their home grounds, which ups the likelihood of them buying the game.
So yes, I’m very happy for these developers. They deserve to be rewarded for their hard work, but so does every other developer, Western, Eastern, or otherwise. Let’s just remember that it’s got nothing to do with wokeness, and more to do with basic economics.
Lies of P
WHERE TO PLAY
Lies Of P is a soulslike game developed by Neowiz Games. Pinocchio wakes up in a train station and players are tasked with guiding him through Krat in search of his creator, Gepetto. An array of weapons at their disposal, most of which are compatible with the lead character’s mechanical arm.
