Dcubed Posted May 7 Author Posted May 7 (edited) 35 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said: Yup. I bet a few of them are seriously regretting their decision. The Ori developers have tweeted out today saying this is exactly why they didnt want snapped up. As @killthenetmentioned, Ninja Theory must be very worried about what's happening around them. I can't see their next game doing big numbers. Yup, totally agreed. They'll likely be on the chopping block when Hellblade fails to sell 10 million consoles. Speaking of which, I'm shocked that MS haven't shut down Rare. They've basically been spinning their wheels ever since the end of the original Xbox and have only had one true bonefide hit (Kinect Sports) since their acquisition in 2003 (Ok, Sea of Thieves has done well in terms of userbase size; but it hasn't really made any money since it was the first first party game to be given away for free on Game Pass). Everwild is also a complete failure, having already been rebooted at least once and having nothing to show for 7-8 years of development. Same with The Initiative as well. They've been working on Perfect Dark since 2018 and that has been such a disaster that MS had to hire Crystal Dynamics to take over development from them. How can they justify shutting down studios that have a proven ability to ship product and (usually) quality product at that, when they are happy to keep throwing money into the Rare and Initiative black hole!? Utter mismanagement at the highest level of Xbox. Edited May 7 by Dcubed 3
Hero-of-Time Posted May 8 Posted May 8 Yeah, seems like your pretty much screwed no matter what you do.
Hero-of-Time Posted May 13 Posted May 13 (edited) Quote According to people who were in attendance, Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu said that both the company's American and European arms would be hit with layoffs, which will happen over the course of the next month. The scale of the layoffs wasn't shared, but staff were told that people working in publishing, IT, and Square Enix's Collective indie games division would be predominantly affected. Those affected will be informed this week. In the UK, employees will enter into a one-month consultancy period, as per local employment law, while US-based staff could leave their roles before June. Following the internal meetings on Monday, many of Square Enix's main Slack channels were locked, VGC was told. VGC has asked Square Enix for comment on this story https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/square-enix-confirms-us-eu-layoffs-as-part-of-restructuring/ I wonder when we can get through a week without any form of gaming redundancies/cuts being announced? Edited May 13 by Hero-of-Time 1
Hero-of-Time Posted May 21 Posted May 21 Not developers but still relevant to the industry. IGN going for a gaming news monopoly.
Happenstance Posted May 21 Posted May 21 Well I don't think I've bought a single Humble Bundle since IGN bought them, hopefully this goes better.
Hero-of-Time Posted June 29 Posted June 29 Ubisoft kick some more staff to the curb. Quote It has been announced that Ubisoft Toronto has been hit by a fresh wave of layoffs that have seen 33 employees lose their jobs. This comes as a result of Ubisoft trying to commit to delivering 'on its ambitious roadmap', a statement said. It's the same reasoning we've heard time and again over the last eighteen months, as almost 20,000 industry workers have been made redundant worldwide. It almost always comes down to a restructuring or a re-alignment with a roadmap – and more often than not, it's an 'ambitious' roadmap. 1 2
Hero-of-Time Posted July 3 Posted July 3 Doesn't surprise me. Soon after the last round of layoffs there were people in the know who said more would be happening during the course of the year.
