It’s mindblowing that the studio had 100+ people and their only game was apparently RUINER. I was convinced it was a smaller indie game, how could they have that many employees and only release one decently successful game in like 6+ years?
Painful for who? I highly doubt any of the CEOs and investors interviewed are going to suffer all that much compared to the artists, programmers, and other employees that are going to be laid off because their company wants to be leaner, more dynamic, or whatever the latest buzzword is.
This would have happened sooner if it wasn’t for the cheap debt. Unsustainable businesses, hiring passionless staff and managers, mismanaging and producing sub par products.
Eventually people stop supporting these games.
When the money runs dry and it’s harder to borrow due to higher interest rates, you have to start cutting costs. And if your business is inefficient and bloated you have to downsize to survive.
Oh no, we might be making marginally less profit than we told our investors we’d be making, and none of us have the backbone to just tell them that you know, sometimes you gamble money and get little in return.
They are. The games industry is releasing a lot of hits in recent times, and there’s a lot of money flowing in. Just not as much as covid times and interest rates are high.
This has nothing to so with the actual industry and the people making games.
A fair point, but I do want to highlight that we’ve had plenty of companies like Bethesda releasing crap like Starfield, using tactics that specifically turned on their artist employees, and then scratching their heads on why it didn’t sell as well as Skyrim or Doom. I’m also seeing a lot of C-class laziness here.
We’ve tried layoffs, we’ve tried cutting funding, revoking investments, and still they refuse to be profitable! We’ll close them now to show them how they failed.
There really needs to be more lawsuits for this type of thing. You bought something and they didn’t make it clear that you were renting it. I get the server stuff but you know what? After you are done with the game it’s time to allow the community to host servers or at least remove DRM for offline play.
Glad I picked up Assetto Corsa instead. That sim is 11 years old and has amazing graphics, a thriving community, and isn’t “always online”… GTS is only 6 years old in comparison.
I think GTS and FMS are going to eventually be a struggle to sell once people catch on to the fact that these franchises are being turned into very expensive recurring game subscriptions, which is a shame given how much these types of games have been decreasing in popularity since the peak of the early 2000s
Honestly they can just go ahead and turn off FM8. What a piece of shit that game is. It’s so bad. Like how can you literally fuck up a slam dunk that badly? They could have issued a slightly reskinned and updated FM7, and it would have been fine. But no.
GT2 and FM2 (and FM4 I guess too) for the forever win!
Games are an art form like any other, I don’t see people complaining there’s too many songs or too many movies, and it’s easier than ever to make one thanks to all the free engines, hobbyists make something, push it to itch.io and move on with their lives.
A strong, cogent argument can be made for having a wide variety of game developers. I don’t see ANYONE saying, “we need more companies like EA, Activision or UbiSoft.”
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