At least the studio’s are keeping their IP’s, but this is basically going to kill the value of Gamepass. And the genius plan to “help” is to churn out more Elder Scrolls/Fallout games
Because that’s worked ever so well for Ubisoft.
Anyhow, this can all be laid at the feet of the LLM Bubble, because MS has gone whole hog on it and gotten deep in debt buying up LLM GPU’s and trying to rapid build data centres. And since the suits are incapable of thinking in the long term or bother with history, anything that doesn’t make “enough” money is going to be sacrificed on the altar of stupidity that is the Bubble.
Does sound like all but Arkane are sorted funding wise, though in Arkane’s case they’re doing a worker’s council thing and will likely be okay. Which is a ray of light in these dark times, because it says there’s some smart investors out there who understand the fact games do make a decent return on investment. Or even better, also want to see new art made. And of course are smart enough to see the LLM Bubble is a bubble.
Apparently most of those fired were coders and programmers, i.e. id Tech engine ones, because MS think Unreal is totes going to save their arses. Hint, it wont. And it’s probably more expensive to use UE due to licencing than for id Tech to be used by the studios that use it.
Never mind even DOOM: The Dark Ages runs like a greased whippet if you knock down the RT settings. Though TDA’s should have never gone for full RT, because consoles don’t handle it that well and even high end GPU’s still get a big performance hit. Anyhow, this is going to be a shitshow, because UE5.0 is still badly optimised and prone to shader compilation issues screwing with performance that drives much of the grumping from players.
Oh and it didn’t help TDA’s sales via releasing it on Gamepass, nor did id fucking over Mick Gordon with Doom: Eternal’s OST. Which happen because a certain schmuck got irrationally upset over Mick’s music becoming so intertwinned with Doom’s feel.
Plus I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the drivers of this is the fact UE 6.0 is going to have LLM slop integration, which MS’s board likely seem as totes useful, when it’ll be a total shitshow instead. Because LLM’s “write” shit code and can’t art either, despite eating all the art humanity’s ever produced.
Lastly, it has become clear that this meme must be deployed:
