Publishers Are Getting What They Deserve
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- Опубліковано 16 вер 2024
- Warner Bros messed up, but Rocksteady are set to suffer. Nacon, publisher of the legendary Lord of the Rings: Gollum, has a complete mess on it's hands, and much more.
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Stop cursing.
"If we give start treating some of you with respect these other peasants may start getting some ideas!" Said Nacon in France, the place were peasants are always getting ideas since 1685.
"Let them eat cake" - Nacon executives, 2024 (probably)
If Nacon truly think they can beat a french worker strike, they're in for a wild ride
"they wouldnt burn down paris, would they?"
"Hold our croissant."
@@Killer2Croc Macron did, unfortunately.
@@UmbraFaux That's debatable, and Macron got enough shit going on, he will not give a single fuck. So yeah...
French 🏳️
They publish for a shit ton of devs. They could probably dissolve the studio and remake a new one while they still get operational revenue from their published titles
"Let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything tee hee hee."
I have full confidence that the industry will hold the line and continue to not learn anything.
@@octavianpopescu4776 i also have full confidence in 9 out of ten people wont learn anything aswell and still support our AAA overlords
It's all fun and games unless you dedicate your career to making games... and to be honest, this just sounds exactly as every single product I ever helped to push over the finish line 😥F
@@octavianpopescu4776 as long as the ESG/DEI funding is available this will continue. Every loss is just a tax write off.
Leave the democrats alone, they’re in on the joke, they are laughing at themselves
If we are going into an age where games are made by smaller indie dev groups or made by one person instead of these big bloated companies that I'm all for it
Yeah i have no problems waiting a few years for a superb and un-corrupted masterpiece. Done it multiple times already with elden ring, armored core 6, black myth, ace combat etc.
We already are in that age.
But than again, wouldn't these indie studios will later get to become a big company's at some point? It's an endless cycle if big company's always going to disapoint while indie's don't have anything to lose and win, wich once more will lead to becoming a big company?
I would argue that the shift began when Sega made its jump to Steam around 2016. We started to see many indie games start popping up since then. It's just that gaming news are drown out by major publishers when these smaller games don't have a marketing team or budget at all
@@somesheesht they would get bought by big companies. More about company ethics. FromSoftware is triple AAA but due to being a private company and having long tenured management, they still release the kinds of games people want to see
A game called "Greedfall" falling due to greed... you cant make this up
First game was actually half decent.
we were all like "we want smaller teams not driven by ideology" then when they start laying off the people making the games bad you say "oh look its greed"? i dont get it you do know its not the publishers that write the tripe right?
The problem with half decent is the half part.
@@SpicyFiur yeah, a bit janky but was rather enjoyable as a AA game.
It was a decent game if bare bones for what it was. My guess is it would have been amazing if not for exec interference.
It cost like 100 million too support the CEOs and the stockholders. So any games that take more then a year to develop can never make any profits, and so they blame the employees.
To be fair, they blame us too.
This guy gets it.
Im a software dev, when i was searching for my first job, i got an offer in game dev for 600 PLN a month. Thats 1/4th of minimal pay here, so it was shady. The other IT offers began with +3000 PLN upwards. During the interview the recruiter/ceo focused on proving me that im incompetent. It was part of his salary negotiation strategy. I told him the offer is laughable and left. I dont understand why game dev people accept such treatment, while having competences that are highly desired on the job market.
@@mac19999x your exactly right, you have a marketable skill and so can to an extent, determine your salaries. With gaming development you can do it at home on a pc and do any number of other jobs to pay bills, just doing it out of a passion and to build your own studio from the ground up. Instead of working for a useless baseless company you could rise to become their largest competitor and they pretty much can’t do anything to stop you.
Probably because those people have some illusion that working for a game dev is awesome and cool. There was some coverage this channel had earlier in the year on Blizzard about layoffs, and there was this software engineer making six figures (in the US). He left his job to take a low-level, underpaid job at Blizzard because it's Blizzard. Not sure what that guy was smoking when he thought that was a wonderful idea.
@@XBluDiamondX In the late '90s/early 2000s? I could actually understand that. There was a point where they WERE apparently a great place to work, and they made nothing but huge successes. Now? I'd never recommend anyone try to become a game dev in the current market, and DEFINITELY not for one of the big AAA companies. Blizzard is a shell of what it used to be, like most of them.
@@XBluDiamondX This is true, but also remember that game developers are artists. Many developers want to create so bad that they will take a low pay if it means they finally get any amount of money for their hard work.
Many of these publishers are just taking advantage of the passion game developers have for their craft.
@@mac19999x 600 PLN a month?! What the fuck
How DARE you question the benevolent AAA lords!
They're going to kidnap us and force us to play Concord.
