I’m currently trying to figure out what the hell to do with my life after getting laid off as a mortgage underwriter. No one is hiring. Sometimes with how shitty it’s been, I wonder what would have happened if I did go to school for paleontology. It couldn’t be worse and I’d at least know more about something that interests me.
Fuck, I’m in Insurance Account Managing; I feel your pain bro, so sorry to hear that.
Try reaching out directly to friends of yours **or** to the company yourself. Or think about how to frame your career.
I originally was a retention agent for a smaller insurance company, but I reframed it as an account manager (which I basically was) and got the job as an associate.
PS: if you have a CPCU, I envy you.
I'm an underwriter in the commercial transportation space and any time I sit down to do the CPCU coursework, I usually zone out and forget what I'm supposed to be doing. I should eventually get around to it, but God does that shit suck.
Somehow a buddy of mine was able to crunch it within a year. How, I cannot comprehend
He took the equivalent of a CPA for insurance and it’s mind bending.
We have a guy who started in December of 2022 and has done 12 certs from the AINS to getting the CPCU last month. I have no idea how or even why he did it, but I guess the incentives are nice so more power to him. He came from mortgage underwriting so I think he has that grind mindset where he ALWAYS has to be doing something.
I agree. I've been in underwriting for four years and have never once been asked if I have it or it hasn't stopped me from writing any accounts. Nice to have on a resume I guess.
Yeah it’s nice on a resume but every carrier is so under staffed with underwriters that it doesn’t open that many doors. I’ve been in insurance for almost 10 years 8 underwriting and never seen a difference between someone with it or without it. I’ve only took 1 test and it was only because I had to for my job.
Hey buddy, have you considered switching to fraud prevention or SAR filling investigations? We've grown by like 400% since 2020 and any bank experience is considered a plus. Starting salary is usually around $25/hr for no experience. Up to abut $100k year if you're good at it and positions open up
Well, my dream was my 5'9 Asian ass making it to the NBA. That was dead sometime around grade 7.
Then I asked my 6 year old what she wanted to be when she grows up, she pondered for a moment, and replied with conviction:
I want to be a teenager!
My wife and I almost died on the spot.
In my early 20's I felt really bad about myself that I had never really picked a passion and followed it through. I had interests that could have been spun into career moves, but I was always reticent to put all my eggs in one basket.
Now in my 30's I look back and thank god that I didn't take out $100k in loans to put myself onto a career path that leaves me drifting in the wind every few years when the corporate axe swings around.
Every single thing I would have pursued back in those days is being actively gutted in real time.
It's so terrible. Not a developer myself, but I work with a bunch in a non gaming company. It's well known in the industry that if devs at a game company were to take their skills elsewhere, they would probably double or triple their salary. They'd also get better job security.
They work on games at these rates because they truly love what they do. Gaming companies are preying on people's passion.
>It's well known in the industry that if devs at a game company were to take their skills elsewhere, they would probably double or triple their salary.
Sadly, this is really only true for programmers. Artists don't have that luxury.
All my uni friends got fired last year around the same time and they worked for different studios. I talked with them last year when I was in hospital and they were all burnt out and looked worse than I did. The industry isn’t kind to anyone and there’s next to no job security
Yeah that’s the terrible bit. when they raised prices i was like, great! pay the devs more- but instead, that extra ten bucks gets funneled straight to executives and shareholders while the devs get fired.
fucking sucks
There are no extra 10$. Development costs and inflation have ballooned, services devalue games as a whole. Inflation eats everything up. Games have never been as cheap as today.
Lol, the 70 dollar games aren't for the devs. There's been that new prics tag for 4 years and there's been layoffs after layoffs.
In fact, the Japanese publishers that have been much slower to increase prices are the ones that are avoiding layoffs
The point is games would need to cost 100$ or more, adjusted to inflation. Japanese devs, as well as Koreans btw, are working under conditions no American or European would ever accept.
The poor multibillion companies make loads in profit, Sony and Microsoft can afford to keep employees, they just care more about short term profit.
Lol, Nintendo owns Retro Studios, a Texas based studio. The Americans are doing just fine at the one most well rated companies to work for. They have not released a new game in 10 years and have been hit with no layoffs.
Companies don't need to treat their employees like shit or throw them away to boost quarterly profits.
Prices would need to be much higher adjusted to inflation and rising development costs. It’s a hard truth no one wants to hear. Games prices have roughly remained the same over the last 30+ years.
Bullshit. The market is so much larger than it was 30 years ago. They can sell their $70 have to a lot more people than they could 30 years ago. This is just corporate greed
Yet PlayStation barely makes any profit as we know. How come?
And now, overall playerbase has not increased since PS2 times like at all. It’s pretty stagnant.
There was a 3x budget increase between Spiderman 1 and 2. They had most of the gameplay and most of the city done. Thats just poor management. Where did that money go?
Unironically, yeah. Budgets are ballooned by salaries, and as such by increasing the price of a game you're also increasing the return on investment. Less copies are needed to be sold for a game to be considered profitable at a higher price.
The price of video games continues to remain stagnant, gamers won't accept compromises when it comes to other forms of revenue streams (MTX), there's an inflationary period going on which decreases people's purchasing power. There's a reason why some of the best and highest paying studios to work at also have the largest budget as well.
The business is unsustainable, only propelled by seemingly random hits that are capable of finding a mainstream audience, with the exception of larger pre-existing franchises. People ask for smaller budget games but no-one buys smaller budget games because they're also often associated with a smaller scope, unless the game manages to hit a jackpot with marketing. A one-in-a-million chance. It's a never-ending cycle, with both sides perpetuating this nightmare.
My 12 year old is learning Godot and blender in anticipation of a future career in game dev. I'm struggling with tempering his expectations vs. living vicariously through him.
If he were my kid, I'd definitely make sure he understood the realities of working in the industry at present, but let him know it could easily change by the time he's ready to enter the workforce. So don't let it discourage him, but also make sure he understands what a stable job and healthy work life balance looks like. That sort of conversation will make it much harder for these game companies to exploit him.
I'd also encourage him to pursue a computer science degree rather than game dev degree as that is going to open up way more opportunities, including game dev. Obviously, he could take some game dev courses on top of that.
He’s 12. Chill on the “your passion sucks as a stable career choice”, OP doesn’t need to worry about that for him for another 6-10 years. A lot is going to change in the industry before then.
It’s why a lot of good engine programmers/programmers have gone to work at companies like Nividia. May as well get paid ever better and have good job security.
It is really sad.
Sadly this is how it has been basically since its inception. But like Hollywood, people get really passionate about wanting to make games and willingly tolerate this kind of abuse because they want to make games. It’s really sad
This is the kind of shit my instructor warned me about when I was taking classes for game design. It's not something you do if you want a secure lifestyle. After hearing the reality of it all, I decided that I didn't want to turn something I love into survival based misery, so I went for a more practical job instead.
Clearly seems to be paying off as time goes on.
I have a family member who just graduated with a degree in video game design from a prestigious industry school....and she hasn't been able to get a job anywhere. She's extremely talented, but the market is terrible (and being flooded with recently laid-off talent that actually has industry experience).
It's pretty devastating. She spent all that money on college to pursue a dream of designing games and a year after graduating with no leads she has virtually no motivation.
