At this point anyone selling a company to a bigger studio is just either ignorant or greedy. It’s almost a given that they’ll just crash it into the grounds. Acquisitions and mergers might be like the eighth deadly sin. Everyone loses.
Who cares? It’s the audiences fault for assuming that prior performance is an indicator of future performance. Let the founders cash out. Buyers get rich because audiences think quality will be maintained post acquisition. How often does that really happen though?
Yeah I mean, I have a hard time being too sympathetic to people who unnecessarily sold their company. There is no reason to do it. If you need money, you can always get investors to get a minor stake or something.
According to the article the old leadership wanted to share the bonus with the whole development team of around 100 people. I don’t think the motivation of the team will be great now that the publisher pushed the bonus in unreachable distance. Fucking assholes can’t even stand by their own promises.
According to the wiki page… “In May 2024, Take-Two announced it would shut down Intercept Games but continue to update Kerbal Space Program 2 under the Private Division label.”
I wonder how will they manage that logistically. They are firing every single developer from IG. Who exactly in Private Division is going to be doing the updating? I suspect they will just brush a little of the code that is ready, then completely abandon the product in a year or so.
Why would anyone be excited for a series that now peaked 21 years ago, and has only had 1 other release in that time?
I understand why youre not interested and I also don’t care for it, but it’s disingenuous to say it isn’t one of the most hyped games of all time. The first trailer has 268 million views on youtube and that’s only on the official channel. People are excited.
Understandable. It was a huge step down from SA in terms of world activities. 5 only managed to rise to levels above it in the online portion (and only through hella years of additions).
4s driving and shooting was better than SA but everything else makes SA better. I wanted then to marry the two together for the best GTA possible but they never did and probably won’t ever
I’d take GTA 4 or 5 over San Andreas, easily. And at this point, a large part of the appeal is GTA Online for a ton of folks; not me, but a ton of folks.
I liked the DLCs as well. I know why they don’t do them anymore, as online is a money printing machine. But I really liked them and wished they had done more.
The world exists, so just add a story with a bunch of missions => nice DLC. But since they make such an obscene amount of money from online it makes no sense for them to do any more.
Warner bros has no idea how to media anymore. They forgot about looney tunes characters. They cancel their movies after shooting before release. They do t make dlc for games that sold like hotcakes. All they did was patent the nemesis system. what the fuck are they doing?
im super on the fuck unity train right now but like, real normal people work there that need employ and have families to support. I hope unity changes course due to public sentiment but i don’t really think that death threats forcing an office closed are going to be the way to invite that change
I think it’s more the “find employment” thing, not the “piece of shit” thing. Tech companies have been doing massive layoffs recently so the market is flooded with people looking for jobs when fewer places are hiring.
Tech companies have been doing massive layoffs recently
A. Sort of big, not recession-inducing.
B. Intentionally done by the larger companies to price-fix the tight job market so they don’t have to pay so much.
I hope they do. But for now I’d rather them not all lose work overnight, nor do I want all of the indie devs getting blindsided by these changes to unity to have to give up on, port, or delist their projects. I want unity to change for the better more than I want them to crash and burn. But I do think this will serve as an awakening for some segments of the industry to not put all their eggs in one basket with a company as greedy as unity. I hope Godot takes off in use, or Epic keeps using fortnite money to make unreal an attractive development platform and continues to be a good steward of it. That’s wishful thinking though, given the current state of unity lol
The second I heard the heard the firings happens and the rumors behind why I removed the game from my wishlist. And as more slowly comes out it makes Krafton look worse and worse
If they can prove breach of contract they can maybe get their IP back. Wishlists are a huge deal for if they want to shop the game around to other publishers.
Let’s be honest. Soon, Subnautica 2 will be on the front page of Steam, likely for a month or more. People who have no idea any of this is happening, nor care will buy it up in droves and in six months, none of this will matter, and you’ll all have likely pirated it by then anyway.