Many lords have failed. We havent hada great complete product since 2010. Waky up Joe
arent they quadruple-a nowadays?
@@JNJNRobin1337 that was skull and bones, emphasis on the "was"
@@galactica_2 werent there other AAAA titles, not just skullbone?
“Buy the game to support the developers.” When you buy a game, unless it’s an indie. You NEVER support the developers. You support their work. You love what they made. But that money doesn’t go to the developers. It doesn’t trickle down to them. It never does. The sooner you all realize that the better games we can all have. Rocksteady, CDPR, Bioware. The games you loved are not made by the same people anymore. People get fired. They move on. Or they stop making games altogether because it has no sustainability for them. These people love what they do and that’s why this stick around despite everything. But love doesn’t pay the bills or keep your family afloat. So we lose talent forever. These lay offs are gonna get worse. Not better. Not unless people unionize and support each other and stop pretending that the higher ups work for any of the money that they make. People MAKE the games. They deserve most of that cut.
Yeah, but if the company has no money they can't pay their employees in the future. We know they get a salary lol we're not 5
@@doommaker4000 The shareholders can be replaced, make shares solely the result of being employed in the company. Without those leeches a lot of money is freed up.
No that's completely wrong.
Its true that its very rare for us to get a cut of the royalties, though we do sometimes get bonuses. But if customers don't buy the games then we don't get new projects and we don't get paid.
Usually investors or publishers are paying us out of pocket to develop the games, for years, before they finally maybe make their money back.
@@maledwarfwarrior The entire point of having shares is to pull in investment from the outside. If you limit the shares only to the staff then all you're asking is for the staff to give their savings to the company so it can give it back to them as their salary. That makes no sense. Its actually worse than just working for free until royalties because they would be losing money through the pointless transactions.
Shareholders do and should get a say in the running of the company since they're the ones putting their money on the line.
However if the game bombs we developers get paid either way, maybe we lose our jobs but we go and apply for new ones.
But the investors lose all their money. That's the nature of gambling.
yes but to get jobs in the future the game they worked on has to do well if nobody nought there game they wont be making games anymore, unless your JUST talking about when people say that as a excuse to buy products from a company that has completely changed and if so id add Rockstar, Bethesda and Overkill Software oh and Volition before they failed themselves out of existence
Always remember .. PC Gamer gave Gollum a 64/100 and spacemarine 2 a 60/100 .. never forget and let it sink in , gollum must be a hell of a game
Sink never was outside in those cases
Not to give any credit to gollum, but space marine 2 doesn't look like a good game either. It just looks like a minor variation to the first game. I have no idea why everyone is so excited about a game that looks so uninspired.
Paid reviews wont save any game anymore.
Nor massive marketing.
At this point its more waste of money
@@searchengine27I think the point is they gave gollum such a high review….
@@searchengine27 It's more the fact that if Space Marine 2 really IS a 60/100...Gollum DEFINITELY isn't a 64. More like a 14 if I'm being generous.
I'm sure someone has already answered this question, but yes, unions in the US are supposed to be protected from employer retaliation. Does that stop companies from illegally firing union workers for simply belonging to the union? No. Does this lead to lots of lawsuits and settlements? Yes.
The main issue is unions are somewhat stopping the meritocracy from working. Being unable to fire union staff is an issue if they aren't performing or are causing problems. A union membership should not make you immune to layoffs, anymore than it should allow you to set company policy or direction!
The problem is most unions are rammed full of clueless activists that never left the college dorms and genuinely think being in a union makes them untouchable and they will demand things without understanding the reality of the situation, threatening to strike if their unreasonable demands aren't met.
This culture of self defeating activism has given companies the excuse to fire their unionised staff first because it's cheaper and easier to fire them and settle instead of leaving them on staff to cause further disruption and loss.
@@joncarter3761 A very true observation. Unions are not the white knight who protects the workers. They are just as greedy and corrupt as the companies.
@@joncarter3761 Me when I lie
@@joncarter3761 Yeah, unions aren't perfect. At all.
But even if they're only the lesser of two evils, they're still an evil that wouldn't exist AT ALL if the collective world of business management weren't so horrible in the first place. Even when unions are at their best, they're still extra complication, bureaucracy, meetings, dues, and other hassles. Do you think anyone WANTS to deal with that? Of course not. But workers are forced into all that because the alternative of living purely at the whims of management that cares about nothing but next quarters numbers eternally going up at any human cost is even worse. Their very continued existence, despite being so flawed, proves they're needed.
So yeah, unions screw up, get corrupt, and sometimes shield people who have no business being shielded. No argument there. But I'll still support unions over management so long as management is even worse by far.