Hero-of-Time Posted July 16 Posted July 16 Here's a great article about just what is going on with the industry, especially artists and the rise of using AI. It's a long read but well worth it. https://www.artstation.com/blogs/telthona/LzzgV/what-is-going-on-with-the-industry 2
Glen-i Posted July 16 Posted July 16 10 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said: Here's a great article about just what is going on with the industry, especially artists and the rise of using AI. It's a long read but well worth it. https://www.artstation.com/blogs/telthona/LzzgV/what-is-going-on-with-the-industry Thanks for that. It is excellent. That said, this particular part hit real hard. Quote Which now created an incredibly hostile, uninspired and hopeless environment online - because you go to your old favourite websites, such as Deviantart, and you see it completely flooded with AI generated content. Same with Artstation, Artstation is sinking. Both these platforms are underwater. This means that, now, real artists, when they are posting something, even once a week, once a day even! - They will still be completely buried and flooded by AI images, that can be created and uploaded in tens and hundreds per day, from singular prompter. Yeah, this is completely accurate, and is likely the main reason why I don't really dabble with drawing, or browsing DA anymore. Because if people with crazy good talent can't emerge from the deluge of AI art, what hope do I, a person of middling skill, have? 1
Hero-of-Time Posted July 16 Posted July 16 39 minutes ago, Glen-i said: Yeah, this is completely accurate, and is likely the main reason why I don't really dabble with drawing, or browsing DA anymore. Because if people with crazy good talent can't emerge from the deluge of AI art, what hope do I, a person of middling skill, have? I think this is why there is quite a lot of fear for the use of AI. If successful, then many people will lose their livelihood and passion for what they do. It won't matter if you're the cream of the crop. If a company can save money by getting rid of a paid worker for something that can be crested on the cheap, they are gonna do it. Look at what happened with the recent Pokemon TCG design competition. People were entering designs done by AI. Some even got pretty far in the rankings before being found out and disqualified. 1
Hero-of-Time Posted July 31 Posted July 31 Bungie are laying off a lot of their staff. Quote This morning, I'm sharing with all of you some of the most difficult changes we've ever had to make as a studio. Due to rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions, it has become clear that we need to make substantial changes to our cost structure and focus development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon. That means beginning today, 220 of our roles will be eliminated, representing roughly 17% of our studio's workforce. These actions will affect every level of the company, including most of our executive and senior leader roles. Today is a difficult and painful day, especially for our departing colleagues, all of which have made important and valuable contributions to Bungie. Our goal is to support them with the utmost care and respect. For everyone affected by this job reduction, we will be offering a generous exit package, including severance, bonus and health coverage. I realize all of this is hard news, especially following the success we have seen with The Final Shape. But as we've navigated the broader economic realities over the last year, and after exhausting all other mitigation options, this has become a necessary decision to refocus our studio and our business with more realistic goals and viable financials. We are committing to two other major changes today that we believe will support our focus, leverage Sony's strengths, and create new opportunities for Bungie talent. First, we are deepening our integration with Sony Interactive Entertainment, working to integrate 155 of our roles, roughly 12%, into SIE over the next few quarters. SIE has worked tirelessly with us to identify roles for as many of our people as possible, enabling us together to save a great deal of talent that would otherwise have been affected by the reduction in force. Second, we are working with PlayStation Studios leadership to spin out one of our incubation projects – an action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe – to form a new studio within PlayStation Studios to continue its promising development. This will be a time of tremendous change for our studio. Let's unpack how we ended up in this position; it's important to understand how we got here. For over five years, it has been our goal to ship games in three enduring, global franchises. To realize that ambition, we set up several incubation projects, each seeded with senior development leaders from our existing teams. We eventually realized that this model stretched our talent too thin, too quickly. It also forced our studio support structures to scale to a larger level than we could realistically support, given our two primary products in development – Destiny and Marathon. Additionally, in 2023, our rapid expansion ran headlong into a broad economic slowdown, a sharp downturn in the games industry, our quality miss with Destiny 2: Lightfall, and the need to give both The Final Shape and Marathon the time needed to ensure both projects deliver at the quality our players expect and deserve. We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red. After this new trajectory became clear, we knew we had to change our course and speed, and we did everything we could to avoid today's outcome. Even with exhaustive efforts undertaken across our leadership and product teams to resolve our financial challenges, these steps were simply not enough. As a result, today we must say goodbye to incredible talent, colleagues, and friends. This will be a challenging time at Bungie, and we'll need to help our team navigate these changes in the weeks and months ahead. This will be a hard week, and we know that our team will need time to process, to ask questions, and to absorb this news. Today, and over the next several weeks, we will host team meetings and town halls, team breakout sessions, and private, individual sessions to ensure we are keeping our communication open and transparent. Bungie will continue to make great games. We still have over 850 team members building Destiny and Marathon, and we will continue to build amazing experiences that exceed our players' expectations. 1 1
