Amir Satvat says he's received 'countless' hateful messages after being honored at The Game Awards for helping laid-off devs: 'This can happen to you too when you sacrifice over 2,000 hours of your time to help the industry'

Gaming IndustryAmir Satvat says he’s received ‘countless’ hateful messages after being honored at The Game Awards for helping laid-off devs: ‘This can happen to you too when you sacrifice over 2,000 hours of your time to help the industry’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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Amir Satvat Wins TGA Game Changer at The Game Awards 2024 - YouTubeWatch On

Amir Satvat Wins TGA Game Changer at The Game Awards 2024 - YouTube

“I am continuing to do my best to tune this out but it is quite extreme,” Satvat said ina LinkedIn post.

During the event,Geoff Keighley admittedthat he’s “struggled” to know how best to address the unprecedented rash of games industry layoffs we’ve seen over the past few years. It was the first time the host and producer directly addressed layoffs at the awards, and the solution he came up with was to honor Satvat, a figure well-known in the games business for his efforts to help laid-off developers find new work.

A brief video segment described howSatvat’s projecthas helped “place nearly 3,000 people in jobs,” and Satvat accepted the award with a tearful speech in which he challenged the crowd to make the industry better.

Many viewers responded positively to the segment, including viewers in the industry, but some have criticized it as a cynical attempt to keep up the appearance of caring while celebrating the very people responsible for the poor state of the business—the executives in the audience whose companies ultimately fund The Game Awards. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, who oversaw Microsoft’s acquisition ofActivisionBlizzard and the subsequent layoffs, is on the show’s advisory board, for example.

Some critics went well beyond denouncing the awards, however: After the ceremony, Satvat himself came under attack for his job at Tencent, where he’s been a business development director for about a year and a half. The suggestion going around social media is that Satvat was presented as a kind of folk hero, but is actually part of the problem—or even a sinister “industry plant” whose heartwarming story was entirely manufactured.

Satvat says that his job wasn’t mentioned during the show because it’s irrelevant. He began providing games industry job hunting resources before he started work at Tencent last year, and says that he doesn’t deal with mergers there, didn’t at his previous job at Amazon, and has never laid anyone off.

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“I’ve never signed a contract or personally been part of a deal that led to job losses in my career,” wrote Satvat. “In fact, in some instances, like at [Amazon Web Services], I put great effort into making sure hundreds of peoples’ jobs were saved during moments of restructuring.

The criticism, insults, and accusations Satvat is otherwise receiving don’t appear to come from any one perspective—good faith criticism of The Game Awards is mixed in with shouting about China, antisemitism, and other staples of internet discourse most associated today with X.

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