polygon.com

cybervseas, do games w Microsoft has never been good at running game studios, which is a problem when it owns them all

“You’ll have GaaS and you’ll like it.”

Lost_My_Mind,

Microsoft owns taco bell?

mrfriki, (edited ) do games w Microsoft has never been good at running game studios, which is a problem when it owns them all

But that is the whole point. You don’t buy studios to make games, you buy them to get rid of competitors.

acosmichippo,
@acosmichippo@lemmy.world avatar

not always true, they clearly bought zenimax to make exclusive xbox games.

Chronographs,

Has Zenimax even released any xbox exclusives? As far as I know they’ve all been cross platform.

arudesalad,

Excluding steam because even playstation release exclusives on steam now, Starfield is (was? I don’t know if it released on ps later on) xbox exclusive. Out of Zenimax’s library, that is probably the game that you would want the least as an exclusive but at least it is something (they needed something after spending US$7.5 billion on them)

Plebcouncilman,

You don’t spend 8 billion dollars on a company to then shrink their market. Microsoft was never planning on making any of these properties they bought fully exclusive. The transition to third party you’re seeing now has been in the making for 5+ years at this point. Youre all just looking at this through the old console war lense when they’ve been over that ever since Gamepass released and they realized they make more money putting that on everything (larger market) than playing the exclusives game (smaller market)

acosmichippo, (edited )
@acosmichippo@lemmy.world avatar

i figured it was going to be a transition over time for less shocking optics.

anyway, the main point is microsoft wants them to make games, exclusive or not. buying them didn’t eliminate any competition.

AHemlocksLie,

Yes, it did eliminate competition. They’re no longer competition once Microsoft buys them. They’re employees, possibly if a subsidiary, who contribute to Microsoft’s profits.

sugar_in_your_tea,

And for Microsoft, to get a back catalogue to ensure your subscription service remains attractive.

dual_sport_dork,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar
who, do gaming w Microsoft has never been good at running game studios, which is a problem when it owns them all

I look forward to the small new game studios that will surely appear as the big old ones are consolidated and/or dismantled.

It’s disappointing to see things we like fade away, but as the sun sets in one place, it rises in another.

endeavor,

There is basically no good AAA studio left save for maybe bohemia, rockstar and cd project red. Meanwhile indies have risen up and overthrown the corpos by making fun games that set trends.

A big studio hasnt set a single trend in like over a decade now. AAA gaming has been dead for a while.

megopie, do gaming w Microsoft has never been good at running game studios, which is a problem when it owns them all

Shame, exploitive studios that let the business idiots take over and then sell them to Microsoft.

Will be happy to support the people who used to work there that go on to make indie games.

rbos,
@rbos@lemmy.ca avatar

If someone drive a truck full of money up to my house, I’d be hard pressed to say no. See Notch and Minecraft.

megopie,

I think the larger issue is that so many studios get set up as things that can be sold by one or two people for the benefit of only one or two people. Like, the larger issue is that everyone who has been working at the studio should have some amount of say in if it should be sold or not. And if they do sell, you should be getting a cut of the truck of money.

endeavor,

If you sell your car do you split it evenly between all the mechanics who worked on it?

megopie,

I don’t own a car.

But if I were to buy one, I’d like that every worker at the factory who assembled it got paid some percentage of the factories profits, and had some amount of input on the leadership of the company as a whole, not just an hourly wage.

Does it generally work like that? No, but doesn’t mean I don’t think that’s a better way to do things.

endeavor,

They do get paid a percentage tho.

megopie, (edited )

Unless the company is an ESOP, has some sort of profit sharing mechanism or is a co-op, they do not, they only get paid an hourly wage or a salary. If the company becomes more profitable, they do not see a consummate increase In their compensation. And they have no say on if the company is sold, and they are not compensated in anyway for the company they’ve contributed to being sold.

endeavor,

Where do you think the wages materialize? They get paid out of the product sold. Literally every time you buy something the company uses that money to compensate their workers for their time and skill.

megopie,

The wages do not come out of the profit.

Profit is revenue minus expenses. Wages are part of expenses.

Wages are used to ensure that people working there are able to keep working there, covering day day expenses of the workers.

Wages rarely reflect the real value of the effort put in by the people working at the company. They reflect the cost to the worker of choosing to work at the company.

I think that workers at a company should be payed some percentage of the profit of the company, with financiers and investors receiving some percentage of the profit in turn.

endeavor,

I agree, wages should be distributed more evenly with the bare minimum wage being so that fuckhead todd who never does anything and only works part time could still afford paying morgage/rent, food and transportation. Id also like managers and ceos be held responsible for any big fuckups of the company. How nestle is still allowed to exist is beyond me.

sampao, do gaming w Microsoft has never been good at running game studios, which is a problem when it owns them all

Would be nice if the studios would stop selling themselves too… They don’t have to take Microsoft money

sampao, do gaming w Microsoft has never been good at running game studios, which is a problem when it owns them all

Would be nice if the studios would stop selling themselves too… They don’t have to take Microsoft money

theangriestbird,

Regrettably…they kinda do. At least for studios like Obsidian and Double Fine, the landscape has become very grim. They are studios of a size that is very difficult to keep afloat in this environment. Investor funding in the gaming segment has dried up post-COVID, and these kinds of mid-level (or higher) devs were very reliant on that kind of funding. In light of that, these studios may have seen Microsoft as something of a safe harbor. They knew these layoffs were always a possibility, but I think it was better for them than the alternative. Or at least, it was the best choice for the people leading these studios prior to their respective Microsoft acquisitions. The devs that are being laid off are not the same people that signed off on the acquisition.

endeavor,

You don’t have to take your employers money but yet you still do. Same with companies who get bought out.

astrsk, do games w Rare's Everwild canceled amid layoffs at Xbox Game Studios
@astrsk@fedia.io avatar

So much for all those studio purchases. What a waste.

billwashere,

What exactly is the point of buying these game studios to just shut them down?

