Following the firing of twelve QA testers, Raven Software team members plan a walkout in solidarity. The team shared a statement with details
An independent UK developer says it’s been forced to announce and postpone its game on the same day, and lay off more than half of its staff, due to the sharp downturn in investment in the games industry.
A new studio based in Liverpool called Starlight Games is developing a futuristic sports title and is headed by the co-creator of WipEout.
Video games -- particularly AAA video games -- have become too expensive to make. The intel from every fly on the wall in every investor's room is there is an increasing level of caution about spending hundreds of millions just to release a single video game. And you can't blame them. Many AAA game budgets mean that you can print hundreds of millions in revenue, and not even turn a profit. If you are an investor, quite frankly, there are many easier ways to make a buck. AAA games have always been expensive to make though, but when did we go from expensive, to too expensive? A decade ago, AAA games were still expensive to make, but fears of "sustainability" didn't keep every CEO up at night. Consumer expectations and demands no doubt play a role in this, but more and more games are also revealing obvious signs of resource mismanagement, evident by development teams and budgets spiraling out of control with sometimes nothing substantial to show for it.
It’s a question that I’ve pondered myself too. How are these developers spending this much money? Also, like the article stated, I cannot tell where it’s even going. Perfect example was used with Starfield and Spiderman 2.
They claim they have to increase prices due to development costs exploding. Okay? Well, I’m finding myself spending less and less money on games than before due to the quality actually going down. With a few recent exceptions games are getting worse.
I thought these newer consoles and game engines are easier-therefore-cheaper to make games than previous ones. What has happened? Was it over hiring after the pandemic, like other tech companies?
I believe that it is due to this unsustainable rise in production costs that more and more companies are looking to AI tools to help ‘lower’ costs.
I genuinely believe it's mismanagement. Why are we seeing an influx of one person or games with a team no bigger than 10 create whole games with little to no budget? Unreal Engine 5 and I'm sure many other engines have plugins that have streamlined to many things you would have had to create and code back in the day.
For instance, before the cull, there were 3000 Devs working on COD alone. I'm a COD player but let's be real, there's been no innovation since 2019s MW. What exactly are those Devs doing? Even more so when so much of the new games are using recycled content
I've stated this in many other articles, but corporate greed, mismanagement and bloat and failing to understand the target audience and misaligned sales expectations as a result are the big reasons for these failures.
You'll see it in the way devs and publishers speak, every sequel needs to be "three times the size" of its predecessor, with hundreds of employees and over-indulgence. Wasted resources on the illusion of scale and scope. Misguided notions that if your budget balloons to three times that of the previous game you'll make three times the sales.
Compare the natural progression of games like Assassin's Creed 1 to 2 or Batman Arkham Asylum to City or Witcher 2 to Witcher 3 or God of War remake to Ragnarok and countless others. How is it that From Software continues to release successful games? Why don't we hear these excuses from Larian? These were games made by developers with a vision, passion and desire to improve their game in meaningful ways.
Then look at Suicide Squad Kill the Franchise and how it bloats well beyond its expected completion date and alienates its audience and middle fingers its purchasing power by wrapping a single player game in GAAS. Look at Starfield compared to Skyrim. Why couldn't Starfield have 5-10 carefully developed worlds with well written stories and focus? Why did it need all this bloat and excess that adds nothing to the quality of the game? How can No Man's Sky succeed where Starfield fails? Look at Mass Effect Andromeda compared to Mass Effect 3. Years of development and millions in cost to produce that mediocre fodder.
The narrative they want you to believe is that game budgets of triple A games are unsustainable, but it's typical corporate rubbish where they create the problem and then charge you more and dilute the quality of their games in favour of monetisation to solve it.
Greed from everyone involved including game reviewers, which are the greedy little goblins that help the lords screw over the gaming landscape.
Good job raven
Other than Brian and Steve Raffel, the core Raven devs are not there anymore.
Its just a shell of its former self. Human Head/Roundhouse Studios is the new Raven Software.
Pre-Activision, Raven was the like the sister studio to id Software.
If they could, Brian and Steve Raffel should just uncouple Raven from Activision and just go back to collabing with id like they used to under MS.
The originality they were famous for is being Suppressed by Kotick's company.
I remember years ago on KindaFunny, Andrea Renee said something like "EA need micro-transactions to pay workers so they can feed their families, and to invest in amazing new IP." It's really disgusting how disconnected a lot that sort of coverage was from reality. Greed is just greed.
COD makes $3 billion a year (more than Avatar and Endgame). Firing these employees is just taking advantage of a lack of workers protections to bag a small amount of extra profit. QA testers deserve job security as well. Something is wrong if a workplace has more turnover than a call centre.
This is a series that needs near constant QA between Warzone and new entries anyway. We're not talking about a studio that puts out a single player game every 5-10 years.
Why were they fired? It didn’t say. “I was promised a raise but they fired me instead.” I mean that sucks but it happens. I’m sure the game industry is worse than most in that sense. What’s new I mean? If you are going to walk out for your friends jobs that’s on you but that’s all it is.
Given their recent atrocities they are in a perfect position to “restructure” in the guise of making a more inclusive environment. They are going to use this to cut fat for sure and bobby will be vengeful lol. Maybe these testers didn’t fit in the new structure. Maybe they brought a certain “frat boy culture” with them. They are going to run these dummies like Japanese corporations do. Just drain the life out of them lol. Maybe they will fire the walkouts too. I wouldn’t be surprised.
I just think what they are walking on is silly. The other shit was bearable but general layoffs cross a line lol? Defend your friends worth to your boss don’t go picket out front. In the case of activision you should have walked out and stayed out a long time ago.
I remember these guys were the development team behind Singularity, which was pretty much a poor man's Bioshock. These developers had potential, it's a shame it was squandered and the team was settled for being co-devs for CoD games. It's a damn shame, would've loved to see Singularity2 sometime.
They deserved better, glad to see them walking out.