Rami Ismail PirateSoftware talk Bungie layoffs
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- Опубліковано 27 жов 2024
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If you are an aggressively monetized “successful” live service and a 3+ billion dollar buyout from Sony only results in layoffs and uninspired to middling content for years with no new developments worth showcasing on other projects you have been grossly mismanaged by upper management at the very least.
Bungie didn't receive 3.7 Billion dollars, that's not how buyouts work. Sony bought out the Shareholders which means that, all of the buyout value in shares, does NOT go to Bungie but goes to those shareholders (whoever they are). Since Bungie is privately held, Bungie the company likely doesn't hold shares in themselves (like you would with a publicly traded company). Sony also doesn't care about Bungie's IP, they care about their Live Service expertise so Sony can make their own live service games.
I also don't have an issue with CEOs getting paid a lot, unlike social media, but they also need to be held accountable and Pete Parsons has had so many misses over the past 8 years that, frankly, he shouldn't be CEO anymore. My opinion is that CEOs should be held to the same standard as their employees, if you have a 3 strike system (IE, three major mistakes that you could've prevented) then the CEO should be accountable to that system.
getting down into the treches, huh. yeah iwata did that, he was programmer and gamer like us. we should strive to be as wonderful as that man was. he was a gift.
Damn..the 08:30 hit me hard. I'm glad I'm not delusional. That one sentence spoke a thousand truths.
Pirate software made a good point on the buying cars drama brought about by Mr. Rami and others on social media. He is wealthy and probably has a lot of investments on the other side. Firing people sucks, and being more ambitious good, but sometimes you fail, and the impact is what happened. Bungie needs to ditch Marathon, focus on Destiny 3, take the story elsewhere, and stop this PVP extraction shooter.
This. He literally just sold Bungie for three and a half billion. He had an ownership stake. He’s not the Illinois super-mayor.
There's literally no D3 ever. They needed to start that in 2018 and now there's literally less than 1% of those there when Destiny started...most new working there people don't have any real idea about Destiny...I mean they literally said the new GM would be the hardest ever in history and it was laughed at and beat with ease. That's who is handling the reign of D2... people who don't have a clue
@@stevegaspar Bungie was in a tough spot. People who do great work need to be paid more, given greater responsibilities, etc. trouble is, there’s only so many positions like that available on a game, and that’s if they haven’t burned out their creative energy on a single game and want to do something else. So having many irons in the fire is not always about over extending, it’s sometimes about curbing brain-drain and losing good people to other companies. Bungie want on a hiring spree after the Sony sale, in many respects they are returning to an employment size prior to the buyout with a renewed focus on just the cash cow and a game in incubation. As far as layoffs hitting people all over the company, that’s how layoffs work. Bungie probably used a consultant company to do it, the moment a specific criteria can be discovered is when lawsuits for discrimination strike.
Honestly, when companies do major layoffs a part of that layoff should be part of the executive team leadership because that is where the failing exists that caused that issue.
@@xtrakulgy They did, leadership was "future endeavored" shortly after the launch of the expansion and shortly after the delay was announced. If youre talking about board members, theyre there as representatives of the owners. Much different issue. Bungie still has almost the same headcount or maybe even a bit more than before Sony purchased them. They went on a huge hiring spree. Not excusing anything, but every big studio was wrong about the pandemic expansion of the industry. Lightfall's collective groan was abosolute garbage and the blame rests on those who made it, not the nebulous bean counters pushing microtransactions.
The car thing has been really interesting to watch, as it is a fantastic example of optics. Pete had been with Bungie since 2002 coming from MS - and I’m not sure how long at a leadership level 22 years there he will be doing VERY well for himself, beyond surely having an insane portfolio particularly of Microsoft stock. Frankly, $2M is likely nothing to him, and the way I heard about it was that somebody found his BaT account and could therefore see his auction wins. We don’t know anything beyond that.
We can absolutely criticize the hell out of leadership at bungie, but he was there through ALL the praises too - it’s not as if this money simply appeared in his bank account in the last few years - dude just had a midlife crisis and started having fun with a hobby relative to his income.
Welcome to the party tech guys, blue collar has been dealing with it for a hot minute now.
Where a hot minute is defined as ~1760 to the present.
No one's mentioned that Bungie upper management said there would be no layoffs when Sony bought Bungie.
Also, when there was a discussion about "losses", what was actually said, was that Bungie had revenue 45% below budget projections. That means someone high up in Bungie leadership had overpromised, NOT that they were _losing_ that massive amount of money.
