Andrew says: "This is the stark contrast between their last two decades of work. The first decade was about building a foundation, forging a legacy. The last nine years have obviously seen a humongous drop-off in terms of output, and shifted their philosophy towards “quality over quantity."
EA senior staff has been investigated for sexual misconduct involving female coworkers, and these said people have been named publicly.
Aye just call Phil, i mean he somehow made Bobby Kotick's scandal disappear and gave him a few million dollar high five on the way out.
EA about to go down like Activision and then Phil saves the day saying.this is good for the industry and consolidation will help create competition. /s.
What's up with all these horny creeps. You gon be horny, fine. Just not at work take care of that shit before you go in. Rub one out if you have to. Don't be a creep at all. ESPECIALLY at work. But don't be one AT ALL.
You think deviants care where they are? Work sometimes makes it an even better situation for them because they can abuse their power.
"it seems that according to EA, given the events transpired outside of work between two adults, and the fact that once investigation has started that the alleged perpetrators didn’t do it again, the investigation is considered closed. [...] The victim still has to work with the people that harassed her."
Yep, EA is disgusting.
I mean the fact stuff happened outside of work puts EA in quite a difficult position legally. These women don't seem to have reported the matter to the police which kinda ties EA's hands on what they can do. If they don't file reports of the crimes then yeah from EA's perspective it is stuff that happened outside of work. The only exception is the guy that apparently referenced things in the slack channel for work, spending on what he said proving it may be very hard and he may well be able to get away with plausible deniability. I don't like EA and I think these people need to be dismissed but without any legal action being taken, EA can't really do much without risk of being sued themselves for unfair dismissal etc.
Former Deviation Games developers have formed a new studio at Sony Interactive Entertainment in order to work on a brand new PlayStation IP.
Well that's an awesome and very surprising turnaround. Cheers to the new studio and what they'll build!
It is not about money it is about talent.. get that talent in and they will take care of you and earn you that money
I had picked up on this before the Deviation shutdown was announced. It was pointed out that a senior manager of the team had joined PlayStation prior to the close. It was a little suspicious because from the outside in, it appeared had basically poached Deviation's talent.
Reading some of the other comments it seems this is understood to be the case.
In other news it would be wild if Sony winds up announcing a brand new internal studio.
That's..... confusing, so shut down but just reformed and same employer 🤔 sounds like pretty much what happened to Japan Studio basically just being rebranded as Asobi
It is odd one I don't know how business deals work or the law of that kind of stuff. But is it possible Sony reached out and said hey we want you apart of Sony but don't want to purchase you for what ever reason. How about use disband and we will open a studio and hire you guys type of thing. Is that even possible?
I guess the deviation team fell apart and didn't deliver good progress on what they pitched (they overhyped themselves when the team was announced)so Sony shut them down. They regrouped with a new team and a new pitch so Sony is giving them another shot.
And this time they are keeping it quiet to keep pressure down on the team. So people aren't asking everyday what deviation(or whatever the new team is called) is doing.
Edit: Also Sony never owned them. They just ended their partnership with them. Deviation decided to close on their own.
Good point. You know, i was thinking of Days Gone too. They pitch an idea to Sony for Days Gone 2 but Sony didnt like it do they scrapped the whole thing. Maybe if a good pitch came by...they'd reconsider it.
To be fair, Sony didn't shut them down. Devation was independent. Sony pulled funding on the project they were working on. As a result, they couldn't run so Devation decided to close on their own.
https://imgur.com/HhYbZDi
The management at Deviation was reportedly a problem. Sony cut their funding and when the studio layoffs began they bought the talent back up
It's probably cheaper to grab the talent than to anage a full studio as a second party.
Maybe we see the game at the PS showcase?
Good for them that they were able to work it out. Hopefully they're developing something interesting.
I think Sony is thinking long term as a replacement for Call of Duty M$ edition.
If they can pull off at least 2 more games similar to Helldivers 2 they won't have to worry about that COD deal anymore (my personal opinion, not fact)
The best thing they can do is make something old school based
The issue with COD is that it's so over the top and arcade like now where it feels more like you are relying on gimmicks and what you've unlocked rather than skill.
If they can create an old school like first person shooter where "less is more" and not a game that relies on a drip feed road map then they'll get some attention.
Paul Thurrott in a recent episode commented on the on-going Microsoft fiasco hinting at more job losses and that "there's more to come".
There won't be no more acquiring game publishers from Microsoft in the future . Xbox has to pay Microsoft back. It might take two decades to do that.
I don’t understand what you’re saying. Xbox IS microsoft so there’s no “paying back “.
And MS gross profit in 2023 was over 140 billion dollars so forget your 2 decades.
Unless you mean the money MS invested in Xbox (acquisitions included) and the time it will take for xbox as a brand to gain that money back on it’s own, then yeah, that could take a while.
The better term to use might be return on investment, xbox is simply a division of Microsoft one that MS can easily do away with if profit margins are not met. So in that regard he's right, if xbox isn't showing the expected return on investment the higher ups are expecting than it's unlikely Microsoft will acquire any other studios any time soon, especially if they are spending billions buying developers just to shut them down in the end.