Coyote_sly,

The modern American dream - figure out how to get paid tens of millions to spend someone else’s tens of billions chasing my own tail. No, I don’t create a fucking thing. I get rich by dismantling shit that used to have value!

MyDarkestTimeline01, do games w Rare's Everwild canceled amid layoffs at Xbox Game Studios

I think…

I think this is it. We’re in the “coughing up blood” stage of Xbox divesting from hardware and turning into just a publisher.

sigmaklimgrindset,

The can’t even publish games properly at this point. They’re just gobbling up other studio/publisher’s products for Gamepass.

NoForwardslashS, do games w Rare's Everwild canceled amid layoffs at Xbox Game Studios

follow Microsoft’s lead in removing layers of management to increase agility and effectiveness

I didn’t realise the game was being developed entirely by management.

Also I hate the “increased agility” line. No-one gets more agile by having to cover the work of laid off folks on too of your own workload.

LettyWhiterock,
@LettyWhiterock@lemmy.world avatar

There’s a logic to a smaller team being more “agile” than a larger team, but yeah these companies aren’t turning them into smaller studios. They’re expecting fewer people to do the work of a larger studio. The problems are obviously except to execs who are literally too stupid to think.

NoForwardslashS,

It’ll be fine because with CoPilot all 10 of the remaining programmers will be able to do the work of 1000!

That or we’re going to see increasingly shoddy AAA titles in the near future and the industry is going to implode.

Aielman15, (edited ) do games w Rare's Everwild canceled amid layoffs at Xbox Game Studios
@Aielman15@lemmy.world avatar

News of Everwild’s cancellation arrives amid more layoffs at Microsoft; the company is reportedly slashing nearly 9,000 jobs as part of new cuts at Microsoft.

Wow. It was rumored to be a big layoff, but 9,000 is way over any forecast. And this is what? The third so far since Covid? Is there anyone left working for them, at this point? Or is it all seasonal contractors?

EDIT: turns out that they gutted The Initiative (the supposedly AAAA studio that never released anything), cancelled Everwild, cut 50% of Turn10, 10% of King, and cancelled an unknown number of unannounced games, including one MMO title developed by the TES Online devs.
What a bloodbath. But hey, at least Phil is safe.

SnotFlickerman,

https://c.tenor.com/z5V6OVLdSkQAAAAC/tenor.gif

But seriously this is tragic as hell for all the people losing their jobs and seeing all the work they did on the game go up in a puff of smoke.

BlameTheAntifa,

Contractors never count in layoff numbers, so this number would be much, much worse if you included them. The actual job losses could easily be more than doubled.

DoucheBagMcSwag,

Fable is on emergency watch

Aielman15,
@Aielman15@lemmy.world avatar

Considering that it skipped the last showcase despite reportedly releasing next year, I don’t have high hopes for that one.

Wouldn’t be surprised if it was built on the backs of seasonal contractors. Seems like that’s the strategy they have chosen for their other big IPs as well (Forza Motorsport 8 and Halo Infinite).

It’s incredible that the clowns in charge of the gaming division and responsible for dragging it through the mud for all these years get to keep their job and will probably see an increase in their salaries as well, while the people that lost their jobs because of their incompetence will get nothing but a sad press release from Uncle Phil the HR department.

Ashtear,

I don’t think we get granular info on this stuff, all we know is this latest round of cuts involves sales too as they are moving to outsource some of that work. And that Microsoft’s total head count has been mostly level since they added a ton of people with acquisitions and hires in 2022.

Clearly, Xbox has seen a lot of cuts though.

LostWanderer, do games w Rare's Everwild canceled amid layoffs at Xbox Game Studios
@LostWanderer@fedia.io avatar

More bad news from Xbox, I was hoping they'd cut Phil Spencer lose instead...They need a brand-new lead to make Xbox awesome again. I can't say that I am surprised, though, as this game has been in dev for 7 years. However, there should've been something that could be salvaged and made into a viable game.

Noerknhar, do games w Rare's Everwild canceled amid layoffs at Xbox Game Studios

Fuck!!!

iamtherealwalrus, do games w Baldur’s Gate 4 may happen eventually, but not with Larian Studios

Article is from April 2025.

prole,

So two months ago?

bjoern_tantau,
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

And it wasn’t even news back then. Almost immediately after the BG3 release Swen Vincke talked about the next project being an in-house IP again. And not much later they quit working on a DLC.

Tikiporch, do games w Baldur’s Gate 4 may happen eventually, but not with Larian Studios

I’m fine with a different studio doing every Baldur’s Gate iteration. Bioware, Beamdog, Black Isle, and others have done Baldurs Gate games and I enjoyed them. I see no reason to tether the franchise to a single developer, particularly one whose heart isn’t in it anymore.

jjjalljs, do games w Baldur’s Gate 4 may happen eventually, but not with Larian Studios

I would be surprised if it was as good and big as bg3. I doubt they’ll give it to a small studio with a lot of heart, so it probably won’t be good.

Though I don’t know, maybe if they gave it to whatever’s left of obsidian it wouldn’t be the worst?

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