I’m so glad bungo left that hellish Microsoft contract so they could be an awesome indie studio again and put out classic for-gamer games!!!
We are going to be seeing a lot of this over the next few years. And it is mostly the same as “EA bought and killed all these studios” back in the day.
The live game market is more and more crowded every year and Destiny 2 is winding up the same arc it has been in since Destiny 1 (I think?). It is hard to tell what the reality of “45% below the full-year outlook” means, but player retention HAS been falling and that is a good indicator.
If Bungie had stayed independent or stayed at MS they would likely be in the same place. Well, at MS they would have gotten gutted with 343 last year.
Its similar to HBS getting gutted under Paradox. I still think it is bullshit that, of all studios, HBS was not given the chance to “fix” Lamplighters considering their amazing track record in that genre. But also? I don’t know a single person who was excited for Lamplighters League. We all heard “Harebrained Schemes is making a new game” and immediately got our hopes up for something like Shadowrun or Battletech. And then we got LPL which… is fine. But, regardless of whether they were at Paradox or independent, that would have likely led to massive layoffs because of the flop.
And we are going to see a lot more of this, same as we did in the 90s and 00s. Between economic uncertainty, increasing interest rates, and just general “flops”. Because EVERYONE thinks “extraction shooters” are the next big thing. But… we are increasingly seeing questions of whether Tarkov is even particularly successful. Same with lots of other games. And publishers are less likely to say “Well, you’ll get it right next time. here is another couple million bucks” in the current climate.
In 1997, Mindscape fired the entire Lego Island team the day before release. The team that just made a custom engine for their much-hyped and soon best-selling game that would garner sequels for years to come. The painfully obvious reason was the promise of giving people more money if the game did well.
Nothing has changed.
Unionize and fuck these corporations.
Even outside unions - pro-rate everything. No more hard cutoffs where some bastard can promise the world, get 99% of what they promised it for, and then give nothing.
fired the entire Lego Island team
So they would’ve just fired the union, no? Do unionise, but at a certain point you can’t protect yourself without socialism.
Relevant law for Washington USA where Bungie is: https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=49.36
You can’t fire someone explicitly for being in a union, but you can still fire the union. If they fired the whole team, there’s no power left with the union. They can’t sue for being punished for forming a union, and they can’t threaten to quit or strike in solidarity, because the company doesn’t plan to keep any of them.
What a dick move, especially the second one. Really goes to show that management seems to forget they’re dealing with actual humans and not machines being turned off at an assembly line. So dehumanizing.
Yet another reason the entire sector should be unionized.
WHAT! This is very scummy, especially on the company shares part. Basically robbing employees of their money.