@@joncarter3761 thanks for letting us know that you know nothing about unions. As a skilled tradesperson, I recognize your ignorance.
The games industry is on fire... smeary, pixelated fire...
$20 for HD fire
And its a good thing.
Most developers have been using their customers as beta testers for years. See every single Ubisoft game for reference.
Heck Bethesda use them as QA and bug fixers.
One thing bosses always forget is that industrial action, such as strikes and work-to-rule, is done by people who ultimately like the job and want to stay, but under better terms. The alternative is for them to quit, which leaves the bosses _in a much fucking worse position._
For corporations a strike hits much harder than that because most of their financial strength is tied up in the speculative value of the comoany not from what is actually in their bank account. Investors will dump shares if they see that workers have no confidence in an unreleased product, that devalues the company as a whole thereby making it harder for them to go begging for loans, negotiating reduced interest rates or asking for extensions on deadlines for debts due.
Hopefully this hits them so hard that the existing senior management "volunteers" to retire or step down like we saw happen with the Unity Engine fiasco earlier this year.
I think as an industry early access needs to go away as a label atleast if you have to pay for that access.
If you are selling something for money it should count as a full release full stop.
If you sell advance playtime like Star wars outlaws, thats not early access or anything, that is just the games official release now.
It's tricky because in some cases like Baldur's Gate 3 or Hades, early access helped because those devs really listened to player feedback. That allowed for amazing and universally loved games to be released at launch.
Sadly, those examples are few and far between. But at least there's proof that it can work under the right circumstances.
@@AidenAlias I agree when it comes to game like Star Wars: Outlaws like you said, because they’re literally just locking the game for a few days for the premium edition owners, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing in the way games live Valheim or Baldur’s Gate 3 do it where they take feedback from players and take what they want into consideration for the full game. That’s just my opinion.
@@LeonValenti Yep, same was done for Divinity: Original Sin 2, also made by Larian.
@@LeonValentiSame with Subnautica. That game would have been nowhere near the lightning in a bottle that it is today (in my opinion) without the early access model.
I feel like Early Access should be like a week, or a month, so it can be used for what Early Access was always meant to do: preliminary testing. If you're selling "early access" by 3 days, you're just charging extra for people who want to play the game on its actual release date instead of 3 days later, and you aren't likely to get enough data or have the time to fix any problems found in that EA time.
8:19 - *_Product quality_* hasnt been very high priority with a lot of mainstream AAA publishers in the last 10-15 years. Not when people are willing to pay $$$ for early _early_ access and do all the QA work for them. We are well into that scenario where games are being released half baked regardless of how bad a state they are in.
"Product quality will suffer" lmao what product quality?? 😆
Why would you need an in-house QA team when you can just charge extra for early access? Lots of suckers gobble it up. Sure they'll complain but you already have their money.
And then just cancel the game before release.
Charge them $120 to play in the alpha like Ashes of Creation is doing.
gamers are good at testing / breaking games, but do you think they can be made to write long, detailed bug reports? that's a _bit_ beyond what you can convince people to do without paying them.
Gamers aren't stupid either they write bug reports for free if u read comments and Reddit more detail than some QA testers also it better to stress test with Alfa unless Ur tripleA @@J1428753
@trucid2 $130 for Star Wars: Outlaws. Then the day 1 patch force deletes all the Early access payer's save files, lmfao
That is awful sacking someone on paternity leave. That illegal
The big publishers have been wilfully incompetent for years now, they deserve the failures they reap, it's just unfortunate that the devs have to suffer for it.
why do you not want rocksteady to get shutdown? its literally not even the same company anymore not a single dev from he batman days is there so why is a company thats only made trash working on something new a good thing? so they can infect it?
Being in any way pro-union is protected from employer discrimination under federal law here in the U.S. However, it's notoriously difficult to enforce because you have to prove what the company is thinking and they might only be taking action when they've got some other reason they can present as their rationale.
Number of Days since Employees of an Industry(ies)/Company(ies)/Organization(s) from France went on Strike for entirely reasonable issues that were suppressed by the Higher Ups for some petty reason: [ 0 ]
Also, for a country historically known for killing or booting out their leaders, the higher ups there sure are comfortable with mistreating their workers...
Because the system was been redesigned to prevent any upheaval.
@@Sypitz Tell that to the French causing chaos on the streets every week.
@@pablotomasllodra4423 oh. I thought we were talking about the states
Based. The more teams that do this the better.
At this rate people will be fired before they are hired
"We'll get an AI* to do it!"
*ChatGPT Wrapper
Rocksteady will NEVER make another hit game. They are Rocksteady in name only now, there is basically no-one left there who worked on the Arkham games.
