Maybe I am just out of the loop, or fail to connect the dots. What's with a whole bunch of gaming companies laying off people or canceling projects? Is it simply the bad economy all over the world? Because that has been going on for a while, so why so many companies doing this just now, and all at once? A lot of games have been shit too for a while, so it's probably not that either. Do they have to publish quarterly reports in the upcoming days, and are trying to get ahead of the bad news by pretending that they have already done something about the issue?
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They've all been slowly dying for a while. A lot of them made money off ESG than making a product that sells and with ESG running out, they no longer have the talent to make a product that sells.
Last company I remember dying was the zombiefied corpse of Volition with Saints Row, EA has been trying to sell itself for years and we just had the recent flops of Suicide Squad and Skull and Bones.
Meanwhile indies are RAKING in the money from Palworld to Helldivers 2 and even attempted boycott last year of Atomic Heart didn't stop that being successful despite it's flaws. Gaming is doing perfectly fine but the companies doing cuts have lost all talent to make games so can't make money, similar to Disney.
The games being bad is political. The people making these games belong to forcibly diversified studios who are paying twice as much for real labor as the indie studios. It’s like an inverted economy of scale, which is how you know it’s leftism lol
Where I work we got a shit ton of investment money about 5 years ago. At the same time the company decided to get an all female board (they were very proud of this) and they started spending all the money on big offices, hiring their friends. Wasting money on courses about "being strong and showing your vulnerability" as well as all the usual DEI training. Massive overstaffing aswell.
Now a lot of contracts have dried up, moneys gone. Many of the best people quit. DEI hires won't leave and don't know how to do their jobs and many in upper management are too terrified to take any kind of risk. They haven't learned anything either, trying to worm trans shit into every prototype and pitch.
When the marketing starts with diversity and representation you just know they know they have a turd on their hands.
Hello Games just announced its hiring for everyhing, likely for Light No Fire.
I know, it was just surprising to me that it happened to quite a few companies in what feels like quick succession.
January tends to be when accounting does their yearly reports, might explain why they all happened quickly this year as under the hood 2023 was CRIPPLING to the major studios by and large.