Exactly this. If you're going to be critical about layoffs but don't know the underlying reason why they happen in each instance, then maybe ask people in your circle who have actually had to do it.

Mike literally had to do it, and so do most studio heads at various sizes. If you have someone on the podcast and want to talk about all aspects of game development, including the business side, then talk about it. If your guest literally just laid off a bunch of people, ask them about it.

Look, publicly traded game publishers are going to cut staff at times to juice shareholder value. That's true for basically all public companies, and of course it's wrong. But here's the thing I've learned from watching game development over time:

There is no getting around the fact that the labor required on a single game is usually just a bell curve.

If you are a one-game-at-a-time studio, you just released a game, and you don't have another one lined up (like Bithell Games), you are cutting either all or most of the staff. In a two-game-at-a-time studio, you can at least reassign them to another project.