What do you think of Gaming companies losing Billions?

[LilRora]

The companies that make games have long stopped caring about making a game for the players. The fun in those games, except some rare exceptions, is the byproduct or the means to earning money.

When they lose billions because of that shit or anything connected to it? Yeah, they earned it. No corporation is going to lose billions for no reason.

Honestly, out of perhaps fifteen or twenty games I tried this year (almost all of them in free demos, there's a lot of those on Steam) I think the only one I liked that wasn't an indie game was Helldivers 2 - and even that got very close to going to shit. All the rest are created either by small studios or individual people. That says something, doesn't it?

Frankly, this is visible almost everywhere, to some degree even in books and manga. Granted, there are no corporations pushing out books the way there are in the gaming industry, but once you think about it, there's a ton of similarities between large gaming companies and the large, popular publishers.

...Actually, isn't Webnovel a good example? If they lose millions, it'll be because of something they brought onto their heads themselves, be it because of money, publicity, or other related reasons. I'm not gonna be happy about it, but it's because I don't like when bad things happen to the thing I enjoy, not because of the company itself.

 

[LollipoPReapeR]

Can’t say I have a lot of sympathy… Games these days, especially AAAs have been getting more and more unwieldy (ridiculous sizes), riven with bugs, stupidly expensive. And most are a fraction as worthy as they used to be. Maybe if a bunch of them crash and burn, we‘d actually get something worth the money they ask us to pay.

Even Rockstar and new GTA, I don't see them doing that well. For a game that's taken over a decade, I bet it's gonna cost something like around the $100 mark. Who's gonna buy that?

 

[beast_regards]

...Actually, isn't Webnovel a good example? If they lose millions, it'll be because of something they brought onto their heads themselves, be it because of money, publicity, or other related reasons. I'm not gonna be happy about it, but it's because I don't like when bad things happen to the thing I enjoy, not because of the company itself.

The Webnovel are a strange example.

Their goal is not making money per se, but to accumulate the IPs (without losing money in the process)

They are doing the very same thing what the Chinese tech companies are doing with patents and licenses.

Now they could ask their own writers to write their version of the story, and attempt to sell it, without the necessity of being creative. It's the same as selling the cell phone with the chip architecture they legally own. It may not be as good as the original, but it sells, and more importantly, it is not unauthorized copy, but the perfectly legal merchandise to sell on an open market. Think of it as the little brain leech.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

The crisis is nothing more than a political movement created by the Jewish socialist friends of Soros, its objective is just a mental straw, it is not an evil plan, it is just a stupid plan that seeks to destroy Western society by promoting aberrations such as vegans, homosexuality, promuscuity, a social barrier between men and

The only problem with this theory is why has it happened before. Its about a fifty year cycle. It'll all happen again in another 50 years. Soon as Trump takes office, your gonna see the return of the 80s. Big shoulder pads, 3 day stubble, glorification of the police and civil order. Its happened before, it'll happen again. It was like this in the 1970s, the 1920s, and I would argue the American Civil War was just another blip on this macro trend. It cycles up, the system collapses, we return to sanity, then take it too far because America never reacts, we only overreact.

 

[beast_regards]

Big shoulder pads, 3 day stubble

 

[Daitengu]

The Webnovel are a strange example.

Their goal is not making money per se, but to accumulate the IPs (without losing money in the process)

They are doing the very same thing what the Chinese tech companies are doing with patents and licenses.

Now they could ask their own writers to write their version of the story, and attempt to sell it, without the necessity of being creative. It's the same as selling the cell phone with the chip architecture they legally own. It may not be as good as the original, but it sells, and more importantly, it is not unauthorized copy, but the perfectly legal merchandise to sell on an open market. Think of it as the little brain leech.

Surprisingly not that different.

EA, Microsoft, Sony, and Activision are known to buy up game studios, force unreasonable mandates on games, then shutdown the studios when they fail. Keeping all the IPs in the process. Then later try to make live service games out of those IPs.

 

[beast_regards]

Surprisingly not that different.

EA, Microsoft, Sony, and Activision are known to buy up game studios, force unreasonable mandates on games, then shutdown the studios when they fail. Keeping all the IPs in the process. Then later try to make live service games out of those IPs.

Smaller scale, more cost effective than hostile takeovers, but yes.

 

[Daitengu]

I don't think it JUST woke that's tanking games. Just that it's easier to spot compared to companies covering up numbers from the media and shareholders.

I see it as three things.
1. Destructive woke propaganda that ignores lore/canon and ugly stick aesthetics for message.
2. Bloated costs for the sake of making a live service game in a crowded market with a player cap. Season passes, micro trans, etc.
3. Churn of workers. Acti/Blizz is notorious for underpaying and eating up devs. It's why Diablo 4 had 3,000+ people work on it. That kind of soulless corp activity kills off the life and flavor of an IP.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

View attachment 28830

I was thinking more of Miami Vice

I don't think it JUST woke that's tanking games. Just that it's easier to spot compared to companies covering up numbers from the media and shareholders.

I see it as three things.
1. Destructive woke propaganda that ignores lore/canon and ugly stick aesthetics for message.
2. Bloated costs for the sake of making a live service game in a crowded market with a player cap. Season passes, micro trans, etc.
3. Churn of workers. Acti/Blizz is notorious for underpaying and eating up devs. It's why Diablo 4 had 3,000+ people work on it. That kind of soulless corp activity kills off the life and flavor of an IP.

Ehhh...

Look. When you hire someone for ANY REASON other than, HE IS THE BEST AVAILABLE, then you will always, by definition, make something less than the best.

See, people don't understand companies. Internally, every company is socialist. Do different departments charge each other for services? Do you have to pay HR or tip the janitors? No. Internally, a company operates with a socialist economy. Externally, the company may act capitalistic, but on the inside, every company works by socialism.

Socialism works best under the dunbar empathy limit.

The larger your company, the more likely it is to fall prey to corporate corruption, because the people who work there do not care. When everyone knows each other, you are less likely to screw each other for your own personal profit. Small businesses work well, because they can work as a team. This is why Large corporations can fall prey to Woke BS so easily because Woke is socialism and Companies are socialism. Then the woke beliefs of crazy communism tries to apply it to OUTSIDE the company and it spirals into insanity.

 

[LilRora]

The Webnovel are a strange example.

Their goal is not making money per se, but to accumulate the IPs (without losing money in the process)

They are doing the very same thing what the Chinese tech companies are doing with patents and licenses.

Now they could ask their own writers to write their version of the story, and attempt to sell it, without the necessity of being creative. It's the same as selling the cell phone with the chip architecture they legally own. It may not be as good as the original, but it sells, and more importantly, it is not unauthorized copy, but the perfectly legal merchandise to sell on an open market. Think of it as the little brain leech.

Quite, that's a good point, but that is actually the part I did not mean, or at least I did not mean that exactly. What I was thinking of when I wrote they are similar to game companies is that the readers or the writers stopped being important, just as gamers and to some degree individual workers don't matter much to the large game companies, but are just means to getting... something, be it money, IPs, influence, or wherever else they might want.

And when we don't know what it's about, it's about money.

Why really many indie games just as really many small stories are good is because, instead of what the large companies are doing, they are created and delivered with the intention to create something great and fun - money or any other benefits are often secondary. That is not to say they are free of those issues, of course, but they're definitely not nearly as pronounced.

 

[BearlyAlive]

Serves them right. The first rule about selling stuff is to know your customers. And the big companies forgot that. Selling is about meeting in the middle of what the customers want and what you want them to want, not about shoving things you want them to want down their throats and then throwing a tantrum when they throw up.

I'm all for empowering indie studios and diversifying the market with fresh and innovative games vying for the players' attention and money instead of AAA studios mass-producing yet more unfinished open-world live-service games that get bought because brand recognition.

 

[CarburetorThompson]

FTC just banned non compete contracts, every major gaming company is having massive layoffs.

Looking forward to the massive influx of high quality indie games in the coming years.

 

[Omnifarious]

Looking forward to the massive influx of high quality indie games in the coming years.

Pretty much.

 

[K5Rakitan]

Get fucked.

Use condom!

 

[Anon2024]

Use condom!

No.

 

[Sola-sama]

They started catering to minority & non-existent groups that make up no size or a very small size of their market, pushing weird politics that go against the typical gamer, and then insulting and attacking the most common/populous gamer demographic: The white male.

Also, the term for modern audience's has become so repulsive I immediately know what I'm in for the moment I see/hear it.

They can burn and I hope I can see the smoke trails from where I live.

There are certain corporates that consult beeg corpos. Imagine hiring a consultation firm to make your game worse than dogshit. Its not strange that the industry is bleeding.

 

[ElijahRyne]

So, I'm sure if you've been paying attention recently... the gaming industry has been in huge turmoil and there are all sorts of things being thrown around including DEI, greed and multiple other things.