Non unionized work being done by teams of 90 feels like a mindset that should have stayed in the workhouses. Love the content always Michael and team 🙏🏻
IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT VISIONS OF MANA: While the studio that made Visions of Mana has shut down, they are not THE Mana studio. The makers of the Trials of Mana remake are Xeen and they're still around and doing the Romancing SaGa 2 remake and the main internal Mana staff are still around, so supporting the game DOES mean SOMETHING.
something~
that money goes towards publishers. Devs make the same money no matter what the result. The CEOs of Xeen make more money based on sales, I guess.
Anyway, the system is rigged.
That may be true... but the Visions of Mana world design and art direction is head and shoulders above that of Trials, and I'm saying that a big fan of the original Trials gameplay and music. Some real talent was jettisoned here
Game delays will become a real norm as more studios join a union. Management won't be able to force "crunch time" on them and I can just imagine walkouts with issues where the union and management/top brass disagreements (pay, benefits, etc) that could easily make lengthy delays. If developers were treated better it may not have come to this. Be interesting to see how this plays out.
I'd rather have delayed game releases than abused workers. The people who make these games deserve to be treated better and that's important to the health of game development in the long term.
Thing is... crunch doesn't work. We have research in the industry and without that shows as such. Crunch is brute forcing a solution. And extended crunch? Studios are actively hurting the very talent and knowledge to make what they make.
And on the people level, crunch may sound great, perhaps because of misplaced passion or what not. But you can only crunch through so many holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and what not before you realize a decade has past and your kid has become a teenager without you noticing, or you haven't had the time to make friends and find a partner, that you've missed out on life outside of work.
I'm not sure that the impact will be as dramatic as all that. It will, certainly, make the "HQ has committed to a Q3 release; everyone is chained to their desks until we have something just functional enough to receive a 20GB day 1 patch that we can shove out the door in Q3" scenario harder to pull off.
However, it's much less clear that it will actually increase the amount of time required to go from concept to actually working game or decrease the accuracy of predicted dev time: actually striking(as opposed to just having the fact that you could strike taken seriously when you raise a concern or make a request) isn't anyone's first choice; and conditions that encourage the retention of experienced people (especially in roles where management prefers to believe that they're just fungible temps, like QA) and reduce the risk of reprisals for being the bearer of bad news are quite likely to increase the overall smoothness of the project management and surface issues that might require adjusting the timeline earlier, rather than having them concealed until they are simply too dire to paper over.
It's not like people generally go into game dev for the sweet cash money; some of the skills on the art side are less transferrable; but the dev side could almost certainly be making more if they just took a job in a really uncool industry that knows it's uncool and so needs to offer competitive pay, benefits, and work/life balance; because nobody grows up with dreams of slinging line-of-business Java for some insurance company's back office in New Jersey; so anyone inclined to make genuinely unworkable demands is likely to just leave the industry rather than wasting their time in endless industrial actions.
@fuzzyfuzzyfungus It is a multi-headed problem, yes, that needs many approaches to fully solve. But that does not mean any one part or piece of action has to be dramatic in results. It just has to help make progress. Otherwise, we risk sitting around all day trying to find perfect broad spectrum solutions that we'll never actually do or that are variable and accomplish able.
Seeing these AAA losers finally getting karma'd by their own BS is quite the site to behold.
Bro, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League only sold better than Stellar Blade because SB is confined to PS5. That's it. Let's not skew over the obvious facts
@@thronosstudios yeah I would've played SB if it was on pc
Unions in the US - I believe you're talking about "Right to Work" laws. "Currently, 26 states and Guam have enacted right-to-work laws. Labor unions still operate in those states, but workers cannot be compelled to become members as a requirement of their job."
For example, UPS is unionized. In a non right-to-work state like California, if you want to work for UPS you have to join the union (and have union dues automatically deducted from your paycheck). In a right-to-work state like Florida, you can work for UPS and decide for yourself whether you want to join the union or not.
I am so grateful that I live in a right to work state. (NC) I never did like the fact that I had to give money to a corrupt organization in order to get a job.
"Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same fucking thing... over and over again expecting... shit to change". Vaas Montenegro 2012.
Mismanagement without Sony? Come on....
I know right.
As time goes on, I think we will see more and more AA or Indie studios put out big successful games and AAA publicly traded company games fall flat. Investors want short term gains and they don't care about the long term. They don't care about the players, the games, the devs, or the QA and it's becoming more and more obvious. There are a lot of devs that have been fired from big companies probably itching to do something without having to worry about stockholders.
French Nobility -- Let them eat cake.
Nacon -- Hold my beer.
Spiders is one of my favourite companies and their Steelrising was a massive let down for me. They don't make the best games, but they have a working system that allows them to create exceptionally interesting worlds and I absolutely felt that change in their developing behaviour in Steelrising - that was, IIRC, the first title they published under Nacon.
