This is heartbreaking, and deeply, deeply fucking stupid. Because to make money in gaming you need to make games and content for them if they’re MMO’s etc. But Business Idiots have struck again and killed the very thing they need to dig themselves out of the hole they made for themselves with overspending on Bungie, all because it “looks good to the stock market”. Which should just be ignored. Because Stock Markets are irrational and frankly should not be paid attention to in the short term, never mind the yearly term. Especially when there’s a bubble present sucking up attention and financing.
Alas the rot that set in the 80’s is once again fucking things up, since Shareholder Theory of Value is treated as holy writ in Business Schools it seems T_T And the stupidity will continue until the likes of Sony, MS , EA etc end up like GE, as hollow shells of themselves feed on by the new batch that will eventually replace them.
Anyhow, guess this means our only hope for good games made with heart is the indie scene and the smarter publishers.
Case in point THQNordic seem to have got their brains back and now making new games after their period of stupidity and the offspring of Disco Elysium are committed to carrying that torch no matter thew drama. While Krafton just got a reminder of why SP games can work well with Subnautica 2. Though Dontnod seem screwed as I suspect Tencent have been manipulating the stock price to buy them up, combined with them deciding unwisely to go with Gamepass.
Fingers crossed then all these stupidly fired devs land on their feet and don’t burnout and so we see a new surge in the indie scene. Provided things don’t go completely to utter shit with the LLM Bubble burst, which the first harbingers just happened this week with stock crashes. Because the circular funding bs is finally getting noticed by the brokers.
Oh and that one day, Destiny rises again, because it’s story of light in the darkest of times deserves to go on, especially in these [REDACTED] times. And who would have though the barebones frame of Destiny 1 would turn out so massive, touching and well written?
Bungie’s being hollowed out damn it, Sony’s firing all the people who were core to making Bungie’s excellent games and particularly Destiny 2. What a shitshow. Oh and Marathon is also being hit hard. And it’s all to make Sony’s stock “go up” while removing the very people needed to help make games that will make Sony more money. Fucking disgusting bullshit. And very much not something Sony’s known for doing either, this is more an EA/Ubisoft move
Though the new head is a marketing guy and it looks like Bungie’s IP’s are going to be farmed out on the cheap for shitty mobile games. Which will make fuck all money because the mobile game scene is a garbage fire with very few making big money.
Anyhow, the schmuck at fault here is Pete Parsons, who pushed for Bungie to expand far too much and run multiple big projects to inflate Bungie’s value to publishers so he could make all the money. So may his collection of classic cars catch fire, Aiat.
And this sort of crapfest is why I’m all for worker owned companies/co-ops to help avoid this sort of greed driven self-destruction by reducing the ability for power to be concentrated like it was at Bungie etc. Because there’s now a ton of people hurt by his greed and they didn’t fucking need to be.
First problem is putting the company on the stock market. Second is indeed people who like to make money instead of own a solid company. There’s a difference. You also don’t always need to grow grow grow the company to make more more more money. I believe it’s no good for anyone (except probably the one that ends up selling said company).
Anyway, having been in one of those situations I can tell it’s stressful even for the people that didn’t get fired. And in my case it was indeed also the fault of someone higher up trying to expand too much too fast and failing.
I wouldn’t mind this I guess, but it can have other issues. A genuine person interested in making games instead of money also can be good. And I’m all for profit sharing, so everyone that contributed to the end product gets the rewards of their hard work instead of just the owners.
