Despite healthy sales, publishers such as Epic Games and Activision Blizzard are making hundreds of employees redundant – which may radically reshape the industry
Why is it that in my own experience Atlus and Nintendo are the only two companies that provide fun games that run with little to no issues and meanwhile every single other triple A company doesn’t anymore? Look at both of them, Persona 3 Reload, Mario Wonder hell even indie games like Palworld are more fun to play. Wtf is wrong with the gaming industry nowadays?
Nintendo isn’t really pushing the envelope on, well, anything and they are basically the Disney or Apple of video games with hordes fans who can see them doing no wrong.
This. I’ll be the last one to defend any of these megacorps but folks calling it greed are being reductive. These are publicly traded companies which means their loyalty is to their shareholders and their #1 goal is to make them more money than they made them last quarter. So it’s more than greed, it’s their job within this capitalist system. They have to do that every quarter for as long as they exist. The only ways to do it are to increase revenue or decrease costs. If they can’t make enough money they have to fire people. That’s the world we’ve built.
But it’s not only about making more profit than last quarter, but also the amount the profits increased by has to be higher than the amount they increased by the quarter before last. That’s how you end up with companies seeing record profits and still laying people off. They made more than last quarter, but only 2% more. The quarter before they made 3% more so now people have to go. It’s insane.
You don’t need an MBA to know that the goal of a large business is to deliver profit to its investors and that this can be accomplished by cutting costs.
There’s a hype cycle that companies like MS ride to bolster stocks, during the hype they over hire to give investors the impression that they are doing really well, when the hype starts to fall, they use layoffs to inch out a bit more, because it shows investors that they’re slimming down now that the hype is falling off. One of the interesting things he mentioned is that the hype is more important than the product, the product is just there to increase the hype and justify the hiring, showing investors that something great is on the way.
Might sound like a bit of a conspiracy theorist here, but if all of the big tech companies lay off people at the same time, why could they not hire their recently laid off competitors for a fraction of the cost?
Obviously it drives down the cost of the salaries and lowers the average hiring rate. Huge wins for all these massive companies.
And to prove that they all did this “together” when they all did it a few weeks apart will be rather difficult too.
Maybe that’s just me thinking from both corporations and employees side at the same time, though…
As another poster said, those of us in tech generally get a significant pay bump, significant. Hell, that goes for most people with skills and experience.
I’ve preached before on here, move on, keep moving on.
Why would it? I usually get a pay raise when I get a new job.
What’s actually going on is they’re massaging the numbers a bit to get investors to invest more. Salaries aren’t the concern here, it’s just a game of staying on the investing trends to get the most investor capital they can. Employees are just caught in the crossfire.
Have you done this from a position of not having a job in tech though? Having thousands of other employees also vie-ing for that same position with equivalent experience or better?
If you have obligations any job is better than no job from a position of no job, no pay.
Yup. I lost my job at the start of COVID in tech and found a new one with a better salary. I had a house, wife and kids, and I was the sole bread winner. It took several months, but I had cash reserves and found a good position at a good company (I was a bit picky).
I wasn’t part of a huge layoff, but a lot of people were looking for jobs at the same time due to shifting markets. My old company was downsizing due to market shifts, and the new company was expanding due to unrelated, company-specific reasons.
It’s annoying seeing people buy the same copy paste games from AAA companies then complain that games aren’t good anymore. Like no shit, you just preordered it without even looking at a review
At a certain point in capitalism, a wealthy person can get enough money to live comfortably the rest of your life. If you decide to continue to grow your wealth from there, you’re essentially not just making money for yourself, but so others can’t have it.
I have a feeling that number is well below a billion, but I’m no economist.
Nearly all social animals would be punished in some way for hoarding resources from the group. Between loss of social status all the way to being killed. Our closest relatives like apes straight up murder individuals that do this.
It’s a mental illness. We’ll probably find out it was caused by lead or micro plastics if our species survives this time.
For now. I believe the correct call to action involves guillotines. We can dial it back if things get better.
If you decide to continue to grow your wealth from there, you’re essentially not just making money for yourself, but so others can’t have it.
This is a zero-sum fallacy. The size of the economy isn’t fixed. It continues to grow each year. The hyper productive people you’re referring to are disproportionately responsible for that growth, and they are disproportionately the recipients of that growth. My father was one of those people. Working 18 hours every day for 30 years. It led to a divorce and our family falling apart, but fuck did he generate a lot of economic value for the world, his company, and himself. He didn’t steal it from you. He created it.
While true, the growth of the economy has been wildly outpaced by the rate of hoarding at the top. After all that extra work, how much better off was your dad after everyone above him benefitted?
