Not a surprise. Anything this company touches is sinking. These giant gaming conglomerates don’t make an iota of business sense. The whole point of a conglomerate buying a whole bunch of similar businesses, aka horizontal integration, is so these businesses can share the same knowledge, infrastructure and supply lines and benefit from economies of scale to lower costs. Like an oil conglomerate using their own tankers to transport oil for all their subsidiaries. But in the gaming industry there is barely any overlap between two studios where synergy can happen. Except for the business admin, promotion and advertising side. But that is a tiny fraction of the costs of big budget production. The biggest cost is on the production side and every studio needs their own set of directors, producers, designers, artists, programmers etc. Another goal of horizontal integration is capturing market share, but with games you run the risk of cannibalizing your own sales especially how Embracer is doing it since most studios in their portfolio are from the same region in the world making games for similar markets.
EA and Ubisoft tried this before and failed miserably and they sold or shuttered almost every studio they bought. The only one who does a good job at it is Sony, but even they don’t have as many studios as Embracer and they rely on Chinese digital asset sweatshops.
Their piece of shit CEO, Lars Wingefors, was in discussion with a gulf national fund on a huge $2 billion investment.
He never got anything legally binding, but before securing the investment he went on a massive spending spree.
The national fund got cold feet and Wingefors had to cut up all of Embracer to account for his mistake.
You would think such a childish error would result in immediate dismissal and essentially a permanent blacklisting from executive positions (not only in the gaming industry).
Nothing like that happened, I believe the Embracer board is full of his friends and family. He just went with it.
This is the kind of stuff that shows that polemics around hard works and meritocracy are at least partially propaganda to keep the plebs in line.
Embracer is also splitting into three separate companies to shed the tainted Embracer name, all still owned and run by Wingefors of course.
Asmodee Group (for board games) and Coffee Stain Publishing (for indie games) are the only two with official names last I heard. The unnamed third is the big one and Embracer’s direct successor, but I guess they’re delaying naming it to minimize bad press associated with the new name.
“That being said, I want to call out the way Unity chose to communicate these layoffs. Receiving a 5am email from ‘noreply@unity’ informing me that my role was being ‘eliminated’ and that I’d lose system access by the end of the day felt completely abrupt and impersonal. Unity must do better in how they treat their workers in hard times like this.”
Oh the irony, they are almost there. Trying to appeal to empathy and humanity of a corporation in the same breath that they acknowledge the lack of it.
There is no humane nature intrinsic in corporations. People need to stop humanizing it. Treat it like It is, know that you are being taken advantage of, you are being squeased, extracted of every value you can give and then discarted.
Is there something to be worried about here with the Unreal Engine being the only big business in town in terms of indie game development for 3d game engines?
I mean obviously yes, but how worried should we be of this becoming a bottleneck?
Godot has been making leaps and bounds. Obviously not close to UE, but if it maintains its rate of improvement, I can see it becoming a more and more common choice in the indie space over the next few years
Nah, it definitely is, in fact I have noticed a disconcerting number of indie games I REALLY like especially 3d games with physics engines are on the unreal engine.
I have always been a massive fan of at least the creative output of projects on the unreal engine, I don’t know much about the politics and details around how it is to actually create games on the unreal engine or anything though. I just don’t trust Epic honestly or whoever owns them now or rather I don’t trust the incentive structure… but yeah I wish the unreal engine success I am just asking how people see the state of similar engines in this moment.
Bevy is damn impressive. I can understand why it’s not suitable for large projects yet but for anyone tinkering or projects willing to adapt to a rapidly iterate ecosystem is well worth a look.
I’m very sorry man, I’ve been through that, and I have friends that have been cut at unity before. They treat their workers terribly.
Focus on getting better first, just process it for a bit. When you’re ready to start looking, the market is warm right now. I’m more than happy to help review resumes.
Ah I think my comment made in haste was ambiguous. Fortunately I was not cut this time around, I’ve somehow skated by all the firings. I’m actually just clinging on for a few more months then I’m off to Sweden to go back to school. Hoping to actually finish my game dev degree this time around! I do have some school application stuff I would love to have people see though I’ll keep you in mind for that if you are up for it (for a work sample primarily, to get into higher rates schools)
Good then, glad you’ve made it through, but obviously stay frosty. Those execs will cut every engineer as long as they still look good. Be ready for anything
It’s very sad. We’re going lose a lot of great employees with tons of experience. This is going to cost to taxpayers in the form of poor services and contractors down the road filling in for more money and with less experience.
These buffoons understand very little, and neither do they understand the value of hard work and what it’s like needing to earn a living. This grandstanding is reckless.
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