The Great Video Game Business and Financial (In)Stability Thread

Alternatively, if the rumors of Bluepoint making Bloodborne 2 are true and it turns out well, maybe they won't need FromSoft.

beanman101283 wrote:

Alternatively, if the rumors of Bluepoint making Bloodborne 2 are true and it turns out well, maybe they won't need FromSoft.

Well depends on if it’s any good or not.

Probably more than anyone, Activision have show use time and time again that the health of the company is not a factor in being laid off--they've made a habit out of having their repugnant puck of a CEO announce record profits to shareholders at the same time workers are being informed they no longer work there. Given that, I think the only means to determine if layoffs might be worse if the acquisition is dead is if it includes any sex offenders or Trump regime goons, as those two factors seemed the best way to keep your job under Kotick.

I appreciate your honesty, Tasty.

TheGameguru wrote:
Dyni wrote:
ranalin wrote:
Dyni wrote:
NathanialG wrote:

In the short term I was really looking forward to WoW and Diablo 4 on Gamepass but its probably healthier all around without the merger.

I still think it's highly unlikely this will actually block the merger, but it could lead to some more concessions from Microsoft to push it through.

They've said that due to the time for this to work it's way through the courts that it will not be settled before the deal deadline is past. So the deal is essentially dead.

Do you have a source? I'm not seeing see any evidence of that.

Given now that the US and the EU are coming out against the deal I think its effectively dead. Microsoft will have to decide if its worth the added costs to go through multiple court hearings to salvage the deal. Given I had no idea how making a 10 year commitment to cross platform ended up as a net positive for Microsoft I think the M&A guys are going to give this a thumbs down now.

Now it remains to be seen if the job losses from the fallout will be greater than the job losses from the acquisition. Typically these types of deals when they fall apart means pain for the company that was trying to get sold (i.e there was a really good reason they were selling).

I would be extremely surprised if this deal doesn't eventually go through. A lawsuit does not (by itself) a deal kill.

Dyni wrote:
ranalin wrote:
Dyni wrote:
NathanialG wrote:

In the short term I was really looking forward to WoW and Diablo 4 on Gamepass but its probably healthier all around without the merger.

I still think it's highly unlikely this will actually block the merger, but it could lead to some more concessions from Microsoft to push it through.

They've said that due to the time for this to work it's way through the courts that it will not be settled before the deal deadline is past. So the deal is essentially dead.

Do you have a source? I'm not seeing see any evidence of that.

https://www.engadget.com/ftc-microso...

While the lawsuit doesn't necessarily kill the deal, it's unlikely to be resolved by July, as Politico, which had reported that an FTC bid to block the merger was likely, recently noted. That was the deadline Microsoft and Activision set for closing the deal. If the acquisition hasn't closed by then, the companies will have to renegotiate the agreement or even walk away from the merger. Regulators in other jurisdictions have been taking a close look at the deal, including in the UK and the European Union (which should complete its investigation by late March).
fenomas wrote:
fenomas wrote:

Statement from Mick Gordon, creator of the (legendary) soundtracks for Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, responding to an earlier open letter where the game's executive producer publicly blamed him for delays and for the game's poorly-done OST release.

For anyone wondering how this turned out, Bethesda ended up releasing a bland PR statement about how they're committed to being a great employer and and hoping to find an amicable...

(touches earpiece) ... sorry, I'm being told that Bethesda doubled down and said they stand by their EP and accused Gordon's (scrupulously documented) account of being wrong in, uh, some unspecified way.

Have been following this and I'm going to side with Gordon. There are some great breakdowns of this whole saga on YouTube with a lot more context.

This would be one of those times for Microsoft to step in for some good PR.

In light of economic slow-downs, and with the need to tighten belts in mind, Microsoft elected not to have Sting put on a private concert for its top executives and 50 or so others at the annual Bond Villain get-together in Davos.

Oh, no wait, they did do that.

They day before they announced 10k layoffs. I assume this is because, as 3rd place in the console space, this simple Mom-and-Pop outfit was really strapped for-- oh, wait, nope, they've apparently saw record increases last year, and are, of course, still able to spend 70 billion for Activision's robust catalogue of sex offenders.

Also apparently Phil Spencer said something weirdly dog-whistley about devs being brave to release games in a "culture of cancellation." Lots of people are desperately trying to parse what he meant by that, I'm going to assume the "culture of cancellation" applies to their jobs.

Not to be Corporate Defender Guy or anything, but Microsoft hired something like 40,000 people in 2021, so, even with layoffs, it's still up 30k. They've been on a major hiring binge the last few years.