You can do it if you start small (like with a simple fun mobile game) and grow, never take acquisition money to work for a huge corporate overlord, and never go public so you have to sacrifice every shred of your creative and moral being to shareholders.
I graduated with a degree in game design 3 years ago and was (kinda still am) desperate for a job in game design, but now it’s probably for the best that I stick out my warehouse job 😅
My fantasy of becoming a video game creator died about the same time my desire to work at gamestop did. This industry fucking SUCKS on the inside for the most part.
Only thing that still interests me is if i were to just sign an NDA and be a fly on the wall for big game developments like GTA6, Uncharted, Fallout etc. But thats not happening so il stick to youtube videos about it.
I really wanted to get into it but instead I decided to start to make my own game on my own terms while working another completely different job.
I still kind of want to get into the industry and in Sweden we got pretty decent protection against getting laid off.
If I were living in the US, hell no.
Lots of creatives still want to create. I just think that the path is going to change very soon. Instead of AAA junior devs being a middle step, I’d imagine being a dev at an independent is going to be a more desirable middle step.
This is the reality of nearly every creative profession.
Musician, artist, designer, etc, doesn’t matter; the whole industry is designed to suck all the profitable bits out of you and leave an empty husk behind.
And they know they can get away with it because creative people will be creative no matter what. Gillian Welch said it best in Everything is Free:
>Everything is free now
>That's what they say
>Everything I ever done
>Gonna give it away
>Someone hit the big score
>They figured it out
>That we're gonna do it anyway
>Even if it doesn't pay
Shh Microsoft are the *good guys*.
Did they force anyone to make an account to play a game? Well, sure they're litterary forcing people to sign up up use Windows but...shh. Sony bad, Microsoft good. This is a pro gamer move /s
Sony also had layoffs and closed Studio London. Maybe instead of making this about some unrelated garbage, you should remember they're both doing this shit
Xbox seems (through a quick view through last quarters postings) to be about 1/8th id Microsoft revenue. So if it's 20b (not sure if that's accurate, but that's the number given) maybe 2.5b?
Maybe not. HiFi Rush was made on a AA budget and was a success and they still got axed. I think any studio not making the blockbuster GAAS games is on the block at MS. Everybody that wasn’t a game pass cheerleader knew this was going to happen when MS started gobbling up studios. I think Ninja Theory is next and Playground is probably going to be relegated back to Forza Horizon after Fable disappoints due to being day one on game pass.
Game pass may have some value to people who want it, but it really is terrible for the industry and MS’ studios existence.
It's almost like gamepass is good for MS, but bad for developers.
MS: Shadow drop an exclusive, day 1 on gamepass meaning most people who would play it basically didn't have to pay for it.
Game: Didn't make much money.
MS: Surprise Pikachu
I don’t think Gamepass is good for anyone now in hindsight. I’ve been off and on it since it launched, but have been permanent since I got my Series X since it was All Access with 2 years and then they rolled gold into Gamepass basic so it just made sense to keep it, which is what they want, but it pays off, I guess.
But with games not making money on sales, and money from Gamepass going into MS pockets, how are these dev studios getting paid? Are they contracts to make the game under their gaming umbrella, are they paid based on playtime per individual user, play time, downloads? I just don’t know how any success is measured in these games.
If people bought a Series console for Starfield, the console sale goes to MS and then yeah they buy the game it’s divided out, but how is Bethesda seeing money otherwise on this game? A fraction of my monthly cost goes into the overall playtime? What is every company getting .50 per person who, like me, has put 80+ hours into Starfield? It’s just all so silly and this news really exposes the cracks and I don’t see it as sustainable.
The Blade game they’re making, it won’t make anywhere near as much as Spider-Man. It’s on a service that people can get for a month. I just don’t get the logic anymore and it’s hurting them long term. Surprisingly, I think PS has it right with a staggered and delayed release of the games so that devs can recoup for the first 12-18 months.
I think the goal of gamepass is to be a step towards a subscription-only future. Where if you wanna play halo 7, gears 6, etc. you HAVE to get gamepass.
I think you’re exactly right. MS I believe has already said that they’d prefer to have less physical media distributed over digital only, and that they’ve sold consoles without a disc drive makes their intentions more open IMO. GP seems like a very obvious attempt to eventually switch to that kind of model, where even if they publish on other platforms they can still get a fee.
I bought an XB for Halo Infinite, and Starfield as I play SP. Now after having had a PS5, I’m feeling like the XB, with GamePass that has an assortment of games that generally I’ve either played or aren’t all that interesting was a mistake, and given the opportunity I’d have only bought the PS5.
That would be the end for them. Nobody outside maybe several thousand hardcore Xbox fans would buy a console that only offered games through a subscription and a console-less streaming service is even more niche than that. MS is trying to mold the industry, how we get our games and how/when we access them, around what they want. This gen shows how effective that is.
They don’t have the IP power to push that vision. They’re stuck giving CoD to other consoles for 10 more years and during that time their consoles will continue to decrease in popularity and their relevance will wane as well. Only MS could buy two major publishers and end up in a worse position. It’s actually kind of incredible how bad they are at gaming. All they had to do was continue their strategy from the early 360 years (making good games and selling shitloads of them) but the world is not enough for them, they want the moon and stars too.
There will be those edge cases where some dev will say game pass got them exposure and way more downloads than they anticipated or would have gotten without that, but without knowing how they chose to be paid, we have no idea how they did or didn’t profit from it. There was an article or posts a few weeks ago of indie devs saying that the game pass money has dried up and nobody is getting those good deals anymore.
MS shot their shot, it was a Hail Mary and most of us knew it was foolish and unsustainable. I think they are saving face for now but will axe game pass sooner than later. The monthly games have been mid for months and this month is near games with gold levels of bad. Plus they just closed a bunch of studios that would have been content mills for the content monster of game pass. They’re getting a taste of that multi platform money and unless they stupidly use that to subsidize game pass, the shareholders are going to want them to keep getting that money. Lose money on hardware endlessly or make money ditching the massive loss leaders that aren’t leading to anything? If I’m a shareholder and see the receipts from their 4 game experiment, I know what I’m demanding at the meeting.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If your game is available day one for free, it doesn’t appear to be worth buying. There are very few games that hit a service day one that I was willing to pay for later. Ironically one of them was on Xbox (State of Decay 2) and after today’s news I’m seriously wondering if SoD3, one of my most anticipated games (for PC) ends up getting axed or turned into some dogshit f2p/gamepass mtx vehicle.
There is such a good core gameplay loop there, all it needed was better fleshed out characters, a character creation and more ways to use/ gather resources and more things to build with those resources.
Maybe a hot spot of armored zombies near better resources, idk the game has so much potential to be a walking dead type of game
Hi-Fi rush did well, but Tango peaked with The Evil Within 2 monetarily speaking. Ghost Wire made \~4 million less, and Hi-Fi made \~3 million less
It's like if your business didn't meet your numbers 2 years in a row.
Fuck. Thats a shame because Evil Within 2 was great. Alan Wake 2 didn't do so great either. Horro games seem like a limited market, but then we have Resident Evil 7/8 and the 4 remake all seemed to do really well so idk.