These sorts of things are what should _really_ make people mad, since if Sony get told that X amount of money will come in, and then it doesn't, the leadership there will of course be displeased, and might very well start demanding the changes we see now.
You really think bungie higher ups have ultimate control over the company that owns them?
They stated the chnage over to Sony would result in everyone keeping their jobs for the foreseeable future.
Well guess what bud. We are way past the foreseeable future. It’s buisness. This is how companies work
That's PR, anyone with any business understanding would know that. That being said, a lot of leadership got canned right after the expansion came out.
No one "works their way up" to earning roles like CEO any more. You either build a company and be the heart behind its product and fall into the role of CEO -- with mixed results because guiding a company is not the same thing that you excelled at -- or you came from a pool of professional, trained managers. Trained managers are a cancer killing every industry right now, and the more modern the industry is, like software development, IT, etc, the worse off it is. They get into roles and then proceed to fill out all of the roles that they have power over with more trained managers resulting in bloat and mismanagement. All of these companies end up with like.. 25% to 33% management when a well managed company SHOULD have about 3% MANAGEMENT (administrators) and about 10% LEADERSHIP (supervisors who are embedded on the team and responsible for doing the same work as their team) and that colossal tumor never has a grasp on reality -- resulting in the kinds of scaling decisions that we keep seeing post-covid.
That's not even mentioning the havoc they put workplaces through. Been through several layoffs the past few years because companies keep switching hands and laying off staff.
Luke worked on the OG Vault Of Glass
And ruined destiny 2 with sunsetting and year 1
@@Waffles19SD the concept of sunsetting was fine it was just implemented in a horrible way
@@gameipedia I don’t think the concept of sunsetting is okay, they literally took away content everyone paid for, I don’t understand how people like you excuse this
There’s a reason they spent years in pre court proceedings over this and even had to pay a fine due to it
@@Waffles19SD MMOs sunset your gear every single expansion. The time frame and the lack of interesting gear to replace what was sunset is why it failed. There was no gun that was better than Recluse/Mountaintop/Anarchy when they got sunset, which made people hate losing that loadout for one that was mediocre in comparison
This is a turning point for the industry. I hope we see a bunch of small start ups like Pocket Pair and Larian made up of these laid off developers taking risks and making the games they know they want to make. The potential for an indie renosance is thick, players have proven they will spend their money on those projects.
so far the only game I've seen from cast-off Bungie employees was Concord. I'll keep it positive and say I hope _if they try this again,_ the next game succeeds and has nice art.
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx it'll be years before we see the full consequences, I just hope for a positive light at the end of a dark tunnel.
I understand what you are saying, but, maybe use a differant example other than Larian, Larian is not a small start up, they were founded in 1996 and have made quite a few games.
@@s1n1st3rs0ul many of the people laid off have been in the industry just as long, Pocket Pair even has a few games under their belt, there's a lot of experienced developers out there rn free from top heavy studios and publisher constraints. The AAA scene has cannibalized itself as it inevitably would, this is the prime real estate for a small dev team (or many) with a vision to stake its claim.
Except these ex devs have no ideas after being corporate stooges for decades. Frost giant games is a group made up of ex StarCraft devs and they’re making a game that’s just a worse looking StarCraft 2.
Old german saying: The fish always starts smelling rotten from the head
Luke joined Bungie back before Halo 3 launched. He worked on the community team.
"We don't know how much he makes."
Well, he spent $2+ million on cars and something tells me he's not spending the lionshare of his pay doing so. And they conveniently won't say how much he's made in pay and bonuses either. So it's a pretty safe assumption that he's being paid way more than he should when hundreds of people are now out of a job directly due to his actions and mismanagement. *Not that he cares, he has $2+ million worth of toys to play with. And plenty of people hoping they'll one day be in such a position to excuse away the ridiculousness and enable it to continue to happen.*
He also sold the company to Sony for $3.6 billion in 2022. That's where he got $2.3 million for classic cars
@@zztzgza The CEO did not solely own the company - as they often don't, especially when the company has changed hands already like Bungie had - so no, he didn't.
Also, if you want to bring that up, in 2022 $1.2 billion was literally paid directly to Bungie (the company) for employee retention and yet here we are. Even going by the $70,000 estimate and accounting for benefits for all of their employees, that's literally runway for 5+ years for everyone.
So how do you think that got massively squandered to where they're laying people off two years later? By the company that brought in $400+ million in revenue in 2023 when they couldn't possibly have an operating budget north of $200 million by Thor's own estimations? I can certainly hazard a guess...