That is sad. Really really sad.
"Does not represent the company's day to day operations"... so they're saying 50% of the company is wrong??
edit: they're not you're
Even if SS: Justice League sold better than P3: Reload, lets contextualize that a bit. Firstly, keep in mind P3 is free on Gamepass and, if you check IsThereAnyDeal, SS has sold for below $20, whereas P3 Reload has yet to dip below $40 (I recognize that this is a "dollar sales" statistic, my point is that SS has felt pressured to cut the price to make sales, whereas P3 hasn't, and will likely make new sales as the price hits new lows). And I'd guess the budget of SS (a licensed multiplayer action game meant to be a live service) is MUCH higher than P3 Reload, a remake/turn-based single-player game. Sales to date (even dollar sales) and long-term profits are very different.
winning against a remake is not really a win anyway
Is this what it looks like when our elites burn? Because honestly my gaming prospects haven't been better in years. I'm rolling in great titles from smaller studios and wouldn't even know these supposed Triple A games existed if it weren't for the sound of their flops.
Problem is the elites are barely burning while the workers in the trenches are the kindling.
"Failures to protect or hire women" Why is that even a thing? DEI---That's why. It is not up to an employer to hire a women let alone protect her...is she qualified? Does the employer need to go home with her to protect her there too? Stupid.
Going on strike in France is a national hobby, doesn't mean much on the real situation
just cram "failure to hire women" in there without any evidence. They always complain about that yet I find that real fking hard to believe. In my experience, women get hired a lot faster than I would.
They do. It's bs because everyone already knows AA and dei exists and a woman has insane power she can make one accusation and ruin someone's life.
Its legal to sack people while on paternity leave!? Wow, thats insane
I guess it only took an economic recession to get gamers to quit paying full price for the same rehashed slop. Publishers are still banking on most customers to pay $60-80 USD for franchise games that release in a “whatever” state.
"Failure to hire women."
Oh no, think of the quota. For the love of God, won't somebody think of the quota?!
Right because clearly it's just a case of all of the men who apply being more competent than all of the women who apply and there's absolutely no sexism involved here. /s
@@Nodiee1 Agreed! We should look into hiring blacks and native Americans too! Maybe someone in a wheelchair will make the game better if they were on the project! Sky's the limit!
@@Nodiee1 Games were better when it was men. Cope and deal with it. If you believe there is any sexism except in the opposite way you imagine in the modern west you are living on a completely different planet (let alone in FRANCE).
@@Nodiee1When you're trying to fill quotas, yes?
This doesn't mean there are no qualified women (past or present) in the industry. Though most of the women (and even men too) are being hired on checking socio-political boxes for quotas rather than their individual merit.
Whats that Lassie??? -Timmy fell down the well???- *Publishers bad???* Imagine my shock. I did not see any of that coming at all. Absolutely not I tell you.
Why are they always starting cuts with QA? Haven't they learned by now that rushed buggy games are costing them tons of money?!
Spiders sounds like a wonderful company to work for. They're using ALL the buzzwords. Nacon deserves them.
Unions in the US are a joke. The Regan administration basically gutted union rights and the republican party has since made unions a very dirty word in the US, so people negatively associate unions as bad things at worst, and even at best union membership is at a remarkable low which gives unions and union members less leverage. The republican party doesn't think that's far enough though, and want to go a lot further and stripping away worker rights. It's one of the reasons you see big CEO or millionaire/billionaire types all latch on to the Republicans. Because they want to make the rich richer. Even Biden catered to that nonsense when he signed an executive order ending the rail strike this year. (The workers did get a lot of what they were asking for in the end, but an executive order halting the strike is not good all the same)
So yea, unions have a lot less rights in the US than they should.
@@searchengine27 yeah in the 80s union membership was like 25% and it’s down to just 10% now. Really really happy to see people start exercising their collective bargaining rights. They’ve been getting f*cked for way too long. Hopefully signaling a larger return to union membership
I agree Unions are a joke, but for the opposite reasons you outlined. I live in a state where Unions have a tremendous amount of power and more rights than even the companies they claim to fight against.
I say because prior jobs were all unionized, and when I joined I was told I could not opt and they always took a cut out of my paycheck. Oh, but they would totally have my back because of it right?
No. Even when needed them most ob work related jobs and told them my issues they ignored me.
Oh, but say anything bad about unions you'll be labeled a corporate shill or bootlicker. As if I can't dislike both corporations and unions for virtue signaling, poor management, and corruption.
Like I'm tired of hearing corpo's bad and greedy (Yeah, no kidding.) Yet unions can do no wrong and are the de facto right solution.
Whenever a dev/publisher expects a decade long game, means it's probably going to be garbage tbh.
