I’ll explain this as quick as I can. Basically the bourgeoisie that own the major studios are so obsessed with profit that they make blatantly unsustainable decisions like overmonetization and shipping unfinished games every few years. Now look what’s happening, the studios have no choice but to lay off employees to recoup the costs they inflicted upon themselves and the worst affected are the fired employees naturally.
This is honestly infuriating and insulting as someone who’s been a massive video game fan since 2019 because the franchises I took a liking to (especially Halo) had countless labor and talent (stretching decades in some cases) have been completely gone to waste publishing cookie cutter generic dogshit games for the c suite’s next payday.
Indies are no better. They also suffer from the problem of shipping unfinished games but unlike their AAA counterparts, they suffer from genuine lack of time and resources to deliver games in a timely manner. So the whole “go indie” is basically lesser evil.
Come to think of it Capitalism actually enables and rewards such incompetence as long as profits are high.
As an anti-capitalist I think that’s an undue slight on capitalism. Prioritising profits doesn’t suddenly turn you into a rabid animal that would give up $5 in 5 minutes for $1 right now. What you’re ascribing blame to over layoffs is more than capitalism, it’s a particular brand of mad short-sightedness uniquely observed in US big tech & gaming sectors.
The reality is that under US employment law, there is very little risk in disposing of workforce assets just to print a lower P/E ratio for the quarter. The company can just rehire the same staff again later if they want. It’s an infinitely more solvable problem than capitalism: pass employment reforms. Studios not having a choice is utter nonsense. The choice is to stop working counter to the mutually aligned long-term interests of literally everyone - the company, its staff, its customers. But they kept choosing some other wacky shit instead.
Prioritising profits doesn’t suddenly turn you into a rabid animal that would give up $5 in 5 minutes for $1 right now.
It literally does.
No, the proposition makes no sense from a capitalist perspective. We can be united against capitalism without turning it into a caricature, that doesn’t serve to convince anyone of anything.
I know what you said is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is true that capitalists will prioritise short-term profits over long-term ones. That’s why capitalists will buy a factory, sell of its machinery, fire all the workers, demolish the building and sell the land rather than run the factory so it can continue producing.
Prioritising profits doesn’t suddenly turn you into a rabid animal that would give up $5 in 5 minutes for $1 right now.
EA laid off 670 employees just recently, yet shareholders have reached a profit of $1.5 billion It is clear that with this strategy, combining with the fact that corporations are switching to contract work (lower wages, no benefits), shows that they care about profit rather than delivering a decent enough game.
Layoffs are a consequence of capitalism, not the root cause. Think about it. If you can make more profit by hiring contractors instead of employees, you might as well. You can make a higher profit, even if the product is half-baked and unfinished. And if you’re kind, you can send a skeleton crew to clean up the mess by updating the game to a working state and eventually they will move onto something else. There’s been a recent trend of unfinished, half-baked products coming to market, such as Battlefield 2042, Halo Infinite, etc.
It’s an infinitely more solvable problem than capitalism: pass employment reforms.
The employment in this case is replacing full-time employees (usually with a wealth of knowledge especially in regards to game engines, art, etc.) with contract workers. It is more profitable in this regard. Employment reforms won’t fix this. The fundamental issue is the game being released is gaining profit at a rate where the game itself is virtually unprofitable. Cosmetics, Gameplay Advantages, Microtransactions, all of these contribute to the profit of the game in some way. Hence why employees are redundant, and thus they are laid off, or filed for redundancy.
The choice is to stop working counter to the mutually aligned long-term interests of literally everyone - the company, its staff, its customers.
The long-term interest of corporations is to gain as much profit as it can before the company sinks to the ground. The shareholders are problem. Capitalism is the problem. Do not blame the layoffs. Layoffs are a consequence of capitalism, it forces workers to become the reserve army of labour. Please, I recommend you read Marxist theory before claiming that capitalism isn’t the problem. With everything that exists in our society, Capitalism is always the problem.
The fundamental issue is the game being released is gaining profit at a rate where the game itself is virtually unprofitable.
I don’t believe this. Gaming is one of the biggest and most profitable industries in the world, and MTX aren’t principally responsible for that.
The developer that participates in cyclical layoffs (read: the average publicly traded one based in the US) is more of a failed capitalist. That they profit from the failure doesn’t change that it fundamentally is one. Franchises have been worth billions each since Guitar Hero, ruining them to reduce short-term company expenditure is shooting yourself in the foot. Outside the US (but still under capitalism), it doesn’t really happen.