Why do you hate the working man, Dan?

Fair enough on the 30k, but I personally will never find it not disgustingly ghoulish for these massive corporations to boast about record profits and growth measured in Billions with a B in one breath and then laying off, well, anyone with the next. In particular because, quelle surprise, it's rarely the costly managers who get targeted. The fact that they started laying them off the day after an absurd extravagance amplifies that.

Google says.. pfft 10K?? how about 12K!

According to a regulatory filing in September 2022, Alphabet said it employed nearly 187,000 people, compared with about 150,000 employees at the end of 2021 and 119,000 in 2019.

The 12,000 job cuts announced Friday represent more than 6% of total staff.

So from 2022 to 2021 they hired 37,000 employees but now they are firing 12,000? So still keeping over half the new jobs.

If you were offered a job in 2021 with the knowledge that there was a 50% chance you would be let go in a year would you take it?

farley3k wrote:
According to a regulatory filing in September 2022, Alphabet said it employed nearly 187,000 people, compared with about 150,000 employees at the end of 2021 and 119,000 in 2019.

The 12,000 job cuts announced Friday represent more than 6% of total staff.

So from 2022 to 2021 they hired 37,000 employees but now they are firing 12,000? So still keeping over half the new jobs.

If you were offered a job in 2021 with the knowledge that there was a 50% chance you would be let go in a year would you take it?

IIRC, the only big tech company that has fewer employees now than at the start of the pandemic is Twitter because obvious reasons; tech companies went on massive hiring binges during the last few years to support all the people suddenly either working remotely or huddling in their homes, and, as the world has opened up, they're pulling back a bit on that.

Would I take a job with a 50% chance of being let go in a year? Eh, probably not, but that's me; in my house, I've tended to keep the longer-term stable job, and my wife has been doing consulting gigs. Frankly, a year in the tech industry is frequently a pretty normal gig for people, and the days when you worked a job for 40+ years and retired are gone, at least in the tech industry. I don't think anyone hired in 2020 or 2021 during the explosion of tech hiring should be shocked future layoffs happened; expansion and contraction is just how things work.

"Yeah, but look at all the people we didn't lay off!" isn't the inspiring rallying cry no ironclad justification people seem to think it is. Maybe Sting could write a song about that.

I am not trying to say it is good but hiring and firing is normal. And unless we abandon capitalism (which we should do) this is how it goes. And taken from that position there is a net gain in employed people so that is good.

Yeah, this is not me going all corporate stooge, it's just part of the cycle of tech. Ramping up and down happens, and this is very different from, say, an auto plant shutting its doors where there is a real risk losing that individual job could devastate somebody's life because there aren't other options. Tech is not like that; my wife has had a few layoffs, rolled off contracts, and, because of what she does, she shrugs and applies for another job, because the skills you learn are applicable in all sorts of places. I'm very weird in tech; my career in this stuff is around 25 years old, and I'm basically on job #4. I had one job for 14 years, my current one is going on 7. Most tech people I know move around a lot more, and one of my closest friends has had a weird year if he hasn't had at least two jobs because that's the kind of roles he likes.

Again, not being a corporate shill, but mobility is part of the industry. Throw in the number of remote working options that clickbait headlines aside are all over the place, and people who are laid off in the tech industry are at far less risk than in probably about any other industry. I work for the State of Minnesota's IT agency, and we had an all-hands meeting this past summer where they focused on just how damn hard it is to find people to fill open roles; IIRC, the agency commissioner said the IT unemployment rate was 0.9%. Even with some publicly-reported big tech layoffs, the industry is thriving right now, and, yes, I do think a net gain of 30k jobs from last year is something that should be focused on rather than a 10k layoff.

Besides, we're all here because we're gamers, right? There is no subset of the tech industry that treats its employees like complete and utter garbage like games development. The AAA games we have played have been driving by life-crushing crunch, terrible work conditions, and massive layoffs five minutes after the game shifts.

I'm sorry, but to be diplomatic, "it's the cycle of tech," is a non-response that does nothing to mitigate the ghoulishness of layoffs from, and I'll repeat, a corporation boasting about record revenues, among myriad other things. It's a pathetic excuse that's been getting trotted out for years, it's not a bold or deep insight, and there is zero reason to accept it. I strongly suggest reading some of the things said by current and now suddenly former workers at 343--a lot of it sounds like the actual cycle of tech.

