Stray was excellent
It’s kind of funny. The studio wanted to spin off to be independent. So everybody resigning, is effectively doing the same thing. It’s not like there’s big heavy machinery they have to move. The studio is the people.
If they start their own company, they have successfully totally spun off
Eh, reputation is still a thing and they probably aren’t getting to keep any of the IPs they worked on, like Stray or Outer Wilds. They also won’t get to keep whatever cash the company might have had in reserve. My understanding is that the idea of spinning off a studio to be indie is that you get to keep developing your IPs to some extent, you still have your brand and your reputation, etc. Otherwise they probably would have done this at the beginning.
So, no, they didn’t really spin it off heh.
They didn’t make outer wilds (the parent company Annapurna interactive published it)
Yeah but publishing is still work though. It’s become much easier to self publish on Steam as a small developer, but there is still value in having a professional publisher. It’s hard to say how much value and sometimes the publisher takes up more than their fair share, but it’s not like zero value either.
Not exactly the same. First of all, a new company hasn’t formed yet and if it does it won’t retain as many of the original staff because it doesn’t have the same momentum as one formed through a legal separation of the companies while everyone is still employed.
It also can’t retain the rights to Stray which would have provided some funding. And it doesn’t retain the rights to whatever projects they had in development, so they won’t have anything to work on for a while.
That legal spinning off was actually pretty important.
Well damn. I hope they can get a start under a new company. Annapurna has been kind of a seal of approval for high quality, small dev team games that weren’t the usual triple A bullshit or obvious cash grabs.
Isn’t it enough that shitty games have to bear that triple A warning label these days?
That’s the kindest thing anyone’s ever said to me on the internet. I’d like to be a robot.
They have a solid catalog and a lot of talent on board. I hope everyone is able to land on their feet. It would be a shame to lose out on those great minds.
They don’t have a solid catalog anymore, they quit the company that owns the publishing rights to the catalog.
These aren’t the developers quitting. It’s the publisher’s staff. Like If the employees of Republic Records all quit, Universal Music Group would still have the right to publish Taylor Swift’s or John Legend’s next album.
I’m rooting so hard for them.