Exactly. Sure, we don't know exactly where the money for those cars came from. And he's entitled to use his own money how he wishes. But not one would be pissed about his cars if he was out of a job along with those 220 people. Instead, he's avoiding the consequences of his own actions, and is obviously in very good financial shape, while other people are being put in poorer financial situations as a consequence of his poor decisions.
@@zztzgzathat’s not how public companies work btw
So is he just supposed to fork over his savings to save jobs of people sony was going to axe no matter what they did?
That makes no sense
The writing should've been on the wall years ago when all the gaming companies started hiring massive amounts of people for covid. It's like they expected covid lockdowns to be a permanent thing, and people just staying home playing all day. You shouldn't be able to fire people cause the higher-ups over estimated and hired too many damn people.
Well some of those devs could become classic car mechanics! /s
big oof
I am personally a motorhead and love cars/bikes. For me I have no problem with him purchasing all of the cars etc. The problem is that as a CEO optics really fucking matter. I know people say no they do not but they really do. Especially when your the figure head and have consistently ran the company into the ground. Bungie as a whole has been over extending consistently for years. This is the culmination of poor leadership and unfortunately the outcome is that people have lost their jobs. I think the biggest problem is that people are fucking pissed is that the management will never be held accountable and these type of situations will continue to happen for the foreseeable future.
Leadership failing says it all. Agreed.
Rami is the kind of guy who is probably never satisfied
I thought it was clear that the cars didn't necessarily have any connection with the layoffs.
Considering they were bought before the layoffs… and he used his own money… anyone that doesn’t get caught in rage bait would know that
What piratesoftware was trying to say, how it is ineffective to contrast a CEOs pay with the recent layoffs, is that it is what the company would ideally like for one person be the scapegoat for the problem than blaming the system.
Ok... yall are misinformed. He said he was leaving months ago.
WE dont know the CEO's are mismanaging the money...but we know they are, as well as buying the expensive cars and holidays with that money. I mean the perfect example was the ex Activision dude, the size of his bonus at the end of the one year could have easily kept many employees in a job, thats not even mentioning the size of his salary every month for doing what...empty promises, threats and stupid tewwts clearly showcasing his lack of empathy toward the consumers?
we shit on Gearbox and valve alot but both randy and gabe clearly like to get involved in their day to day activities and thats why their products are still good.
Gearbox deserves to get shat on, Pitchford is a hack fuck. Valve doesn't, gaben is the goat. Get outta here.
> glances at the Borderlands movie.
You sure about that chief?
@@JohnDoe-ji5cr I don't think gearbox had a lot to do with the borderlands movie. Aside from getting a bag for selling the rights to it. And even then Take Two own the IP, not gearbox.
@@jamescaldow5608
Damn, brother. You could catch bullets too with that kind of deflecting skills.
I would say Valve yes, Gearbox no. Also, Valve is a private company which is a huge deal. You are not a slave to a horde of investors.
Luke Smith was not relevant anymore for Destiny 2, he had nothing to do with that game for years.
He was overseeing the other media projects like TV shows and Films.
But tbh, good that he is gone, he was responsible for destiny 2 year 1 which nearly killed the game and for sunsetting and content vaulting which damaged the games reputation in a major way.
Funny that many of the community now miss him and doom post because he is gone while most of them hated on him and wanted him gone before
That's how it's been each time bungie has laid people off, the community was very vocal about how they hate bungie for this or hate bungie for that and want those people out of there, then when bungie gets rid of said people, everyone is surprised.
This is not me saying they *should* have been laid off, but people need to stop being surprised when they constantly shit on and threaten devs.
@@s1n1st3rs0ul Yeah idk bout that one, the community have been shitting on the management, not the devs, almost unanimously since lightfall. Nobody has ever been happy about devs getting laid off
@@s1n1st3rs0ul Bungie stole content from me that I paid for. They also delete resources I've collected for years. They don't respect me. They are digital thieves. I don't have anyone specific to blame other than Bungie. Consequently, I want Bungie to fail utterly and completely. The layoffs don't change how I feel.
Yeah I don't miss him, he insulted the player base when he quoted "We could make anything and the players will throw cash at the screen". Like fuck no, make quality content and we will pay for it. Don't give us bad content
@@jackburkel4119luke literally killed destiny 2 before it even got going.
Year 1?
Sunsetting?
Calling the player base stupid and will just give them money for shit content. Obviously he was wrong. Good riddance
nice. Interesting conversation, so far.