As far as I understand it, the vast majority of ‘successful’ indie studios are in the same boat. You need to continual decent hits to keep afloat in an ever turbulent and flooding market. Even if the next title is successful, they already mentioned the other looming problem, burnout. You might be able to push yourself through one game, two is a struggle, and very few make it to three.
To me, and maybe I’m being a bit cynical, but this feels like a very foreboding article.
That’s what. I’ve been trying to get into game dev myself multiple times the last few years and it’s difficult. I can’t imagine getting one game out, let alone a second one. Getting that far I imagine has to drain a person
It most definitely takes a toll. Most devs don’t even talk about the weird sadness you get after finally getting something out the door either.
I don’t mean to make it all sound bad though, there is some genuine joy in making something and seeing it come together. Anyways good luck on your game dev projects.
The investigation found that Barrett called lower-level female employees attractive, asked them to play truth-or-dare and made references to his wealth and power within the studio, suggesting that he could help advance their careers, according to two people familiar with the case.
In a statement to Bloomberg News, Barrett said that throughout nearly 25 years at Bungie, “I feel that I have always conducted myself with integrity and been respectful and supportive of my colleagues, many of whom I consider my closest friends. I never understood my communications to be unwanted and I would have never thought they could possibly have made anyone feel uncomfortable. If anyone ever felt that way about their interaction with me, I am truly sorry.”
Uh…
That might hold water if it was just casual flirting (though you should seriously be trained at any company near that scale that even that with anyone in your “chain of command” puts them in a really bad spot). But not for (alleged) open quid pro quo.
Seriously, I just finished my annual “preventing harassment’ training and there’s a whole section on power differential and how just asking puts employees in a bad spot. Just…don’t.
It’s one thing to say “your hair looks nice today, Susan.” I don’t think 99% of people would take that as anything beyond an innocent compliment.
Asking to play truth or dare is another thing entirely, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the guy saying that, probably isn’t going to just be complimenting Tina’s earrings
I wonder why companies do this? does it actually make it get done faster? Last I knew most workers were only efficient at their job for like the first 5 or 6 hours if that, spending an extra 8 ontop of it sounds like a waste of salary.
Ex Activision QA employee here - It does not get anything done faster, and it burns out the devs and QA alike so more mistakes are made. It’s always about hitting dates on time for shareholder profits, the C-suite people in charge do not give a shit about releasing a quality game.
Naughty Dog made its name by working ludicrous hours. One of the founders worked 16 hour days for a year, only taking off for Christmas, in order to make Crash Bandicoot.
The article seems primarily focused on new games. And the article still makes some great points, but when you factor in older games the problem gets bigger.
I am not going to say that old games were better or that “they just don’t make them like they used to”. What I will say is that a lot of older games that are super cheap on Steam or out of print entirely are still great. There are occasionally new great games being released of course (I haven’t played Hades 2 yet but I expect it to be great, for example). But there’s a lot of new games being released where I think… “Why would I spend $70 or $80 on this when I already have this backlog of older games? Why would I spend my time playing 7/10 games when I have dozens of 9/10’s sitting in my library waiting for me?”
Very true. And sometimes there’s an answer to those questions, even if we discount the games designed to disappear after a few years. You might be sensitive to spoilers, it might be the perfect game for you in the moment (like the right game for a handheld system just before a trip), your friends might want to play it with you or talk with you about it when you’re done, etc. But that competition with back catalogs absolutely exists.
Yeah. When they announced the new Silent Hill I was somewhat interested - although I felt the peak was back then with SH2. But having read about the remaster of SH2 and some reviews that said, it’d return to the roots? Nice!
Then I saw a streamer play it early, watched a bit and it looked promising. So I went to wishlist it. Then the release day comes and steam lists it for 70 bucks (available in two days) or 90 bucks now. Well, no. Let’s see how long the price will be that high, but WTF? I don’t wanna know what’s the price on console for it - usually it’s 10-20 bucks more?!?
Ahh fuck, stuff being published by them was usually a decent sign that it'd be interesting in some way. Best of luck to the actual team, I hope they can put something new together
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