Yes, I know that, but they haven’t done anything egregious in quite some time. Microsoft, Sony, Take-two, Embracer and Activision have been been making a lot worse headlines for the last few years now.
Honestly all these tech layoffs could really come bite back publishers and the big tech in the near future.
Theres a lot new talent for competitors to snatch and fraction of these developers might even form up new studios to make the next big thing.
I never played Hi-Fi rush, Redfall, Mighty Doom, or The Evil Within. That said it looks like Tango hit their sales and quality strides. Alpha Dog and their Mighty Doom shit-ware deserves the dust bin and closure.
As cold and callous as this all sounds, I read about the Redfall development and it was leadership start to finish on that disaster. The employees, even at Alpha Dog, don’t deserve this treatment. Dinga Bakaba from Arkane Lyon stated it perfectly
Don’t throw us into gold fever gambits, don’t use us as strawmen for miscalculations/blind spots, don’t make our work environments darwinist jungles. You say we make you proud when we make a good game. Make us proud when times are tough. We know you can, we seen it before.
Fuck me, this part hurts the most, and I highly recommend anyone who didn’t read the article at least look at what was said here. Everyone knows damn well that the corporation has the ability to flourish in keeping all the talented workers who got fucked by shitty leadership, instead the leadership will fail upward and keep ruining projects. Companies have so many chances to really disrupt and show the world a better way and they continually take shallow short sighted routes to cheap monetary victory, discarding humanity along the way. Fuck companies.
We all know this was completely necessary at any level, but why the hifi guys? Aren’t they the best bets you could hope to invest in? They make good games that sell decently with less investment than AAA massive failures need.
Sad. I was thinking the buyout was more about owning ip e.g halo, fallout tv shows than the devs. I guess in ms world any other studio can take over game development.
I’m honestly ready to not support Xbox anymore after this. They’ve been non-stop fumbling the ball with game releases this generation. Hi-Fi Rush was the first game that came out that I felt was phenomenal and such a breathe of fresh air, and they just straight killed the studio anyways. Killing studios that make good games is not how you foster a gaming platform people want to be part of.
Arkane Austin (Tap for list) Blade (Marvel game (not?) in development)
Redfall
Deathloop
Prey
Prey Digital Deluxe
Prey Mooncrash
Dishonered
Dishonered 2
Dishonered Death of the Outsider
Dishonered Dunwall City Trials
Dishonered The Knife Of Dunwall
Dishonered The Brigmore Witches
Dishonered Void Walker’s Arsenal
Arx Fatalis
Tango Gameworks Hi-Fi Rush
Ghostwire Tokyo
The Evil Within
The Evil Within 2
Alpha Dog Games Wraithborne (iOS, Android)
MonstroCity: Rampage (iOS, Android)
Ninja Golf (iOS, Android)
Mighty DOOM (iOS, Android)
I’m not gonna lie I found he died today when I was double-checking the spelling with a quick google. I then had to check the timeline to make sure he was actually involved in the sale.
Basically selling user data from BNET didn’t work out and after the year of flops the board got antsy. Still blame Altman tho.
Because these corporations presumably think they’ll buy a talented studio, get it to make something its isn’t used to making, force a bunch of shit into it for monetisation and/or launch early in order to keep schedule. All this to keep investors/management happy. Then when the combination of the aforementioned (repeatedly) blows up in their face; usually by pissing off customers, they lose money. Finally you start layoffs and rehires if needed because you’re running into money problems.
They couldn’t care less about the talent. It isn’t rare for a lot of the talent to bail when these studio get bought up. Especially since it feels like you’re just going to be crunched the second you get the first job post acquisition. Found this while checking this assumption, a bunch of them left early for Arkane specifically.
I always viewed it companies like EA take a gamble. Either the investment pulls off the unlikely, convoluted shit you ask and makes you money or you take it out back and try with another studio.
You would think, right? But HiFi Rush was lauded as one of the best games last year and was highly successful, even being ported to PS5 and Switch at this point, so why close them?
From what I read it outsold forspoken and got around $6 million in the first month? That’s small change to a billion dollar publisher. Especially when you can close a bunch of studios(probably claim some losses for tax reasons like WB with catwoman) and reshuffle. Doesn’t need the individual studio to do poorly in this instance I’d guess. Just didn’t make the selection for “who do you want to keep going forward”.
My best guess is that Microsoft/Bethesda hired too many people during the pandemic, because gaming had a boom then. I do not know, if it’s a massive management failure or planned, that all these people would need to be laid off shortly after the pandemic-boom ends.
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