your bet on who is next to be shuttered down?
my bet is #Arkane Lyon and #Rare (Sea of Thieves). both of them make high-quality games (Arkane: DEATHLOOP, Dishonored 1/2/DotO; Rare: #SeaOfThieves) and are NOT money behemoths, so they are likely the next target
Billions in profit. Billions. Spent years ravenously gobbling up game studios. And now they're chopping them down so they can keep .000001% more gain this fiscal year.
Fuck workers, art, games, players, the industry's future, basic decency. NUMBER GO UP FOREVER
I'm a latecomer to video games. They were sanity-saving when the plague hit and it was wisest to stay home. The potential and scope for interactive storytelling is amazing. What we mostly get instead, especially from the big corpos, is a bit saddening. It's the gaming industry that added phrases like "minimum viable product" to my vocabulary. bleeeeeeeh
Good on you for not streaming music. That industry is doing everything it can to starve all the artists to death.
@Emmadrime Unfortunately I didn't do this on a moral stance. I did it on a practical stance before the immorality of streaming services started to shine clearly: I don't trust tech firms to not delete everything unless I have a copy of my own.
I don't use cloud storage without local copies. Cloud storage is convenient, but companies deciding to shut it down is a risk, so I always have local. Same with streaming. Except I don't find streaming convenient because I hate interruptions in music.
When Phil Spencer took over Xbox, he sold himself as a fellow gamer to win player support. He used that vibe to convince them industry consolidation would benefit everyone.
But now we’re seeing the real costs: layoffs, closures, and fewer games. Spencer was always serving the company.
I really get the feeling that AAA games are dying.
Layoffs everywhere, huge budgets, too big to fail; indie devs are eating their lunch and ex-McKinsey MBAs are leading the Xbox division into their disaster. It was cool while it lasted… but maybe its a good thing.
I wonder why Valve is not laying off people. Maybe it's because they understand gamers and keep career-centric managers out?
@obrhoff Valve haven’t created much in terms of notable AAA games since Portal 2 in 2011. There’s Alyx and CS2, but compare that to what they did the in the 13 years before starting with Half-Life 1. Steam really has taken over. Kinda proves your point. It’s not layoffs but a change in focus, where resources go, and similar drop in output.