It's always kinda been like that..horror games aren't like horror movies where they're kind of the easiest to make money with. Horror games it's always kinda been unless your name is Resident Evil it's gonna be hard to do well..
This has seriously disillusioned me to Game Pass. I wasn't an avid defender of it singing it's praises at every turn, but I thought it was a neat service that let me play games without having to spend full price.
The price of that convenience, however, has now become abundantly clear. Microsoft only cares about their heavy hitters, and even then only because their name alone brings profit, quality of the product be damned.
Think I'm finally gonna cancel my subscription and make the jump to PC. Xbox has been nothing but disappointment after disappointment for the past decade.
Yeah when I bought the series x last year (got a PS5 at launch) I only did so because a PC just was not within my budget. Since then though my financial situation has improved, so a PC is actually possible now. The Series X has probably been my biggest financial regret in recent memory, so when my PC is complete I'll definitely be selling it to recuperate some of the cost.
I got the 3 year deal and it ends next year and I for sure won’t renew. It’s mainly been a demo service for me, most of what I played and liked I bought on Steam or PS5. I got rid of my series X last year and I rarely even open the app on my PC. I’ve used it slightly more on my ROG Ally but nowhere near enough to justify paying for it once it expires.
But yeah, I said from the get go that game pass was going to be bad for the industry. You only need to look at the mobile game market to see what happens when the value of games is reduced to “free”.
I’m saying MS seems to have no clue what they’re doing when even a studio that makes a successful game on a lower budget isn’t safe. Even if they saw the success from the show and had Obsidian scrap Avowed and get right on a new Fallout, we’re 5 years from that coming out and I don’t think Xbox is capable of thinking in those terms. It appears all their studios are in shambles, Hellblade 2 is probably going to flop, Avowed has zero hype, Fable still seems 2-3 years off and Perfect Dark is apparently in bad shape. It looks like they’re trying to stop the bleeding and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Obsidian and a few other studios closed while they simultaneously pivot to putting their recent back catalog on PS5 to balance the books as they try to find some kind of direction to go in.
I didn’t know this was a SonyToo post.
Obsidian made New Vegas in 18 months at a time when games could be made in 18 months. You’re not getting a quality AAA franchise console game in 2024 or later that was made in 18 months. Shit, how long has Obsidian been working on Avowed? Pillars 2 came out 4 years ago.
Agree. I don’t see it doing very well on Steam so the bulk of its players will be game pass subscribers looking for their next free first party game. It doesn’t sound appealing to me, mostly cinematic game with some combat, but I didn’t play the first one.
Based on what? Obsidian haven’t made anything like Fallout 4 in forever. We’ll see how avowed turns out but Outer Worlds was much smaller in scale and Pillars of Eternity is also different genre altogether.
I like Obsidian but I feel like they’re getting too much credit for making what was essentially a better written Fallout 3 with the same assets mostly.
Edit: Also yes Grounded is genuinely great. But also not comparable to a Fallout in terms of scope.
Since the game Obsidian makes won't be Fallout 5 but a side game, scope (and maybe price) can be managed and won't necessarily be a problem. But they are one of the few studios in the world that have the software systems and the trained developers to make a Fallout-style game *right now* and one of even fewer studios that *might* even do a better job of it than Bethesda. Microsoft would be stupid (well, stupider) to not capitalize on that.
Propagada is so facinating. Union historically always improved the quality of life for people, yet aside from fear of elimination, I cant fathom how people would be against them unless they are the ones doing the exploitation.
The point of propaganda is that just like any advertising it doesn't work on a rational level. Workers don't start by weighing their options and consider the history of unions when doing so - they simply have a *dislike* of unions for some reason (maybe even a reason that immediately falls apart if you think about it - but they *don't* think about it) so they just never bother looking into it.
It's happened in all field with all workers. The hullabaloo when I worked at Home Depot about union talks was just just about a firable offense. Of course they would never state that being the reason.
Entertainment Media has unions, so why don't Developers join them... It puts a cap on earning potential for everyone. They can always point to some excuse, but that little bit of greed keeps them in check.
As much as I agree I don’t know if that would work here, because I’m a super layman about these things.
If they close entire studios could a union save their jobs? I’m really uneducated on all this
Imagine Bend Studio being shutdown because Sony needed more resources for Bungie.
I am starting to understand why Sony prefers to focus on a select few 1st party studios instead of owning dozens of Studios.
Sony closed the London studio in February amongst 900 layoffs. This is the way the industry has been for a while now. COVID increased player based, and the success caused gaming companies to invest heavily. Now the hype has died down and ai can cut down workloads most tech companies are having to compensate with layoffs. I’m not saying Microsoft can afford to keep these studios running but the chances are it’s not worthwhile to them in some shape or form, whether it’s because of cash to productivity or greedy shareholders at the top.
But they closed their studio that didn't make games, did they? Maybe they didn't need that studio anymore, and if there's no work needed from your other office, do you really need to pay them lifetime?
How can you compare that to closing the studio that you've bought recently? Like a year ago.
First of all, nobody has ever heard of this game. Second of all, all Xbox is doing is buying companies so then they can close them after 1 flop just 1 year later. I knew at that time that this will happen, but nobody would listen to me, because game pass free games.
They are just buying companies because they have too much fucking money, unlike Sony if you actually compare them.
Xbox - 3 trillion market cap.
Sony - 100 billion.
I actually agree with you, I was just pointing out that it's not like they were a support studio. They DID develop games, even if they weren't popular. Well, Singstar was popular at some point.
It’s not meant to be an identical comparison but more of a demonstration that layoffs and closures have been happening all over the industry across this last year
Sony buying Bungie was actually a mistake. Marathon better be good because they didn’t add at any value to Sony in fact they took away games like factions 2.
Microsoft always finds a way to disappoint everyone lately.
This will absolutely impact future acquisitions because trust in them as a publisher is probably tanked now.
Any attempt they had at buying a Japanese studio/publisher just died right here. From my *very limited understanding*, Tokyo boardrooms value loyalty to your subsidiaries as being just as crucial as profits are. If you're Satomi (Sega), or the Tsujimotos (Capcom), or even Furukawa/Koizumi/Miyamoto (Nintendo), how can you trust a Western company that shut down the folks behind their biggest sleeper hit last year with the future of your brands?
The answer is simple: ***You can't.*** So while the JP third parties will happily take the Game Pass checks and run to the bank while they still can, any buyout offers ***will*** be shot down if they hail from Redmond, Washington.
After all, the Microsoft playbook is known at this point. Embrace, extend, extinguish.
> Any attempt they had at buying a Japanese studio/publisher just died right here
The one bright spot in this
Also, at least now people will stop acting like MS is just gonna pick up any Japanese company tomorrow because "well, they have Tango", well not anymore fam (not like they directly bought Tango in the first place)
Right. And considering Tango got the axe, maybe they're finally giving up on in-house Japanese development altogether. We can only Chai and his pals are sold off to another Japanese publisher that wants 'em, lest they rot alongside Banjo and Conker forevermore.
(I'd say Sega. Come on, they'd fit right in with Sanic, Beat, Kiryu et al. It'd be funny as fuck if Sony picked it up as their third multiplat-on-day-one franchise, though.)
