A story in three parts:
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Studio given free reign over team building and dev time ends up wasting so much time and money that they get the entire project cut.
If you’re an executive at a big game publisher watching small studios crank out big hits like Helldivers 2 and Expedition 33, then you have to start asking tough questions about why your own bloated, overpriced, DEI infested teams can’t deliver even half as much quality despite 2-3x dev time. And when you realize that DEI is a huge part of the problem, you can’t turn around and publicly announce to the world that you are firing a bunch of women and blacks in order to make your video games good and profitable again.
Helldivers 2 had hundreds of millions in funding, Sony backing and a dev team the size of Skyrim's, as well as 8 years. And they produced a cancerous MTX riddled always online abomination that comes with malware in their korean anticheat that literally only protects their mtx system.
They're as "indie" as bungie. EDF is actually made by a smaller budget studio producing consistently better games.