Xbox is a division that they discussed shutting down but doubled down on after Gamepass was pitched.
It needs to make money at some point. Big money.
According to Statista the net income of Microsoft is about $72.4 billion dollars which is a bit lower than last year profit. That is almost as much as Activision's acquisition but I assume that would be a one off since it costs so much plus I see how their focus has been shifted to AI, thus any major future investments will probably be in that area.
“There won't be no more acquiring game publishers from Microsoft in the future”
No bro, there do be is for Microsoft not acquiring for what is now if not what it be is 😂
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Let’s be real, this is the media spinning all the acquisitions and liquidations of said developers and spinning it to make M$ the villain.
This was bound to happen, a bigger slice of pie and cut costs, when the games come they stand to make more and that’s their agenda—it was the writing on the wall when the sales went through and legally all those who approved the sale and mergers knew this would happen.
Snowflakes need to realize business is ugly and you can cry all you want but this is how capitalism works. And it works.
That said, M$ needs to steer the narrative and grab hold of all this, make their plans known, hype the hell out of all those dead IP’s they plan to revive, and be honest about the timeline. This is likely to involve mobile and IP on other consoles, and most people realize that.
The problem is this company is incapable of being transparent and seems to often want to dissuade and confuse is customer base. The lack of E3 has hurt Microsoft and I don’t think they know how to properly or effectively market their brand anymore.
There really needs to be a class action lawsuit here. You buy these companies just to put people out of jobs. And it’s not like something happened to derail their plans this WAS the plan. Microsoft has no business in this space at all.
Microsoft has been doing this for years. They simply want the IPs. Look at Nokia. Look at Skype. This time it simply expanded to games. Gaming is not as important to Microsoft’s executives as it was to the founders too. Bill Gates was willing to sell the og Xbox at a loss. Steve Balmer approved the red ring of death fiasco. This CEO isn’t really a gamer.
Maybe it's time though to put a stop to it and use a big giant like Microsoft as a huge example to the rest of these big companies.
There has to be a line drawn somewhere.
People like the FTC and the like went against Microsoft yet their Actvision deal was still allowed to go through yet look what's happened...it's not even Acitivisions studios aswell, it's Bethesdas.
You do realize this happens in ALL industries? Or are you just saying this because it is Microsoft? In any case I feel for those that are being let go but the trch industry is suffering right now.
Ninja Theory, Perfect Dark, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Wolfenstein 3, Dishonored, Prey, Doom, Quake... something tells me that bad things are going to happen to these entities under Microsoft.
ID software, the makers of Doom and Wolfenstein that have been with us since 1991 could be gone and MS will keep the IPs.
I hope some of these studios can buy their freedom from MS otherwise this is going to be even more devastating for the industry and gamers.
That's exactly what I'm worried about. I've been a fan of id since Wolfenstein 3D and I'm honestly afraid.
Toys for Bob saw the writing on the wall and bought themselves out.
Wouldn't be the first time a company did that under MS either. Bungie and Twisted Pixel did the same. Considering what just happened, I can see some other devs trying to buy themselves out too.
Won't make a difference.
The whole structure needs to be overhauled. Anyone that replaces Phil will be no different than him, Mattrick, or anyone else.
Until the company changes how they go about business, nothing will change
I just don't have any idea what they would do , they have done sooo much damage on their xbox brand, they have a show at July or June I think, but will it even matter even they show amazing games, idkn
True,
But they may as well get it over with. Whether it happens now or later, the burning is going to hit the same.
Reality is the ONE move that can alleviate a lot of this is the one move they can't make. Remove day 1 from gamepass.
No, they already did that years ago
A whole generation going by and them releasing only one new game for the entirety of it while all their other IPs go dormant didn’t clue you in?
Where have you been since 2014?
Greed has poisoned mens soul -Charlie Chaplin
Years ago, Rockstar did this. It’s a darn shame too.
I mean, as much as I personally loved GTA5’s campaign & Multiplayer as an overall package, and thought they delivered a very good multiplayer mode, I wanted some SP DLC, which would’ve made them plenty of millions alone in that itself. No doubt gamers would’ve bought, as I’ve seen from so many who’ve expressed disappointment from it not having happened. But what can you do? Rockstar see many are just buying to darn “Shark cards” and the company’s made so much money its absolutely sickening.
Now, looking at Rockstar’s quality of games, I do believe they’re still at the top tier in the industry, no doubt about it. Their production values, work, story, and gameplay (yes I said gameplay) for me was very good/solid in RDR2. I loved the realistic approach and slowness of everything pretty much in the game, although I know many didn’t, which I do understand and that’s fair. But its a shame their focus on GTA5’s online has driven them to shift focus to not online putting so much focus on that which takes away from their other IPs like Max Payne, Bully, Manhunt and so on, but only getting one game per the last 2 generations from them.
I sure do hope the PS5 will be a real change for Rockstar to bring out more than one game (not remastered GTA5 for PS5/Xbox series X) but multiple IPs this console generation. I won’t hold my breath tho.