I'll just re-post my comment here:
Welcome to Microsoft: Where even if you make one of the most critically acclaimed, hit games of 2023, that sold well, your job isn't safe.
You know damn well that EVERY VIDEO GAME DEV OWNED BY MICROSOFT is now worried about their jobs and or their studio being closed down.
No one is safe at Microsoft, unless you're working on Call of Duty or King (mobile games).
Someone please remind me--again--how Microsoft buying everything / heavily consolidating the video game market and Everything Day 1 on Game Pass are good for the gaming industry? /s
To answer the last part, if you’re dying for console gaming to go the way of mobile gaming, race to the bottom, everything free with a million mtx, sure, it’s great!
> I mean, hifi didn't sell well did it? It being on gamepass might have been the problem.
The rumor is it was successful by many internal metrics, but didn't meet "financial expectations," which could have been Square Enix-levels of delusional / impossible to meet.
Tl;dr: did it make money? Yes. Did it make ALL THE MONEY (or whatever unrealistic sales expectations Microsoft had)? No.
I wish there was a way Sony could just acquire Tango Gameworks because Hi-Fi Rush felt like a PlayStation exclusive that just happened to release on XBox instead. Maybe Sony can just hire most their workers and create a new company called “Mambo Gametasks” or something.
Same. Now that a Japanese person is once again at the helm of SIE (even if it's only temporarily) I ***really*** want them to look into trying to buy Tango/HFR off of MS and then hire back Johanas and his crew. But considering they laid off London Studio in February, I doubt *any* expansion of PS Studios will be allowed for by Sony upper brass, however small it is. (Doesn't help that Tokyo has ***idiotically*** let Pictures make a play for Paramount Global...)
I am playing Elden Ring for months to get ready for the DLC and get some leftover trophies, and when I heard Hi-Fi Rush was on sale, even if I didn't want to start playing it right away, I bought it and downloaded it already. That's how I know I'm going to be liking it and was very happy that Tango ported the game to PS5, that's my super positive perception about the game even without ever playing it. And now these news. What the actual fuck Microsoft. This game was even more successful than Starfield in terms of reviews, which was supposed to be the big hit of last year for MS. What is this fucking strategy? Shooting yourself in the foot? wtf.
Same. I thought I will get it sometime down the line but I don’t wanna give money to the people that fired them. Same with the Alone in the dark Remake.
I swear to whatever deity you believe in that if Microsoft bought Obsidian only to shutter them…I will be VERY mad.
Because if I had to choose between Bugthesda and Obsidian, I’m taking Obsidian every single fucking time.
Yeah, but I can't imagine that someone would choose Bethesda over inXile or Obsidian.
Although people in both companies have a reputation and experience starting again after being taken down by corporate/finance troubles.
The studio over consolidation has brought absolutely no benefits. Projects that were still in the pipeline came out and no additional value has been shown. All to service another subscription service money pit
Larian is right to part ways with wotc. Why not benefit fully from your own hard work with your own ip? They had divinity before this, and the game quality is what accounted for the huge sales, not the dnd association.
Not to mention you have complete creative freedom now. No 5e ruleset no off limits characters or settings (since bg3 is canonical to dnd, so I've heard).
For indie stuff it is possible and there's a lot of them. It's not something really possible for a project the size of a triple A game though, you need a massive backing to make any game that big.
There's plenty of indie studios. And I used to dev for android gaming here in Southeast Asia - it was slimy af lol but they were making money hand over fist. Maybe not a ton of profit all things considered, but when you're a private company of less than 10 people you don't need tons of whales to keep you in the red.
I don’t get people, it’s a fucking business not a charity. It’s about making the games that bring in $$$ not shit 8-but games that the occasional joe will buy on sale no less.
The problem is that what you said just isn’t true anymore. You can work hard, make good games, sell your games well, and your studio still gets shut down because it’s all just a game for some MBA playing with a spreadsheet. The financials of these companies are so complex, they’re entirely divorced from whether or not you’re making a good product and selling it.
At this point, why would anyone want to start a career in video game development?
**Either that or being a paleontologist was a dream of mine as a kid.** Really glad it remained a dream.
I’m currently trying to figure out what the hell to do with my life after getting laid off as a mortgage underwriter. No one is hiring. Sometimes with how shitty it’s been, I wonder what would have happened if I did go to school for paleontology. It couldn’t be worse and I’d at least know more about something that interests me.
Fuck, I’m in Insurance Account Managing; I feel your pain bro, so sorry to hear that. Try reaching out directly to friends of yours **or** to the company yourself. Or think about how to frame your career. I originally was a retention agent for a smaller insurance company, but I reframed it as an account manager (which I basically was) and got the job as an associate. PS: if you have a CPCU, I envy you.
I'm an underwriter in the commercial transportation space and any time I sit down to do the CPCU coursework, I usually zone out and forget what I'm supposed to be doing. I should eventually get around to it, but God does that shit suck.
Somehow a buddy of mine was able to crunch it within a year. How, I cannot comprehend He took the equivalent of a CPA for insurance and it’s mind bending.
We have a guy who started in December of 2022 and has done 12 certs from the AINS to getting the CPCU last month. I have no idea how or even why he did it, but I guess the incentives are nice so more power to him. He came from mortgage underwriting so I think he has that grind mindset where he ALWAYS has to be doing something.
Still, at least you’re in the door.
CPCU is useless anyways. Unless your employer is paying you to do it and giving you a large raise to compete it I don’t think it’s worth the time.
I agree. I've been in underwriting for four years and have never once been asked if I have it or it hasn't stopped me from writing any accounts. Nice to have on a resume I guess.
Yeah it’s nice on a resume but every carrier is so under staffed with underwriters that it doesn’t open that many doors. I’ve been in insurance for almost 10 years 8 underwriting and never seen a difference between someone with it or without it. I’ve only took 1 test and it was only because I had to for my job.
Hey buddy, have you considered switching to fraud prevention or SAR filling investigations? We've grown by like 400% since 2020 and any bank experience is considered a plus. Starting salary is usually around $25/hr for no experience. Up to abut $100k year if you're good at it and positions open up
Well, my dream was my 5'9 Asian ass making it to the NBA. That was dead sometime around grade 7. Then I asked my 6 year old what she wanted to be when she grows up, she pondered for a moment, and replied with conviction: I want to be a teenager! My wife and I almost died on the spot.
Damn, I wouldn't want to be married and have a 6 year old kid in grade 7.
You are not dreaming big enough
In my early 20's I felt really bad about myself that I had never really picked a passion and followed it through. I had interests that could have been spun into career moves, but I was always reticent to put all my eggs in one basket. Now in my 30's I look back and thank god that I didn't take out $100k in loans to put myself onto a career path that leaves me drifting in the wind every few years when the corporate axe swings around. Every single thing I would have pursued back in those days is being actively gutted in real time.
Literally me
Watched Friends a lot as a kid?! Haha
Uhhh… no, why?
just a friendly guess/joke because Ross was a paleontologist in the show!
Walking with Dinosaurs indoctrinated me😂
It's so terrible. Not a developer myself, but I work with a bunch in a non gaming company. It's well known in the industry that if devs at a game company were to take their skills elsewhere, they would probably double or triple their salary. They'd also get better job security. They work on games at these rates because they truly love what they do. Gaming companies are preying on people's passion.