They should have canceled or froze these incubation projects after the first round of layoffs AT THE LATEST. Like if bungie leadership are too stupid to realize 1 game can't simultaneously sustain itself and 3+ other games all at once then there is no excuse to not learn that lesson after the FIRST round of layoffs
Assuming at least a quarter of those redundancies were in QA, no way anyone is paid 70k in test 🤣🤣🤣
Rami wanting the optics to matter of car buying CEO > actual problem at bungie like its leadership, project's, and live service game
It is not wanting to make optics matter. They do. All of the points matter just it is not the biggest issue.
I'm only here to listen to what pirate software has to say
None of these things are new in the games industry. I often wonder where the surprise comes from.
Lay offs are "normal" in the game industry in The sense of seasonal hires being let go at the end of a project, veterans/tenured being shifted to other departments or another project and those showing aptitude/loyalty/desperation and survived the lay offs being tasked with doing post release maintenance or a sequel based on the bones of the first game. It's how we got shovelware sequels quickly back in the day.
But today's industry.is so broke that EVERYONE gets laid off regardless of tenure/position/skill/clout. That's the part where people in the know are surprised about. It's not normal.
The surprise comes from people's perception being skewed and them thinking that a company making a 10 year-old live service game couldn't possibly be losing money.
@@zztzgzaIt's pretty difficult to increase profits for your live service game when your content drops are notoriously hit-or-comeplete-miss & your game has arguably the worst new player experience/on-boarding in the industry AND like 70% of the story content has been removed from the game anyway.
@@YetiCoolBrotherI quit destiny 2 years ago and tried to rejoin and frankly it’s just to much fucking work. I went through lightfall (because it was 10$) and I just couldn’t be fucked to do the grind anymore. I already have a 9 to 5 if I’m gonna do anything after work the last thing I want to do is more work.
Microsoft will beat the hell out of bungie but give special treatment to 343 how can a company have 9 flops in a row and still exist ? Seriously how are those people even still in the industry
Wow
Trello was great until JWZ sold it to Atlassian.
Luke Smith is NOT A LOSS. Dude blined bullshit for the first half life cycle of destiny 2. We can contribute that unflattering idealists as the main cause for why so many vets left during destiny 2. Experienced yes, Very even. Knows what players want nah. Dude was hand over fisting changes early days of Des 2.
Rami, you think too highly of the workforce. I worked with a lot of people, those who truly is exceptional, are like myth, and legend. I myself consider to be decent developer, but there are a lot of others who are taking on jobs that they are not qualified to begin with.
Kudos to Thor for being reasonable on the $2 million car story. Rami is just looking for some rant bait but truthfully nobody knows enough about that story to say anything meaningful about it.
I wont let Bungie get away with this. Everyone needs to report them to the FCC for their ToS violating Unconscionability so we can start a class action for them removing Forsaken, which is a part of the core story. Which doesnt even last 10 years it was more like 5 if we go by Bungie saying the new light and dark saga starts with Shadowkeep.
Idc if im the only one trying to fight but i could use some help fighting anti consumer practices.
Pirate software is missing the point that where is the accountability for the CEO? Like how do you not see what Iwata did when the Wii U happened and ask why don’t other CEOs do the same? Instead it’s like just taken as normal that only rank and file should suffer consequences.
You don’t want your favorite companies to be ran like Nintendo or any Japanese global company at that fact
Learn what those companies really do. They aren’t the saints you think they are
omg kids are so dumb in this comment section
Envy is tiresome
Trying to dismiss every criticism of the wealthy as envy is far more tiresome, and those who do it should realize they are deluding themselves.
Rami should change his name to Rami Doomenglum
It's almost ironic that Thor is in this discussion. His philosophy, "go make games," is a big part of the problem companies like Bungie are suffering. Great games are coming from solo devs, without the $60-$70 price tag. Then consider that a lot of talent for these big companies is very specialized, and they're amazing at that one thing. I don't know... Those jobs are great, but now more than ever there's no long term security.
???? What? That's some reaching you're making right there. Indie devs are far from the problem here, this osnentirely the fault of top management at bungie. Incentivizing people to make games people will love isn't part of the problem
@@gooeymon8146 it's part of the problem for Bungie. You're confusing "problem for Bungie" with "problem for everyone" I think. It's honestly a good thing for gaming in general that indie devs are becoming competitive. It's just bad for slum lords like Bungie.
