Layoffs don’t just shrink teams, they wipe out institutional knowledge that takes decades to build. When veteran developers leave, all the unwritten stuff disappear with them: tool quirks, shortcuts, artistic intuition, “don’t reference that file like that” warnings, and the reasoning behind old tech decicisions. Most of it isn't documented because no one has time to record years of tiny hard-earned tricks and thought processes. The impact shows up so fast, man. New teams waste months relearningg systems, repeating old mistakes, and rebuilding processes that once ran smoothly. A lot of that expertise just vanishes. You can hire new people, but you can’t replace a decade of tech intuition or cross-department problem-solving overnight. The result is slower production, more friction, more bugs, and projects feel less stable and take longer to start working. Studios don’t just lose staff; they lose the memory of how they make games, and rebuilding can take years. Sometimes a studio known for a specific type of game suddenly can’t make it anymore, and now your sequels freaking suck.