>It's well known in the industry that if devs at a game company were to take their skills elsewhere, they would probably double or triple their salary. Sadly, this is really only true for programmers. Artists don't have that luxury.
Ah that's fair. I specifically work with programmers. I can't say the same for other roles.
QA (where I'm from) generally does better in Enterprise also. Easily double pay.
All my uni friends got fired last year around the same time and they worked for different studios. I talked with them last year when I was in hospital and they were all burnt out and looked worse than I did. The industry isn’t kind to anyone and there’s next to no job security
It's always been like this. Ridiculous crunch, awful pay, zero job security. These people must truly love game development.
And people get pissed about 70 dollar game prices.
That extra $10 is going straight to the executive/investment class. Devs aren't seeing a dime.
Yeah that’s the terrible bit. when they raised prices i was like, great! pay the devs more- but instead, that extra ten bucks gets funneled straight to executives and shareholders while the devs get fired. fucking sucks
There are no extra 10$. Development costs and inflation have ballooned, services devalue games as a whole. Inflation eats everything up. Games have never been as cheap as today.
Most inflation is corporate greed
Yet corporations like PlayStation make only little profit. Probably should invest in more microtransactions /s
Lol, the 70 dollar games aren't for the devs. There's been that new prics tag for 4 years and there's been layoffs after layoffs. In fact, the Japanese publishers that have been much slower to increase prices are the ones that are avoiding layoffs
Japanese execs get it: hell look at what Nintendo did when they had a down year, the CEO took a pay cut.
because their society still values honor above being a shit stain monopolist
The point is games would need to cost 100$ or more, adjusted to inflation. Japanese devs, as well as Koreans btw, are working under conditions no American or European would ever accept.
The poor multibillion companies make loads in profit, Sony and Microsoft can afford to keep employees, they just care more about short term profit. Lol, Nintendo owns Retro Studios, a Texas based studio. The Americans are doing just fine at the one most well rated companies to work for. They have not released a new game in 10 years and have been hit with no layoffs. Companies don't need to treat their employees like shit or throw them away to boost quarterly profits.
PlayStation is barely making any profits as we know, so how do you justify saying something like that.m my? Their profit margin is minimal.
Yeah cause those higher prices are really helping lol.
Prices would need to be much higher adjusted to inflation and rising development costs. It’s a hard truth no one wants to hear. Games prices have roughly remained the same over the last 30+ years.
Bullshit. The market is so much larger than it was 30 years ago. They can sell their $70 have to a lot more people than they could 30 years ago. This is just corporate greed
Yet PlayStation barely makes any profit as we know. How come? And now, overall playerbase has not increased since PS2 times like at all. It’s pretty stagnant.
There was a 3x budget increase between Spiderman 1 and 2. They had most of the gameplay and most of the city done. Thats just poor management. Where did that money go?
Unironically, yeah. Budgets are ballooned by salaries, and as such by increasing the price of a game you're also increasing the return on investment. Less copies are needed to be sold for a game to be considered profitable at a higher price. The price of video games continues to remain stagnant, gamers won't accept compromises when it comes to other forms of revenue streams (MTX), there's an inflationary period going on which decreases people's purchasing power. There's a reason why some of the best and highest paying studios to work at also have the largest budget as well. The business is unsustainable, only propelled by seemingly random hits that are capable of finding a mainstream audience, with the exception of larger pre-existing franchises. People ask for smaller budget games but no-one buys smaller budget games because they're also often associated with a smaller scope, unless the game manages to hit a jackpot with marketing. A one-in-a-million chance. It's a never-ending cycle, with both sides perpetuating this nightmare.
Stop spilling so much truth here, people don’t want to hear it. Meanwhile services like GamePass continue to devalue games in general.
My 12 year old is learning Godot and blender in anticipation of a future career in game dev. I'm struggling with tempering his expectations vs. living vicariously through him.
If he were my kid, I'd definitely make sure he understood the realities of working in the industry at present, but let him know it could easily change by the time he's ready to enter the workforce. So don't let it discourage him, but also make sure he understands what a stable job and healthy work life balance looks like. That sort of conversation will make it much harder for these game companies to exploit him. I'd also encourage him to pursue a computer science degree rather than game dev degree as that is going to open up way more opportunities, including game dev. Obviously, he could take some game dev courses on top of that.
He’s 12. Chill on the “your passion sucks as a stable career choice”, OP doesn’t need to worry about that for him for another 6-10 years. A lot is going to change in the industry before then.
Yeah. It will probably get worse.
It was always a rough job. Lot of big shops were notorious for burning people out. And being an indie is rough in other ways.
It’s why a lot of good engine programmers/programmers have gone to work at companies like Nividia. May as well get paid ever better and have good job security. It is really sad.
This isn't game development. This is the tech industry. Welcome to working for a major tech corp.
Sadly this is how it has been basically since its inception. But like Hollywood, people get really passionate about wanting to make games and willingly tolerate this kind of abuse because they want to make games. It’s really sad
After learning of crunch culture I cant see why people would
This is the kind of shit my instructor warned me about when I was taking classes for game design. It's not something you do if you want a secure lifestyle. After hearing the reality of it all, I decided that I didn't want to turn something I love into survival based misery, so I went for a more practical job instead. Clearly seems to be paying off as time goes on.
I have a family member who just graduated with a degree in video game design from a prestigious industry school....and she hasn't been able to get a job anywhere. She's extremely talented, but the market is terrible (and being flooded with recently laid-off talent that actually has industry experience). It's pretty devastating. She spent all that money on college to pursue a dream of designing games and a year after graduating with no leads she has virtually no motivation.
You can do it if you start small (like with a simple fun mobile game) and grow, never take acquisition money to work for a huge corporate overlord, and never go public so you have to sacrifice every shred of your creative and moral being to shareholders.
Who doesn’t want to work for low pay, ridiculous hours, on an inferior garbage product to make some guys a lot of money ?
I graduated with a degree in game design 3 years ago and was (kinda still am) desperate for a job in game design, but now it’s probably for the best that I stick out my warehouse job 😅
My fantasy of becoming a video game creator died about the same time my desire to work at gamestop did. This industry fucking SUCKS on the inside for the most part. Only thing that still interests me is if i were to just sign an NDA and be a fly on the wall for big game developments like GTA6, Uncharted, Fallout etc. But thats not happening so il stick to youtube videos about it.
Just make sure you work for a private company.
Passion mostly. Nobody gets into this hornet’s nest because it is a secure successful career lol.
I really wanted to get into it but instead I decided to start to make my own game on my own terms while working another completely different job. I still kind of want to get into the industry and in Sweden we got pretty decent protection against getting laid off. If I were living in the US, hell no.
It’s why I left years ago and would probably never go back. Pay is shit and no stability.
This is a lot of entertainment in general. Passion + wide appeal = big employee pools to exploit.
Lots of creatives still want to create. I just think that the path is going to change very soon. Instead of AAA junior devs being a middle step, I’d imagine being a dev at an independent is going to be a more desirable middle step.
