Aaron Keller has recently revealed the team's vision behind Overwatch; how the PvE mode was meant to be a step toward an Overwatch MMO.
After laying off numerous employees, Tim Sweeney, the company’s founder and CEO, sent an email about the situation. The 52-year-old businessman clarified why the layoffs happened and even shed some light on the future of Fortnite.
Good on them doing this at least.
“we’re offering a severance package that includes six months base pay and in the US/Canada/Brazil six months of Epic-paid healthcare. We’re offering to accelerate people’s stock option vesting schedule through the end of 2024 and are giving two additional years from today to exercise the options. In the US we’re also offering to vest any unearned profit sharing from their 401k. And we’ll provide benefits including career transition services and visa support where we can.”
Would be "too much" for us, but probably it's "not enough" for the greedy bastard...
Epic makes way too much money to have to lay people off of the spent that money smartly. Tim wasted money on exclusives for their store when it could have gone to paychecks for people.
Epic put all their eggs in one basket with fortnite, they should have continued with the development of unreal tournament and got that game going as an arena shooter that's free to play with a huge cosmetic cash shop.
But your CEO knows what their doing.... laying off people so the board doesn't see exactly how much you stuck. The usual playbook.
Jim Ryan oversaw the successful launch of the PlayStation 5. His four-year tenure was also marred by several flubs.
I understand why Sony is trying to develop gaas titles as even if only 1 or 2 are a hit that means a nice stream of revenue for them and a foundation for further gaas games to build on. Their single player games sell great but with gaming budgets getting bigger and bigger the more the games need to sell. So if they develop gaas games and get a hit that will help migrate some of the cost.
Bye Jim. You won’t be missed.
“But over the last two years, Ryan has overseen a PlayStation shift toward “games as a service,” a popular industry buzzword referring to video games, usually multiplayer, that can be monetized over long periods of time. It’s been an uncomfortable pivot for some of Sony’s studios, which have spent the last decade building out teams of experienced developers to make big, cinematic adventure games that are played solo."
So Blizzard is taking away from people that already put money into the game in order to facilitate their next game? Scum.
Who the f*** wants an Overwatch MMO
If done right, it would be a massive mmo.
It's Activision, don't think there's a right.
How about we talk about the outright lie/manipulation into releasing OW 2 with pve as the core missing piece when you knew beforehand that you benched it last yr.
Illegal to Lie to Investors*
Just general practice to lie to your fanbase*
That's no excuse.
They gave people the sense that overwatch 1 closing was in part BECAUSE of the PVE mode overwatch 2 was meant to get. So they end a game people paid for, pivot to a f2p, then take away the biggest reason for said pivot. All with the explaination of "it's for an mmo".
But as usual, enough people will keep buying and thus predatory companies will continue their ways.