Not always the case there has been a lot of good MMOs and live service games like Destiny 2/PoE/Warframe haven’t been bad at all. Just publisher executives that don’t care if the product is any good. Greed is just running rampant in every industry.
@@Turn5ignal "Destiny 2"
Ahh yes, Bungie, the company who permanently removed expansion content we the players had paid for from the game and then proceeded to fuck up any sense of progression with the free to play update.
I was having fun, I had paid for the DLC because I knew I was gonna play it later. But no, they removed the DLC I had paid for, that I had never gotten the chance to play. And then they fucked up the progression in such a disruptive way I could not continue from where I left off.
Fuck Bungie.
@@Turn5ignal Destiny 2 stole content from me that we were forced to pay for, what do you mean Destiny hasn't been bad at all?
43 people complaining that they have to do 2 games.
And some 3 person developers do very good Indie games in the same time.
I don't know if there is any standard these days. Ofc Talent matters. Passion too.
Here's the thing about all this. The industry has been raising the budget for games for decades in both the indie and AAA scene, which for AAA publishers, makes every game more and more of a risk. Every AAA Game has to be a blowout nowadays for the publisher to not only recoup the costs, but justify the expense. The consumer has proven this because games have only been expected to grow in depth, complexity, scope, and playtime. On the current path of just raising the budget to try and meet these expectations, there isn't a world where AAA Games exist long term. At some point the straw will break the camel's back, and we'll see a crunch on development budgets. I guarantee it
I don't think this is quite the whole picture. People's expectations of scope, depth and scale have only really increased at this pace for AAA games. Because, after all, what else do AAA games offer? People's expectations of indie games have grown, but I feel it's been at a much slower pace, because people appreciate what's possible at a given scale and budget. The issue then is, if you're paying AAA prices, you want to get a AAA product.
@@phill8223 that's true. I agree that indie games are set to a different standard, and that isn't a bad thing, as plenty of indie games are way above AAA in my book. We're already seeing a surge in indie game purchases. It'll be interesting to see how the trend develops.
There's too much bloat in the management structure and the myth that you can suplant lack of quality with massive marketing, these thing cost MUCH and yet wont impact the final product quality.
Specially when ALL good games that where released can still be played these days, so theres a surpluss.
Sure theres live service/multiplayer current-thingy public... And chasing this audience put them where?
@@pedrojustice I agree that the whole management system for AAA studios is generally backwards and out of touch. I also think that won't change because the ones that would need to accept that change have interests in keeping themselves in the current positions. Instead, I'm expecting them to feign some level of "I don't understand what's happened, but we need to downsize" followed by massive layoffs, and reduced budgets for products. Likely we'll see live service taken to even further extremes, until either the consumer refuses to put up with it anymore, or worse
That and they are more interested in appeasing the likes of Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street for funding. Thus following ESG or rather BRIDGE standards, hiring based of "diversity" quotas more so than colorblind merit, and bloating their staff with slackivists who push the "right" socio-political messaging rather actually making a good product.
Combine that with the factors you presented and a terrible economy where folks have less disposable income and...well the industry is in a terrible place.
Union is a monopoly that sells "work labor". Monopoly is good for the people monopoly, but bad for everyone else.
Oof, this is one of the only games I've looked forward to in a while. Greedfall 1 felt like a great proof of concept--never finished it for a reason (mid-to-late game got very repetitive and tedious), but excited to see where the studio went. And this is one of the only studios around still making the sort of single-player game I like--wasn't as desperate in 2019, but the landscape feels pretty bleak in 2024. Thanks for the update, definitely have to keep an eye on this to know whether I want to support the final product.
Indie devs: are we a joke to you?
@@TheSuperappelflap I like Indie games a lot, but I've run into almost nothing that fills the 2000s to early 2010s Bioware itch, almost like the industry deleted my favorite genre. I live for book-like narratively structured party RPGs with a close over-the-shoulder view (Dragon Age Origins and KOTOR are probably tied for my favorite) and just enough in the way of character-perspective graphics to hit that immersion threshold as isometric doesn't do that for me. Greedfall wasn't perfect--too action dodge-roll for my tastes--but closer than what I've found. If you've other recommendations, would love to hear.
@@shinnyshin7792 BG3? Kingdom Come Deliverance?
@@shinnyshin7792 Not a fan of that genre, but these are my recommendations to at least check out:
Divinity: Original Sin 1/2, Baldur's Gate 3, Nier: Automata, Disco Elysium
Haven't played the below, but they are kinda in that genre:
Kenshi, Lost Odyssey, Granblue Fantasy Project Re: Link, Xenoblade Chronicles 1 Remastered
I was pretty excited for Visions of mana, but there is just no way I'm willing to give them a penny after shutting the studio that made it down like that. May have to just pick it up from a questionable website after the price goes down.