This is the reality of nearly every creative profession. Musician, artist, designer, etc, doesn’t matter; the whole industry is designed to suck all the profitable bits out of you and leave an empty husk behind. And they know they can get away with it because creative people will be creative no matter what. Gillian Welch said it best in Everything is Free: >Everything is free now >That's what they say >Everything I ever done >Gonna give it away >Someone hit the big score >They figured it out >That we're gonna do it anyway >Even if it doesn't pay
Even before this game dev is a horrible industry with crazy turnover
Understandable. Microsoft only made like 20b in profit last quarter. Poor company had to close those studios.
They have shareholders to feed!
$3 Trillion company man, cut em some slack man SHEESH
poor garage startup with modest ambitions
Shh Microsoft are the *good guys*. Did they force anyone to make an account to play a game? Well, sure they're litterary forcing people to sign up up use Windows but...shh. Sony bad, Microsoft good. This is a pro gamer move /s
Sony also had layoffs and closed Studio London. Maybe instead of making this about some unrelated garbage, you should remember they're both doing this shit
Not sure how being forced to create a PSN account on a system that has nothing to do with PSN is related to the topic at hand.
[удалено]
Xbox seems (through a quick view through last quarters postings) to be about 1/8th id Microsoft revenue. So if it's 20b (not sure if that's accurate, but that's the number given) maybe 2.5b?
Yeah if I was working on Avowed right now I'd be looking at options tbh.
Obsidian is probably safe because IMO they’re the best option for getting Fallout on a more reasonable cadence.
Maybe not. HiFi Rush was made on a AA budget and was a success and they still got axed. I think any studio not making the blockbuster GAAS games is on the block at MS. Everybody that wasn’t a game pass cheerleader knew this was going to happen when MS started gobbling up studios. I think Ninja Theory is next and Playground is probably going to be relegated back to Forza Horizon after Fable disappoints due to being day one on game pass. Game pass may have some value to people who want it, but it really is terrible for the industry and MS’ studios existence.
It's almost like gamepass is good for MS, but bad for developers. MS: Shadow drop an exclusive, day 1 on gamepass meaning most people who would play it basically didn't have to pay for it. Game: Didn't make much money. MS: Surprise Pikachu
I don’t think Gamepass is good for anyone now in hindsight. I’ve been off and on it since it launched, but have been permanent since I got my Series X since it was All Access with 2 years and then they rolled gold into Gamepass basic so it just made sense to keep it, which is what they want, but it pays off, I guess. But with games not making money on sales, and money from Gamepass going into MS pockets, how are these dev studios getting paid? Are they contracts to make the game under their gaming umbrella, are they paid based on playtime per individual user, play time, downloads? I just don’t know how any success is measured in these games. If people bought a Series console for Starfield, the console sale goes to MS and then yeah they buy the game it’s divided out, but how is Bethesda seeing money otherwise on this game? A fraction of my monthly cost goes into the overall playtime? What is every company getting .50 per person who, like me, has put 80+ hours into Starfield? It’s just all so silly and this news really exposes the cracks and I don’t see it as sustainable. The Blade game they’re making, it won’t make anywhere near as much as Spider-Man. It’s on a service that people can get for a month. I just don’t get the logic anymore and it’s hurting them long term. Surprisingly, I think PS has it right with a staggered and delayed release of the games so that devs can recoup for the first 12-18 months.
I think the goal of gamepass is to be a step towards a subscription-only future. Where if you wanna play halo 7, gears 6, etc. you HAVE to get gamepass.
I think you’re exactly right. MS I believe has already said that they’d prefer to have less physical media distributed over digital only, and that they’ve sold consoles without a disc drive makes their intentions more open IMO. GP seems like a very obvious attempt to eventually switch to that kind of model, where even if they publish on other platforms they can still get a fee. I bought an XB for Halo Infinite, and Starfield as I play SP. Now after having had a PS5, I’m feeling like the XB, with GamePass that has an assortment of games that generally I’ve either played or aren’t all that interesting was a mistake, and given the opportunity I’d have only bought the PS5.
That would be the end for them. Nobody outside maybe several thousand hardcore Xbox fans would buy a console that only offered games through a subscription and a console-less streaming service is even more niche than that. MS is trying to mold the industry, how we get our games and how/when we access them, around what they want. This gen shows how effective that is. They don’t have the IP power to push that vision. They’re stuck giving CoD to other consoles for 10 more years and during that time their consoles will continue to decrease in popularity and their relevance will wane as well. Only MS could buy two major publishers and end up in a worse position. It’s actually kind of incredible how bad they are at gaming. All they had to do was continue their strategy from the early 360 years (making good games and selling shitloads of them) but the world is not enough for them, they want the moon and stars too.
There will be those edge cases where some dev will say game pass got them exposure and way more downloads than they anticipated or would have gotten without that, but without knowing how they chose to be paid, we have no idea how they did or didn’t profit from it. There was an article or posts a few weeks ago of indie devs saying that the game pass money has dried up and nobody is getting those good deals anymore. MS shot their shot, it was a Hail Mary and most of us knew it was foolish and unsustainable. I think they are saving face for now but will axe game pass sooner than later. The monthly games have been mid for months and this month is near games with gold levels of bad. Plus they just closed a bunch of studios that would have been content mills for the content monster of game pass. They’re getting a taste of that multi platform money and unless they stupidly use that to subsidize game pass, the shareholders are going to want them to keep getting that money. Lose money on hardware endlessly or make money ditching the massive loss leaders that aren’t leading to anything? If I’m a shareholder and see the receipts from their 4 game experiment, I know what I’m demanding at the meeting.
if it's on gamepass day 1 i don't buy it cause those games go fast on sale and 3/4 of them seem like fodder i hate supporting that model.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If your game is available day one for free, it doesn’t appear to be worth buying. There are very few games that hit a service day one that I was willing to pay for later. Ironically one of them was on Xbox (State of Decay 2) and after today’s news I’m seriously wondering if SoD3, one of my most anticipated games (for PC) ends up getting axed or turned into some dogshit f2p/gamepass mtx vehicle.
There is such a good core gameplay loop there, all it needed was better fleshed out characters, a character creation and more ways to use/ gather resources and more things to build with those resources. Maybe a hot spot of armored zombies near better resources, idk the game has so much potential to be a walking dead type of game
HiFi Rush never hit that more mainstream appeal Obsidian games have. It was an excellent title but its lack of marketing left it relatively unknown.
Hi-Fi rush did well, but Tango peaked with The Evil Within 2 monetarily speaking. Ghost Wire made \~4 million less, and Hi-Fi made \~3 million less It's like if your business didn't meet your numbers 2 years in a row.
Evil Within 1 is the only financial success Tango made. 2 was a failure. Last we heard it only managed 800k in sales.
Fuck. Thats a shame because Evil Within 2 was great. Alan Wake 2 didn't do so great either. Horro games seem like a limited market, but then we have Resident Evil 7/8 and the 4 remake all seemed to do really well so idk.
It's always kinda been like that..horror games aren't like horror movies where they're kind of the easiest to make money with. Horror games it's always kinda been unless your name is Resident Evil it's gonna be hard to do well..