Dcubed Posted July 31 Author Posted July 31 (edited) Damn that’s brutal… And they’re also not just losing staff from the layoffs, but are also getting 155 staff members taken away from them and absorbed into other parts of Playstation… and on top of that? They’re getting their other non-Destiny/Marathon project and an additional 40 staff members stripped away from them and spun off into a wholly new studio? Oh and if that’s not bad enough? Bungie is no longer being run independently as Herman Hulst has now reportedly taken over the running of the studio… This is a massacre. That’s more than 30% of the entire studio wiped out, just like that. Why did Sony even bother buying Bungie for such an exorbitant sum (an amount that I and almost everyone else unanimously agreed was a massive overspend for the company), if they were just planning on gutting them anyway? What a massive waste of money! Edited July 31 by Dcubed 1 1
Hero-of-Time Posted July 31 Posted July 31 3 minutes ago, Dcubed said: Damn that’s brutal… And they’re also not just losing staff from the layoffs, but are also getting 155 staff members taken away from them and absorbed into other parts of Playstation… and on top of that? They’re getting their other non-Destiny/Marathon project stripped away from them and spun off into a wholly new studio? This is a massacre. That’s at least 30% of the entire studio wiped out, just like that. Why did Sony even bother buying Bungie for such an exorbitant sum (an amount that I and almost everyone else unanimously agreed was a massive overspend for the company), if they were just planning on gutting them anyway? What a massive waste of money! By all accounts, the 155 people being absorbed into Sony would have lost their jobs if not for that move. Bungie's CEO... Apparently he was walking around bragging how many cars he owns and then gets rid of a lot of his staff. Classy move. Yeah, I still don't know where Bungie fits within Sony. However, when the deal was made for them to be bought they were given a timeframe to get everything in order and be profitable otherwise Sony would absorb them. Destiny hasn't been a cashcow for years and yet they continued to pump resources into it. There was no way Bungie was going to keep it's independence within Sony by following that route. Time has basically ran out for them. 1
Hero-of-Time Posted August 7 Posted August 7 Ready at Dawn are no more. Loved their output on PlayStation platforms. 1
Hero-of-Time Posted August 8 Posted August 8 (edited) Man, what could have been. I loved The Order 1886. In slightly related news, GameXplain are letting people go. Quote I'm saddened to say that due to softening revenue, it's become impossible to continue to sufficiently provide for my full-time team members. I tried everything imaginable to avoid this for as long as possible, including forgoing any payment myself for more than two years and reinvesting 100% of the revenue back into the company, but sadly, these efforts weren't enough. I couldn't be more proud of what my team has accomplished in the time I was fortunate enough to have them. They have created so many incredible video features that I believe are among the very best to be found on gaming YouTube. I'll miss having my team here, but I know Joey and Tris have a promising future, as they are both extremely talented all-star creators and would make an amazing addition to any team. And I know they will both continue to kick a ton of ass at whatever it is they do next. This doesn't surprise me. Gone are the days of GX being the only player in town doing analysis videos and Nintendo related stuff. These types of channels are a dime a dozen now. YouTube really is a bloodbath for a lot of gaming content creators. Gonna be interesting to see how Andre handles things now that he hasn't got as many employees to exploit. Edited August 8 by Hero-of-Time 1
Julius Posted August 15 Posted August 15 (edited) Some numbers on Embracer from the last 12 months: Over 4 in 10 employees carted off (41.7%). Over a quarter of their internal studios shuttered (25.8%). Over 4 in 10 projects shelved (40.9%). Brutal. Disgraceful. Definition of a massacre. Edited August 15 by Julius 1 2
Hero-of-Time Posted September 3 Posted September 3 Quote The developer behind the upcoming remake of Supermassive's Until Dawn has laid off an unspecified number of employees ahead of the game's October launch. British developer Ballistic Moon has since made a statement after reports began to emerge on LinkedIn and were shared on ResetEra. It reads, in part: "It is with deep regret and heavy heart that we must make the tough decision to significantly scale down our team to secure the future of our studio. This comes after our development of Until Dawn for PS5 and PC." The developer notes that saying goodbye to such a talented, passionate group of people is "incredibly difficult" and that "we are profoundly sorry" for the impact this restructuring will have on the families of affected employees. Ballistic Moon says it will remain focused on supporting the launch of Until Dawn and will explore new opportunities and collaborations in the future Games is probably finished and so they are cleaning house. Didn't even wait for the thing to release. 1
Hero-of-Time Posted September 12 Posted September 12 More job losses at Microsoft. Quote Microsoft will lay off approximately 650 people from its gaming team, the company's head of gaming, Phil Spencer, told employees in an email to team members this morning. Spencer framed them in the context of Microsoft's October 2023 $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard. "As part of aligning our post-acquisition team structure and managing our business, we have made the decision to eliminate approximately 650 roles across Microsoft Gaming—mostly corporate and supporting functions—to organize our business for long term success," Spencer wrote. The majority of the cuts will impact people in those corporate and support roles at Activision Blizzard, according to a source familiar with the matter. This time around, "no games, devices or experiences" will be cut, per Spencer's note. None of the business unit leaders at Xbox or its affiliated gaming teams will be cut either, according the a source familiar. 1
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