"it didn't sell bad but it didn't make it's money back"
so it sold bad
Welp this was bound to happen eventually.
I actually wasn't aware that Visions of Mana was produced by Tencent and NetEase. It's such a shame, because I like the Mana series, but now I can't play this game. I simply won't support these companies, especially now that they've closed their Japanese studio.
The problem with the games industry is you have 2 fundamental employer/employee systems currently on going. The people who make games think they are part of a team and this represents them and their resumes so they take it personally. The people who are in management see their employees as used furniture shop have no creative input in the product so they hire the cheapest thing to do the job and dump them when it goes wrong. These systems are fundamentally opposed to each other which is where all your problems stem from. And nobody is intelligent enough to fix it
People are to greedy to fix it. They know how to fix it, but it would cost them profits. So it can't be done.
"Together we bargain, alone we beg."
Striking is a heroic act and should be lauded - every positive change in labor conditions has always been won by the labor movement. Capital never has, and never will, give a single solitary fuck about how workers are treated.
"Hey boss, we're tired. We're overworked, and we're afriad it's not only harming our personal lives, but also the quality of the final product we're all contributing to."
"Tired and overworked? No you aren't. Get back to work."
What a fucked thing to say to your employees...
Ironically, developing a game called "Greedfall..." Someone's greed is going to cause a big fall...
How in the hell did Suicide Squad outsell Persona!? I get anime stuff isn't gonna appeal to everybody but Persona sold pretty dang well. So are there just that many uninformed consumers out there shelling out 70 for live service trash?
Netease pulling out really seems like knee jerk reaction to Black myth wukong
Ok a AAA studio making an early access game is ridiculous. The whole point is that smaller game devs can get a small income stream to help them finish the game, not so companies can sell unfinished garbage to us at a minor discount.
we need to stop paying CEOs the wage of 20-30 combined people
These companies never learn. We don't need a million cods or fortnites. That spot is flooded enough. We don't need half finished games either. We want quality over quantity.
Blood Bowl was on a downward spiral since Games Workshop sued Cyanide Studio over Chaos League.
Meanwhile, the indie gaming industry is thriving from all this chaos. As consumers, we have never been in a better position than we are now. Getting all these great quality titles coming from indie\AA studios. Just ignore AAA and go indie\AA, and forget AAA exists :P
This is exactly why you don't outsource production to Union studios. High cost, high risk, low quality product.
Visions of Mana has so far been one of my favorite titles this year.
Being the first game in the franchise in 15 years, you can feel that the team really cared about the story and characters.
Knowing that the team has been all but wiped out, puts a bit of a sour note on it. Its possible we end up waiting another 15 years before we see another title in the franchise.
So the incompetent devs are blaming the suits pre-emptively for why their game's gonna suck?
It is evident why their games suck when one of the first things they ask for is more woman DEI. Game is already infested
Let the AAA gaming crash continue!
Could this be a lucky escape from the absolute abomination Greedfall 2 is shaping up to be?
I really liked Greedfall, but when I heard that Greedfall 2 is a prequel, I was like "Ennh". With this news, I think I'll wait on it, and wait to see whether the workers get a fair deal here. Thanks!
Im so tired of companies releasing these games unfinished and just pushing them out the door because they want quick and easy return on investment!
I'm sick and tired of unoptimized, buggy, and soulless games that are a fraction of their original vision cause the higher-ups just care about the precious investors!
I will never accept this lazy standard!
We don't NEED ur games, its you who NEED our money and time!
There are other options for me, goodbye.
"We've investigated ourselves and found that we've done nothing wrong"
SSKTJL is the 14th best selling game of the year. Now I'm curious: Does that factor in all the copies handed out by Prime?
Nacon basically said "if we treat you with the respect you deserve, we'll have to do that for everyone! and that isnt fair for us because money!"
Complaining about not protecting women is a common tactic for enforcing DEI. Happened to blizzard and now look at the state of Blizzard.
So true. Anyone who believes all the wahmen allegations about blizzard is a fool too.
Hopefully more eastern devs keep coming up and performing like wukong. I'm so sick of all this western slop.
Just make good, fun games. That's literally it. That should be the agenda. Not a diversity checklist.
And hire good developers. The best developers. Not 'We need more women and minorities.' Do they not realize how racist and sexist that is? If it's all women, fine. If it's all men, fine. Who cares? The answer should be no one. Just the best people for the job, whomever they are. It's amazing in 2024 that it's somehow controversial to say, "Hire the best person for the job." But this DEI crap is killing the creative process.