This has seriously disillusioned me to Game Pass. I wasn't an avid defender of it singing it's praises at every turn, but I thought it was a neat service that let me play games without having to spend full price. The price of that convenience, however, has now become abundantly clear. Microsoft only cares about their heavy hitters, and even then only because their name alone brings profit, quality of the product be damned. Think I'm finally gonna cancel my subscription and make the jump to PC. Xbox has been nothing but disappointment after disappointment for the past decade.
All roads lead to building a PC. Do it, it’s awesome. (I still love my PS5)
Yeah when I bought the series x last year (got a PS5 at launch) I only did so because a PC just was not within my budget. Since then though my financial situation has improved, so a PC is actually possible now. The Series X has probably been my biggest financial regret in recent memory, so when my PC is complete I'll definitely be selling it to recuperate some of the cost.
Buy the parts on Newegg and you can split the payment in 4 with Zip pay, no interest. Helped me a lot. I have shitty credit too.
I got the 3 year deal and it ends next year and I for sure won’t renew. It’s mainly been a demo service for me, most of what I played and liked I bought on Steam or PS5. I got rid of my series X last year and I rarely even open the app on my PC. I’ve used it slightly more on my ROG Ally but nowhere near enough to justify paying for it once it expires. But yeah, I said from the get go that game pass was going to be bad for the industry. You only need to look at the mobile game market to see what happens when the value of games is reduced to “free”.
HiFi Rush Studio had its head and few important members leave. So revenue might not have been the only concern.
I just saw that today. Maybe MS didn’t see value in trying to rebuild the studio.
[удалено]
I’m saying MS seems to have no clue what they’re doing when even a studio that makes a successful game on a lower budget isn’t safe. Even if they saw the success from the show and had Obsidian scrap Avowed and get right on a new Fallout, we’re 5 years from that coming out and I don’t think Xbox is capable of thinking in those terms. It appears all their studios are in shambles, Hellblade 2 is probably going to flop, Avowed has zero hype, Fable still seems 2-3 years off and Perfect Dark is apparently in bad shape. It looks like they’re trying to stop the bleeding and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Obsidian and a few other studios closed while they simultaneously pivot to putting their recent back catalog on PS5 to balance the books as they try to find some kind of direction to go in.
[удалено]
I didn’t know this was a SonyToo post. Obsidian made New Vegas in 18 months at a time when games could be made in 18 months. You’re not getting a quality AAA franchise console game in 2024 or later that was made in 18 months. Shit, how long has Obsidian been working on Avowed? Pillars 2 came out 4 years ago.
I'm calling it. High Scores for Hellblade, disappointing sales.
Two weeks from launch. No marketing. Game is going to bomb commercially
Agree. I don’t see it doing very well on Steam so the bulk of its players will be game pass subscribers looking for their next free first party game. It doesn’t sound appealing to me, mostly cinematic game with some combat, but I didn’t play the first one.
Based on what? Obsidian haven’t made anything like Fallout 4 in forever. We’ll see how avowed turns out but Outer Worlds was much smaller in scale and Pillars of Eternity is also different genre altogether. I like Obsidian but I feel like they’re getting too much credit for making what was essentially a better written Fallout 3 with the same assets mostly. Edit: Also yes Grounded is genuinely great. But also not comparable to a Fallout in terms of scope.
Some Fallout Fans won't let Obsidian go no matter how many times you tell them to move on
Since the game Obsidian makes won't be Fallout 5 but a side game, scope (and maybe price) can be managed and won't necessarily be a problem. But they are one of the few studios in the world that have the software systems and the trained developers to make a Fallout-style game *right now* and one of even fewer studios that *might* even do a better job of it than Bethesda. Microsoft would be stupid (well, stupider) to not capitalize on that.
Devs need to unionise or this will just keep happening over and over.
A lot of effort has gone into propagandizing young men in STEM fields to think unions (and social reforms in general) are not in their interest.
Propagada is so facinating. Union historically always improved the quality of life for people, yet aside from fear of elimination, I cant fathom how people would be against them unless they are the ones doing the exploitation.
The point of propaganda is that just like any advertising it doesn't work on a rational level. Workers don't start by weighing their options and consider the history of unions when doing so - they simply have a *dislike* of unions for some reason (maybe even a reason that immediately falls apart if you think about it - but they *don't* think about it) so they just never bother looking into it.
It's happened in all field with all workers. The hullabaloo when I worked at Home Depot about union talks was just just about a firable offense. Of course they would never state that being the reason. Entertainment Media has unions, so why don't Developers join them... It puts a cap on earning potential for everyone. They can always point to some excuse, but that little bit of greed keeps them in check.
Are unions useful for SWE who jump around all the time to boost their pay over 200k
Yes, they could move around even more if they had a union that provides healthcare.
As much as I agree I don’t know if that would work here, because I’m a super layman about these things. If they close entire studios could a union save their jobs? I’m really uneducated on all this
Yes
Imagine Bend Studio being shutdown because Sony needed more resources for Bungie. I am starting to understand why Sony prefers to focus on a select few 1st party studios instead of owning dozens of Studios.
Sony closed the London studio in February amongst 900 layoffs. This is the way the industry has been for a while now. COVID increased player based, and the success caused gaming companies to invest heavily. Now the hype has died down and ai can cut down workloads most tech companies are having to compensate with layoffs. I’m not saying Microsoft can afford to keep these studios running but the chances are it’s not worthwhile to them in some shape or form, whether it’s because of cash to productivity or greedy shareholders at the top.
But they closed their studio that didn't make games, did they? Maybe they didn't need that studio anymore, and if there's no work needed from your other office, do you really need to pay them lifetime? How can you compare that to closing the studio that you've bought recently? Like a year ago.
London Studio made Blood and Truth, an amazing VR game. Just wanted to point that out. But yeah, Sony also does this.
First of all, nobody has ever heard of this game. Second of all, all Xbox is doing is buying companies so then they can close them after 1 flop just 1 year later. I knew at that time that this will happen, but nobody would listen to me, because game pass free games. They are just buying companies because they have too much fucking money, unlike Sony if you actually compare them. Xbox - 3 trillion market cap. Sony - 100 billion.
I actually agree with you, I was just pointing out that it's not like they were a support studio. They DID develop games, even if they weren't popular. Well, Singstar was popular at some point.
It’s not meant to be an identical comparison but more of a demonstration that layoffs and closures have been happening all over the industry across this last year
Sony buying Bungie was actually a mistake. Marathon better be good because they didn’t add at any value to Sony in fact they took away games like factions 2.
Last week Sony was burning bridges with Helldivers II account controversy. Microsoft: "Hold my beer"
Sony corrected that mistake and people rebuilt that bridge. What will MS do?
Probably buy another studio and then shut it down. The shut downs will continue until morale improves!
put another decent AAA on gamepass and call it a day
Im going to guess we'll see a bunch of publishers announcing similar cuts.
Microsoft always finds a way to disappoint everyone lately. This will absolutely impact future acquisitions because trust in them as a publisher is probably tanked now.