@@terryjophlin But its not bad, if management had made the right decisions and not try to start 3 different projects + all the content for destiny and marathon. The success of indie games like helldivers, lethal company, undertale, should be a calling card to 3A studios of what gamers actually want so they can change their strategy. But they dkon't. Also the issue here is also the lack of quality for recent 3A releases. If a 3A game like suicide squad was actually good and it did what players wanted it would sell more than indie games. So I dont believe the success at indie games is bad for 3A
@@gooeymon8146 you're not wrong about bad management decisions. The substance of the conversation is that Bungie had to lay off a couple hundred employees. Those employees should not have been hired in the first place. They were hired to facilitate all those projects and whatnot. I'm not really disagreeing with you there. You essentially restated my point, though, even if you see it through a different lens. The success of those indie games showed players an alternative. I can enjoy 2-4 great indie games for the price of a single AAA game. Why is that? The indie games give me what I want as a player. Good story, interesting mechanics, fun gameplay. The AAA game is so expensive because it requires 5-10x as many devs, making the game as 'stunning' as possible even if it is basically devoid of meaningful content. Then, as an average player, I'll never see 'stunning' in those games unless I watch it on UA-cam, because I don't have the latest CPU/GPU. Give me Kenshi, Undertale, Stardew Valley, Dwarf Fortress... The list of indie games that are hands-down better than anything AAA has given us in the last 5 years is no joke.
It is kinda like the French Bulldog. They've been bred and bred and bred for those short noses. The same breeding ruined their sinus cavities so that they can barely breathe. They snore when they are awake. But to the French Bulldog, that's just life. They've never known anything different. We were the French Bulldog. Indie games have shown us it is possible to breathe. How much better off would all of AAA be if we had never been shown that?
Dude, it's like saying "the artisan furniture market is a problem for IKEA, how dare you take those jobs from them". Trying to implicate Thor in that is just wrong, please take your tinfoil hat off, you look ridiculous.
Big games do employ a lot of specialized talent, yes, but what they produce is an entirely different beast to what indies are doing. These jobs are entirely uncoupled from each other. Bungie didn't loose employees because of a "go make games" attitude, but because of bad management of company resources. They thought they're invincible and overreached.
Well, maybe the developers should have done a better job making the game.
The Final Shape was a buggy mess that has not retained players.
If the game sold better, this would not have happened.
Additionally, hiring based on box ticking and not merit, got them in this situation.
The industry is in a corrective period, nothing more.
There are also a lot of just shit coders out there, occupying these jobs and it takes time for corporate bureaucracy to filter them out.
Reminder: The CEO structure of the West has led to the largest boom in videogame history. The vast majority of the most successful game companies are from companies with high paid CEO's. None of these podcasters brought up that fact.
And every boom has a bust. The ceo structure is a terrible way to run a company.
You’re so full of shit dude. Trickle
Down business doesn’t work. The pigs gets fat and rarely help with shit. Stop clutching your pearls
@@zztzgza Exactly, and these CEOs are not worth the money that is being spent on them, no employee should be worth that much.
@@zztzgza I don't know. The last 30+ years of videogames in the west has been pretty awesome in terms of growth. No one wants to pay CEOs all that money. They do it because it works.
@@bigbox1431my guy. Bungie is currently being absorbed because of its CEO’s incompetence. You can point to random whatever’s about videogame booms (which have been followed by the most anti-consumer practices we’ve seen in a long time mind you) but that doesn’t change bungie’s current state.
The cars thing is a non-issue. An employee was having a conversation with Pete and was saying how they just got their pro racing license. Pete offered the person an invitation to come see his cars. A 3rd person who was nearby (one who lost their job) also got invited because they were part of the discussion. The biggest story of the layoffs isn't being addressed. Sony is kicking the woke out of Bungie after repeatedly warning them to or they were going to have to step in. They have been bleeding money for years because of DEI and politics that have nothing to do with games being Bungie's focus instead of games. The people let go were majority useless management positions and low performers who were on notice for months. Bungie when at MS made the franchise games with 100 less people then they have now. Full games. With year 2000 technology.
Except when they fire their figure heads who gave us iconic Destiny content such as Michael Salvatori who worked on the OST for Destiny which has been legendary. They fire their communications directors and QA team who ensures that the latest patches work. This past week alone was the worst patch in the games history, so many things are broken due to them firing people. Not everyone who was fired was in a useless position.
This is such an unhinged and ridiculous comment that I'm not sure where to start to address the numerous faults and straight up propaganda 😂
Bungie also had more managers then programmers😮