It’s called hoarding and it’s an unhealthy habit so why isn’t anybody doing anything? Because if you give them enough of that money they won’t complain.
There was a study from 2010 that said that the happiness already plateaus somewhere around 75k annually. But more recent studies suggest that for some people, more money means more happiness well beyond that, and for some it doesn’t. Basically, if you’re generall an unhappy person, money doesn’t help much. https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/does-more-money-correlate-greater-happiness-Penn-Princeton-research
But I agree that owning more than 1 billion (or even 100 million) is just useless hoarding, since no one can spend that much money in a lifetime (at least without decadent spending for spending’s sake).
But you miss that having the money isn’t necessarily the point they have power and control over resources people and machines as well as influence in government
Also not a psychologist, but attended a four hour lecture on psychopaths recently (out of interest). I don’t think happiness as a concept exists for actual psychopaths, because they don’t really feel emotions the same way.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur’s Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 … barely a week passed without some blockbuster hit or independent gem.
Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, one of the most successful titles of the decade, laid off 830 employees; Electronic Arts shed 6% of its workforce, amounting to approximately 780 jobs.
The effect was twofold: strong sales for titles such as Animal Crossing and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare boosted revenue and sent share prices soaring, thereby attracting the attention of external investors who flooded the industry with funds.
For publishers looking to cut development costs, expanding the use of AI in production (already a limited element in the process) may be a tempting prospect, especially in areas such as quality assurance and performance capture.
In January, the Sag-Aftra union was criticised for reaching an agreement with an AI company that would allow it to create digital likenesses of actors’ voices, prompting furious responses on social media.
Starfield and Mortal Kombat actor Sunil Malhotra wrote on X: “I sacrificed to strike half of last yr to keep my profession alive, not shop around my AI replica.”
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Why is it that in my own experience Atlus and Nintendo are the only two companies that provide fun games that run with little to no issues and meanwhile every single other triple A company doesn’t anymore? Look at both of them, Persona 3 Reload, Mario Wonder hell even indie games like Palworld are more fun to play. Wtf is wrong with the gaming industry nowadays?
Atlus is Sega, though
Pokemon…
Both those companies have the advantage of owning a ton of beloved IPs and Nintendo releases a lot of stinkers as well.
Nintendo isn’t really pushing the envelope on, well, anything and they are basically the Disney or Apple of video games with hordes fans who can see them doing no wrong.
Nintendo is not exempt from this.
It’s not that we’re not making profit, it’s that we’re not making ENOUGH profit.
A.K.A Capitalism.
This. I’ll be the last one to defend any of these megacorps but folks calling it greed are being reductive. These are publicly traded companies which means their loyalty is to their shareholders and their #1 goal is to make them more money than they made them last quarter. So it’s more than greed, it’s their job within this capitalist system. They have to do that every quarter for as long as they exist. The only ways to do it are to increase revenue or decrease costs. If they can’t make enough money they have to fire people. That’s the world we’ve built.
But it’s not only about making more profit than last quarter, but also the amount the profits increased by has to be higher than the amount they increased by the quarter before last. That’s how you end up with companies seeing record profits and still laying people off. They made more than last quarter, but only 2% more. The quarter before they made 3% more so now people have to go. It’s insane.
It will never be enough…
Greed.
Same reason as every other tech company
Line need go up more
Where u get MBA?
You don’t need an MBA to know that the goal of a large business is to deliver profit to its investors and that this can be accomplished by cutting costs.
I’d recommend watching this
https://youtu.be/-653Z1val8s
Got a TL;DW? Shits over an hour long fam
There’s a hype cycle that companies like MS ride to bolster stocks, during the hype they over hire to give investors the impression that they are doing really well, when the hype starts to fall, they use layoffs to inch out a bit more, because it shows investors that they’re slimming down now that the hype is falling off. One of the interesting things he mentioned is that the hype is more important than the product, the product is just there to increase the hype and justify the hiring, showing investors that something great is on the way.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/-653Z1val8s
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Might sound like a bit of a conspiracy theorist here, but if all of the big tech companies lay off people at the same time, why could they not hire their recently laid off competitors for a fraction of the cost?
Obviously it drives down the cost of the salaries and lowers the average hiring rate. Huge wins for all these massive companies.
And to prove that they all did this “together” when they all did it a few weeks apart will be rather difficult too.
Maybe that’s just me thinking from both corporations and employees side at the same time, though…
As another poster said, those of us in tech generally get a significant pay bump, significant. Hell, that goes for most people with skills and experience.
I’ve preached before on here, move on, keep moving on.
That’s illegal.
Why would it? I usually get a pay raise when I get a new job.