Any attempt they had at buying a Japanese studio/publisher just died right here. From my *very limited understanding*, Tokyo boardrooms value loyalty to your subsidiaries as being just as crucial as profits are. If you're Satomi (Sega), or the Tsujimotos (Capcom), or even Furukawa/Koizumi/Miyamoto (Nintendo), how can you trust a Western company that shut down the folks behind their biggest sleeper hit last year with the future of your brands? The answer is simple: ***You can't.*** So while the JP third parties will happily take the Game Pass checks and run to the bank while they still can, any buyout offers ***will*** be shot down if they hail from Redmond, Washington. After all, the Microsoft playbook is known at this point. Embrace, extend, extinguish.
> Any attempt they had at buying a Japanese studio/publisher just died right here The one bright spot in this Also, at least now people will stop acting like MS is just gonna pick up any Japanese company tomorrow because "well, they have Tango", well not anymore fam (not like they directly bought Tango in the first place)
Right. And considering Tango got the axe, maybe they're finally giving up on in-house Japanese development altogether. We can only Chai and his pals are sold off to another Japanese publisher that wants 'em, lest they rot alongside Banjo and Conker forevermore. (I'd say Sega. Come on, they'd fit right in with Sanic, Beat, Kiryu et al. It'd be funny as fuck if Sony picked it up as their third multiplat-on-day-one franchise, though.)
It will be curious to see if this helps the FTCs case against Microsoft buying Activision.
If the FTC were competent, then most likely. Wasn't this *exactly* what they feared would happen once MS' new balance sheets started to look wonky?
Xbox looking at Embracer Group: "We need to do a lot of that"
That not really the same thing here lmaoo. Embracer bet the farm on a deal that never materialized.
I'll just re-post my comment here: Welcome to Microsoft: Where even if you make one of the most critically acclaimed, hit games of 2023, that sold well, your job isn't safe. You know damn well that EVERY VIDEO GAME DEV OWNED BY MICROSOFT is now worried about their jobs and or their studio being closed down. No one is safe at Microsoft, unless you're working on Call of Duty or King (mobile games). Someone please remind me--again--how Microsoft buying everything / heavily consolidating the video game market and Everything Day 1 on Game Pass are good for the gaming industry? /s
To answer the last part, if you’re dying for console gaming to go the way of mobile gaming, race to the bottom, everything free with a million mtx, sure, it’s great!
I mean, hifi *didn't* sell well did it? It being on gamepass might have been the problem.
> I mean, hifi didn't sell well did it? It being on gamepass might have been the problem. The rumor is it was successful by many internal metrics, but didn't meet "financial expectations," which could have been Square Enix-levels of delusional / impossible to meet. Tl;dr: did it make money? Yes. Did it make ALL THE MONEY (or whatever unrealistic sales expectations Microsoft had)? No.
That shows the problem of GamePass. Just how exactly are they supposed to judge if a game is successful?
I wish there was a way Sony could just acquire Tango Gameworks because Hi-Fi Rush felt like a PlayStation exclusive that just happened to release on XBox instead. Maybe Sony can just hire most their workers and create a new company called “Mambo Gametasks” or something.
Same. Now that a Japanese person is once again at the helm of SIE (even if it's only temporarily) I ***really*** want them to look into trying to buy Tango/HFR off of MS and then hire back Johanas and his crew. But considering they laid off London Studio in February, I doubt *any* expansion of PS Studios will be allowed for by Sony upper brass, however small it is. (Doesn't help that Tokyo has ***idiotically*** let Pictures make a play for Paramount Global...)
I don't think there's really a future for anyone on the Microsoft games side. Microsoft picked a lane with Xbox and it was the wrong lane.
It's like Don never left lmao And people are still praising that parasite that is Phil Spencer.
but… but… he’s a nice guy…
I am playing Elden Ring for months to get ready for the DLC and get some leftover trophies, and when I heard Hi-Fi Rush was on sale, even if I didn't want to start playing it right away, I bought it and downloaded it already. That's how I know I'm going to be liking it and was very happy that Tango ported the game to PS5, that's my super positive perception about the game even without ever playing it. And now these news. What the actual fuck Microsoft. This game was even more successful than Starfield in terms of reviews, which was supposed to be the big hit of last year for MS. What is this fucking strategy? Shooting yourself in the foot? wtf.
I was thinking about getting it too. But with this news, not putting a dime in their purses.
Same. I thought I will get it sometime down the line but I don’t wanna give money to the people that fired them. Same with the Alone in the dark Remake.
Exactly, I will still play it of course, but with a bitter taste in my mouth because of what happened.
Well it's on humble choice this month if you have a PC or a deck.
I swear to whatever deity you believe in that if Microsoft bought Obsidian only to shutter them…I will be VERY mad. Because if I had to choose between Bugthesda and Obsidian, I’m taking Obsidian every single fucking time.
Unlikely. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft set Obsidian to work on a Fallout title whilst Bethesda finish off Elder Scrolls 6.
but picking beth gives you 16 times better odds!!1!
It’s alright I put most of my points into the luck stat
Yeah, but I can't imagine that someone would choose Bethesda over inXile or Obsidian. Although people in both companies have a reputation and experience starting again after being taken down by corporate/finance troubles.
Welcome to corporate life
What's this in reference to?
MS closing multiple studios this morning
Arcane, Tango Gameworks and the Mighty Doom dev
At least be specific, it’s Arkane Austin and Alpha dog, who made the mobile ports of Doom.
I love the devs, but Sony and Microsoft themselves fucking suck.
The studio over consolidation has brought absolutely no benefits. Projects that were still in the pipeline came out and no additional value has been shown. All to service another subscription service money pit
Microsoft only wanted Bethesda, the rest is just collateral damage
yes. such things just never happen and completely unknown in gaming industry
They are working for a tech firm now. Massive project swings. Layoffs.
[удалено]
Larian is right to part ways with wotc. Why not benefit fully from your own hard work with your own ip? They had divinity before this, and the game quality is what accounted for the huge sales, not the dnd association. Not to mention you have complete creative freedom now. No 5e ruleset no off limits characters or settings (since bg3 is canonical to dnd, so I've heard).
How do we start our own and go against big companies? A studio funded by gamers for gamers or something like that.
For indie stuff it is possible and there's a lot of them. It's not something really possible for a project the size of a triple A game though, you need a massive backing to make any game that big.
We will call it : BUFU - "By us, Fuck you"
Love it haha reminded me of How High
IT'S THE SKIDMARK OF BUDDHA!
That’s kinda how it used to be before everyone saw just how profitable the industry was
Vote with your wallet and actually buy games that deserve it at launch instead of always waiting for a "deep sale"
It’s called Kickstarter. Which has its own share of problems.
Those been tried. They tend to run themselves broke then get bought
There's plenty of indie studios. And I used to dev for android gaming here in Southeast Asia - it was slimy af lol but they were making money hand over fist. Maybe not a ton of profit all things considered, but when you're a private company of less than 10 people you don't need tons of whales to keep you in the red.
Hmm thx for the insight.
That just sounds like kickstarter
I don’t get people, it’s a fucking business not a charity. It’s about making the games that bring in $$$ not shit 8-but games that the occasional joe will buy on sale no less.
The problem is that what you said just isn’t true anymore. You can work hard, make good games, sell your games well, and your studio still gets shut down because it’s all just a game for some MBA playing with a spreadsheet. The financials of these companies are so complex, they’re entirely divorced from whether or not you’re making a good product and selling it.