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Someone help me out here.
Why buy all these studios if you're just going to lay off all the talent?
Doesn't that kind of brain drain damage the studios that you purchased?
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.
The inefficiency of capitalism
Games made by the studios being closed:
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)
Does Arkane Austin co-develop Blade? Because in the article, it says that Arkane Lyon is (also) working on that.
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.
They'll keep the talent they want, and fire everyone else. "Talent Acquisition".
They're very good at identifying talented developers /s
They’ll keep the talent they want, and fire everyone else. “Talent Acquisition”.
Would have been cheaper for them to just poach the few talented people, under your scenario.
(And yeah, but, they'd be able to work around the poaching contracting/legal issues. They always do.)
this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
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