If this is an effect of capitalism, it is only insofar as US capitalists have the leeway to fuck around and find out, because what they find is still profitable (largely due to complacency of gamers). But that leeway is a product of regulatory failure. It’s ridiculous for workers to be thrown aside to boost profits when this purpose isn’t actually achieved.
Gaming is one of the biggest and most profitable industries in the world
It is, but the profit doesn’t come from sales, but rather recurring systems as a result of battle-passes or one-time purchases for microtransactions. I said virtually unprofitable because a lot of multiplayer games are now free-to-play, take any game, Call of Duty, Halo, etc. Most likely there is a free-to-play game available in the multiplayer sector. With that multiplayer sector, they are now gaining revenue not from sales (as it is impossible), but rather from recurring payments or microtransactions. Therefore most of the revenue that comes from games today is not from sales of a particular commodity (Note that when you purchase a game digitally, you do not own the game, you own the lease for a (supposed) indefinite amount of time, therefore it cannot be considered a ‘sale’ since you do not own your game), but rather the payment of certain cosmetics or a battlepass which is only available within that specific game. You do not own the cosmetic, you just own the lease to it.
When you shift your focus from ‘owning’ a game (as it is a lie for PC gamers, for console gamers, it makes a bit more sense), it is clear that revenue now is generated not from a game sale.
The developer that participates in cyclical layoffs (read: the average publicly traded one based in the US) is more of a failed capitalist.
The corporations that run most of the game market (Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, Valve, etc.) are not headed by one person. They are held by shareholders, i.e. capitalists, not a single capitalist. Shareholders do not care about the quality of a game, rather how much revenue it generates. If it does not generate more profit than the last game, then there will be consequences despite the game being profitable (from sales or otherwise).
Franchises have been worth billions each since Guitar Hero, ruining them to reduce short-term company expenditure is shooting yourself in the foot.
Guitar Hero is a dead franchise, for the most part. A lot of franchises are dead. Why is that? They’re not profitable enough to keep themselves running. No one aside from Guitar Hero fans wants to play Guitar Hero. Any franchise you can think of, Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, Battlefield, these are being milked, because it is a safe bet. Even a singleplayer experience like Assassin’s Creed has microtransactions. And their game instead of centering around a fun experience, it is centered around wasting your time as much as possible or force yourself to do side quests so that you can get the level you want. Not only that, most of the Assassin’s Creed games require a third party DRM tool, and tampering with your game may result in your account being suspended, or your game gone all together. This is the turn-around we see for games. Games are not calculated per sale, as it is useless (or often a minority in the game’s revenue all together) but rather how much money it can accumulate based on microtransactions, battle-passes, etc.
If this is an effect of capitalism, it is only insofar as US capitalists have the leeway to fuck around and find out, because what they find is still profitable (largely due to complacency of gamers). But that leeway is a product of regulatory failure.
This is liberal speak. I’m astonished that you can say this and not see that capitalism is to blame. Every capitalist is concerned with one thing, profit. I already said what I said earlier, that being that capitalists care about how much revenue it generates. It is not based on regulatory matters, rather how much capitalists have control over how people play games and consume their product. Saying that is an effect of regulation and not capitalism is advocating the same as social-democracy, removing the “bad” aspects of capitalism whilst still keep capitalism in place.
It’s ridiculous for workers to be thrown aside to boost profits when this purpose isn’t actually achieved.
I provided two links which shown the exact opposite. Please, do some research.
The biggest problem is that it’s basically impossible to sell quality products without sacrificing profit. There’s a reason why the pestilences of microtransactions, live service, battlepasses and CoDNite gameplay are popular in the AAA market.
If you compare a game like Fallout New Vegas to Starfield - including in representation - the quality is night and day, and the latter has a sophisticated pronoun system mind you. Just look at Halo Infinite, you have to get ripped off just to change the color of your Spartan’s armor, and you know why? It’s simply more profitable conditioning entire generations of people to mindlessly consoom overly monetized CoDNite slop than publish quality games. I cooked up the idea of “groomed to consoom” for this reason.
If you want to save gaming you need to get rid of capitalism. We do not out of touch corporate fuckheads like Frank O’Connor who hire people who hate the franchise they’re hired to work for to decide how a game is developed.