The right to unionize is a nationally protected status. National Labor Relations Act of 1935 signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt "is a foundational statute of United States labor law that guarantees the right of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining, and take collective action such as strikes."
The last point is American workers realising unions are actually great. About time.
Formation and joining are protected legally in the US and California. The technical issue is the executive and judicial branches do not enforce those laws and often collude with corporations to prevent or attack anything related to union activity
Mismanagement? Business 101. Find a market, the bigger the better. Make a product the market wants to buy. Advertise to entice market. Make billions. If anyone at any studio does not know this, they should be working at a used car dealership, not a reputable business.
It simply didn't sell, it didn't make a profit. It sold badly. So odd to try to tip toe around that.
Of course, getting rid of the team that tells the devs if the game is good makes perfect sense
3:26 it blows my mind that someone in a position of power could be so spineless to blatantly lie about their struggles and refuse to solve any of their internal problems. Makes me wonder how fucked up they are in their personal lives.
Random Note; Blood Bowl is supposed to be the most frequently played of games workshop's tabletop games. It does not sell anywhere near as much, but, it's supposed to be less than 1:5 of the GW models sold that end being played with
I just want to add my 2 cents, given what I know about business in China. Game Science almost certainly had funding from the Chinese government. China has laws where companies over a certain size must have a representative of the CCP in them, and the government certainly knew this game could be big, so they wanted to make sure they delivered the best product possible. This game is not just a success for Game Science, but also China itself. That's something the Chinese government needs, especially since their international reputation has become worse over the years.
I don't say this to diminish Black Myth: Wukong. It looks like an amazing game and the story its based on is very popular and not well known in the west. This really is a success. Instead I'm saying this as a warning for other companies trying to replicate their success. Not many governments would back a studio like China / CCP did.
This is how good indie companies are made folks. We are seeing something being stirred up to make a new company.
Bit of a Catch-22 about whether or not to buy these games from studios that got dissolved or went on strike before their games launch.
On one hand if we boycott and limit sales, the publisher could spin that as not needed the studio and justifying dissolving them. On the other, we should tell the publishers that we want these games by buying them out of spite for their actions, incentivizing them to reestablish or reinvest in the teams that made them.
A big part, maybe the biggest part of what unions do is they communicate with the upper echelons of a company, bypassing all the various levels of management that would want to downplay problems for their own image, and thus upper management have a clearer idea of what ground floor staff need in order for a product to succeed.
So, WoW's development staff have better communication with executives, new WoW expansion succeeds. Again, correlation doesn't mean causation, but it does give food for thought.
I think the major issues right now all revolve around so many of the largest publishers and studios looking at mobile game money & gotcha game money and saying well that's the direction we need to go because that's what will make investors happy and at the same time they think that because they make AAA games they are going to make this insane breakout game because it will be fun first and gotcha second. So we are just stuck in the loop of seeing disappointing games with heavy handed micro translations and games as service models that don't work or won't last. The idea that you can make a stand out 1 play through game is no longer the goal, it's make infinite money from 1 game with some small investments each quarter.
Having had experience with game dev unions I don't really trust them anymore.
This is not to say that there aren't issues within companies especially around things like crunch, But the unions are a business of their own. If things are going well in a company then they will attempt to cause trouble and drum up dissent so that they can justify their existence and also rake in more membership fees.
They're also highly ideological, Usually headed by people who are extremely far left wing, Sometimes literal communists who fantasize about revolution and socialist dictatorship, I've been in staff meetings with them where they've said as much.
So I again, I'm not going to take their word over the company, I wouldn't be surprised if the company was pushing staff too far since its not uncommon, But I'd need to see actual evidence.
Nah you arent allowed to have any nuance on this topic since everyone puts all the blame on publishers and pretends like the devs are little angels. They arent. Especially in this example.
Kinda sounds like Geopolitics may have been a major factor behind NetEase's repugnant decision. Not a whole lot gamers could do about that.
Their employees suffer more than the leadership
On the Nacon situation, why automatically trust the union here? This is hugely slanted, it's just assumed publisher = bad in this because of a bad game, and even that story isn't exactly well researched. It sounds like these people want to work from home more (or entirely) and... for game development whether that's ideal or not depends on a lot of things. Group cohesion is one. If over half the group isn't in the union then they aren't all on the same page at all. So it's weird to talk about how the union side represents the company more. It seems like instead they are just a total mess.
I agree with avoiding games by this group, whether it's the publisher or developer. They sound potentially entitled. Now.. could there be real issues? Sure. I just am not seeing them. Nothing described clarifies things so much I strongly take one side or the other. But I don't trust the union that can't even convince the other half the development staff.
The wahhh poor women slant they took ensured my skepticism.
greed isn't the problem, quality is the problem, i don't care if they get stinkin rich if they make a good game