What’s actually going on is they’re massaging the numbers a bit to get investors to invest more. Salaries aren’t the concern here, it’s just a game of staying on the investing trends to get the most investor capital they can. Employees are just caught in the crossfire.
Have you done this from a position of not having a job in tech though? Having thousands of other employees also vie-ing for that same position with equivalent experience or better?
If you have obligations any job is better than no job from a position of no job, no pay.
Yup. I lost my job at the start of COVID in tech and found a new one with a better salary. I had a house, wife and kids, and I was the sole bread winner. It took several months, but I had cash reserves and found a good position at a good company (I was a bit picky).
I wasn’t part of a huge layoff, but a lot of people were looking for jobs at the same time due to shifting markets. My old company was downsizing due to market shifts, and the new company was expanding due to unrelated, company-specific reasons.
Greed
Because lethal company is a much more fun game than anything the big guys are putting out and it only costs 10 bucks
Top heavy teams suffer the problem of play it safe don’t innovate mentality. Especially if a publisher is pulling the strings.
Same with Battlebit, that’s $15.
It’s annoying seeing people buy the same copy paste games from AAA companies then complain that games aren’t good anymore. Like no shit, you just preordered it without even looking at a review
I had a shower thought this morning:
At a certain point in capitalism, a wealthy person can get enough money to live comfortably the rest of your life. If you decide to continue to grow your wealth from there, you’re essentially not just making money for yourself, but so others can’t have it.
I have a feeling that number is well below a billion, but I’m no economist.
Nearly all social animals would be punished in some way for hoarding resources from the group. Between loss of social status all the way to being killed. Our closest relatives like apes straight up murder individuals that do this.
It’s a mental illness. We’ll probably find out it was caused by lead or micro plastics if our species survives this time.
For now. I believe the correct call to action involves guillotines. We can dial it back if things get better.
This is a zero-sum fallacy. The size of the economy isn’t fixed. It continues to grow each year. The hyper productive people you’re referring to are disproportionately responsible for that growth, and they are disproportionately the recipients of that growth. My father was one of those people. Working 18 hours every day for 30 years. It led to a divorce and our family falling apart, but fuck did he generate a lot of economic value for the world, his company, and himself. He didn’t steal it from you. He created it.
I’m sorry your dad cared more about money than family, that must have been really hard on all of you.
Thanks man, it did suck :( We still have a strained relationship many years later.
While true, the growth of the economy has been wildly outpaced by the rate of hoarding at the top. After all that extra work, how much better off was your dad after everyone above him benefitted?
I agree that the distribution should be adjusted.
It’s to keep score.
It’s super gross.
Also power.
It’s called hoarding and it’s an unhealthy habit so why isn’t anybody doing anything? Because if you give them enough of that money they won’t complain.
if they have to do that to enough people we would have inequality solved
There was a study from 2010 that said that the happiness already plateaus somewhere around 75k annually. But more recent studies suggest that for some people, more money means more happiness well beyond that, and for some it doesn’t. Basically, if you’re generall an unhappy person, money doesn’t help much. https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/does-more-money-correlate-greater-happiness-Penn-Princeton-research
But I agree that owning more than 1 billion (or even 100 million) is just useless hoarding, since no one can spend that much money in a lifetime (at least without decadent spending for spending’s sake).
But you miss that having the money isn’t necessarily the point they have power and control over resources people and machines as well as influence in government
I would argue that all those things are even more likely to not make you happy.
Unless you already have a tendency towards psychopathic behaviors, the they probably
(not a psychologist)
Also not a psychologist, but attended a four hour lecture on psychopaths recently (out of interest). I don’t think happiness as a concept exists for actual psychopaths, because they don’t really feel emotions the same way.
Capitalism.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur’s Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 … barely a week passed without some blockbuster hit or independent gem.
Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, one of the most successful titles of the decade, laid off 830 employees; Electronic Arts shed 6% of its workforce, amounting to approximately 780 jobs.
The effect was twofold: strong sales for titles such as Animal Crossing and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare boosted revenue and sent share prices soaring, thereby attracting the attention of external investors who flooded the industry with funds.
For publishers looking to cut development costs, expanding the use of AI in production (already a limited element in the process) may be a tempting prospect, especially in areas such as quality assurance and performance capture.
In January, the Sag-Aftra union was criticised for reaching an agreement with an AI company that would allow it to create digital likenesses of actors’ voices, prompting furious responses on social media.
Starfield and Mortal Kombat actor Sunil Malhotra wrote on X: “I sacrificed to strike half of last yr to keep my profession alive, not shop around my AI replica.”
The original article contains 1,217 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Maybe they overhired when we had “cheap” money in 2021.
Because they would like to be the $360bn games industry.