Earnings haven't come out yet so there has been no boasting (yet). We'll find out Monday.

But I tend to have a lot less sympathy for tech workers than blue collar workers, who saw it so many times worse than what has happened so far to the tech sector.

It is always terrible for those losing their jobs, and hopefully many of them will be able to soon find jobs elsewhere, as there still seem to be plenty of tech hiring - albeit that window might be closing fast But overall I dont think it is a terrible thing that companies can increase and decrease their workforce relatively effortlessly, as the "need" arises. Mobility is good, as long as it is humane.
My concern is always on the state/federal side of things. Losing your job should not be something that will completely devastate your life. Unemployment benefits should offer a helping hand, dont freaking tie health care to employment, and other obvious things...
And of course, on the employee side of things... unionize dammit.

SpacePProtean wrote:

I'm sorry, but to be diplomatic, "it's the cycle of tech," is a non-response that does nothing to mitigate the ghoulishness of layoffs from, and I'll repeat, a corporation boasting about record revenues, among myriad other things. It's a pathetic excuse that's been getting trotted out for years, it's not a bold or deep insight, and there is zero reason to accept it. I strongly suggest reading some of the things said by current and now suddenly former workers at 343--a lot of it sounds like the actual cycle of tech.

You may not like it or want to accept it, but it doesn't change the fact that it is the reality we live in.

Wonder how things would look if those big tech companies were run by the workers and it was the workers that had to buy off on all that hiring and now firing.

It feels like some folks here are forgetting that global-scale companies aren't just big pools of fungible employees. When they cut a percentage of their workforce It's not like, say, a bar that fired three bartenders because it had too many bartenders.

Normally when a megacorp fires X thousand people it's because they're shuttering specific business units, or canceling specific projects, closing down specific office locations, and so on. If someone has strong feelings that google/MS/etc was wrong to cut project P or facility Q that's one thing, but it seems strange to look at stuff like this and make a value judgment about the company based on no information except the net change in headcount.

ranalin wrote:

You may not like it or want to accept it, but it doesn't change the fact that it is the reality we live in.

SpacePProtean wrote:

it's not a bold or deep insight

It also seems the cycle of layoffs is really not the reality we live in, just the one that the layoffers prefer: MS is having to negotiate with Zenimax's union over this.

fenomas wrote:

Normally when a megacorp fires X thousand people it's because they're shuttering specific business units, or canceling specific projects, closing down specific office locations, and so on. If someone has strong feelings that google/MS/etc was wrong to cut project P or facility Q that's one thing, but it seems strange to look at stuff like this and make a value judgment about the company based on no information except the net change in headcount.

Again, the most game relevant layoffs were are 343, where many current and recently laid off workers have been sharing tales of how they were grossly mismanaged. So, yes, seems they are shuttering a specific business unit, because they also f*cked it up.

SpacePProtean wrote:

Again, the most game relevant layoffs were are 343, where many current and recently laid off workers have been sharing tales of how they were grossly mismanaged. So, yes, seems they are shuttering a specific business unit, because they also f*cked it up.

343 has been such a terrible steward of the Halo franchise for over a decade now, I'm not particularly inclined to buy their finger-pointing, even though I'm sure the stories people are sharing are truthful and did contribute to the problem.

Halo Infinite and its monetization scheme definitely reeks of parent company meddling, but people at 343 should look at the decade prior and think about how that factors in to MS's attitude towards Infinite.

*Legion* wrote:
SpacePProtean wrote:

Again, the most game relevant layoffs were are 343, where many current and recently laid off workers have been sharing tales of how they were grossly mismanaged. So, yes, seems they are shuttering a specific business unit, because they also f*cked it up.

343 has been such a terrible steward of the Halo franchise for over a decade now, I'm not particularly inclined to buy their finger-pointing, even though I'm sure the stories people are sharing are truthful and did contribute to the problem.

Halo Infinite and its monetization scheme definitely reeks of parent company meddling, but people at 343 should look at the decade prior and think about how that factors in to MS's attitude towards Infinite.

Yea i'm not overly worried about the loss to 343. They needed to be shook out some. They took a critical darling with Infinite and tripped over their own feet every step of the way to just completely sh*t the bed with it.

SpacePProtean wrote:
ranalin wrote:

You may not like it or want to accept it, but it doesn't change the fact that it is the reality we live in.

SpacePProtean wrote:

it's not a bold or deep insight

Nor is repeating yourself or ignoring the facts...

But as I said right below that, the push for unionization in tech illustrates how not a fact and not reality that notion is.