I have to say that all these things are interconnected.

DEI gives cheap loans.
CEO thinks "Oh hey! Cheap funding for game! As long as we make something gamers will play because they addicted LOLZ!"
DEVS are like "Okay... we toe line cuz we got jobz..."
GAMERS get bad game and are like "I ain't spendin' me monies on that shit!"
CEO/DEVS/DEI LOVERs then go on like "bigots, hippocrites, nowz, we don't wantz ur monies anyways!"
Then CEO fires DEVS and DEVS ask GAMERS to back them up.

I'm all like... ya know... this really is all about greed.
Then again, greed does have to take its course.
I realize that I won't be able to change the gaming industry, however, I also realize that I don't need to.
Gaming is recreational. It is not a need.

I'm more concerned about the food industry.

Either way, I do have great interest in everything happening, just now that I've realized I don't need video games to live my life and see it as nothing but a past time. I'm kind of wishing more gaming companies would go the route like VALVE and just be private ownership without public trading.

It's pretty obvious that in our current culture and world, companies are destroyed over public trading and investors who buy stock without even knowing or caring about the industry since many of them are just short term investors instead of long term ones.

Well what else do you expect from a profit driven system. Find something that works once, and repeat it faster and faster until everything collapses and you have to start from essentially the beginning…

 

[Daitengu]

I was thinking more of Miami Vice

Ehhh...

Look. When you hire someone for ANY REASON other than, HE IS THE BEST AVAILABLE, then you will always, by definition, make something less than the best.

See, people don't understand companies. Internally, every company is socialist. Do different departments charge each other for services? Do you have to pay HR or tip the janitors? No. Internally, a company operates with a socialist economy. Externally, the company may act capitalistic, but on the inside, every company works by socialism.

Socialism works best under the dunbar empathy limit.

The larger your company, the more likely it is to fall prey to corporate corruption, because the people who work there do not care. When everyone knows each other, you are less likely to screw each other for your own personal profit. Small businesses work well, because they can work as a team. This is why Large corporations can fall prey to Woke BS so easily because Woke is socialism and Companies are socialism. Then the woke beliefs of crazy communism tries to apply it to OUTSIDE the company and it spirals into insanity.

Ok, then explain Star Wars: Battlefront II, Fallout 76, WWE 2k20, Warcraft 3 reforged, Cyberpunk 2077, Balan Wonderworld, Battlefield 2042, and LotR Gallum.

Because as far as I can tell, all those launch flops didn't do so because of woke agenda.

Mind you, woke has been going on since at least 2009 when Disney thought it was a good idea to DEI Marvel comics.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

Ok, then explain Star Wars: Battlefront II, Fallout 76, WWE 2k20, Warcraft 3 reforged, Cyberpunk 2077, Balan Wonderworld, Battlefield 2042, and LotR Gallum.

Because as far as I can tell, all those launch flops didn't do so because of woke agenda.

Mind you, woke has been going on since at least 2009 when Disney thought it was a good idea to DEI Marvel comic

Easy. SW Battlefront DEI Programers
Fallout 76 - DEI hiring of programers
WWE 2k20 - Wrestling just sucks.
WC3 Reforged - They LITERALLY DUMBED DOWN THE IN GAME ECONOMY SO THEY COULD GO FOR A DUMBER AUDIENCE. How is that not going after "The Wider Audience" ie the war cry of woke shit.
Cyberpunk 2077 That was just mismanged
Balan Wonderworld - Never heard of it.
Battlefield 2042 - That was just microtransationed into the ground.
LotR Gollum - DEI hiring of programers. They refused to hire certain programers because "Pale and Male Is Stale". That was a gigantic Shit Show.

And stop putting words in my mouth. I say what I mean and mean what I say.

 

[ZukoMee]

Fallout 76 - DEI hiring of programers

The last good Fallout was Fallout New Vegas though Fallout 3 will always be my favorite. 1 & 2 were good, but Fallout 3 hit a certain spot that no other has come close to touching. Fallout 4 is only playable on PC if you have mods, otherwise I despise it. If I have to add other shit(mods) to make shit "less shit-like", its not worth playing anymore. I'm not even going to dignify Fallout 76 with a response.

Anyone who says Fallout 76 is a good game is NOT a real Fallout fan. You can like what you like, and I can still call you full of shit, have shit taste, and ARE NOT a Fallout fan.