Larian publishing director on mass layoffs: 'None of these companies are at risk of going bankrupt. They were just at risk of pissing off the shareholders'
Larian publishing director on mass layoffs: 'None of these companies are at risk of going bankrupt. They were just at risk of pissing off the shareholders'
Peoples jobs will always be sacrificed to make that quarterly earnings call sound sweet to investors.
Profits above all.
Even ditching quarterly reporting won't help :/ Should the SEC ditch quarterly reporting?
IMO worker-owned businesses should be the future. There should also be a forced role-switch or shadowing for managers and workers, so that both understand better what each others respective jobs look like. Managers often think they should be earning their money because their work is more important and set the salaries as such: "Without me, you wouldn't know what to do, so my job is more important should be compensated more". They are out of touch with their workers and their realities.
Agreed, the first steps toward fixing this are much deeper.
The function of a public company is to create growth for its shareholders...
And that's fine
Dammit the duality of man
In my opinion game studios should not sell out to investors and/or have any stocks as it will lead to profit making the calls eventually. It is tempting to get a bunch of investment, I know it would make my game studio easier to run right now, but then you are constantly reminded how it all ends up. Don’t like the system, stop playing in it and build your company slowly and organically instead and retain full control.
Same goes for many businesses outside of gaming. Imagine if there was no such thing as the stock market / investors and all companies had to grow on their own merits.
In my virtual studio everyone is their own sole proprietorship contributing to the project off and on and getting compensated fairly for their contributions. They also have their own projects too and may even pay me to help them sometimes. This way everyone assumes their own risk and reaps their own benefits. If any one person on the virtual team has a hit with their project, they retain full control and owe no money back to some shareholders who did nothing but lend money to make money. It does mean I am way slower than if I could just hire everyone full time as employees, but knowing where having investors will ultimately take me, I accept. Plus going slower means more time to sit on things and polish and not feel time pressure to appease shareholders.
Shareholders are a little like getting a loan and depending on how successful you are, you have to pay back more than you borrowed and giving them control on your art. No thanks.
The CEOs of these investor funded companies have forgotten that investors are not their customers, gamers are. This will hurt them in the long run because they are pissing off their customer base, people who really given them money to appease their shareholders. It never ends well for the companies.
The investors are the ones forgetting that. CEOs work for the investors not for the customers.
Now, a good CEO will be able to manage upwards and throw around things like reputational damage and consumer trust to convince to keep the investors focused on the long term in order to protect the company (and the investors uhh... investment). The problem in the gaming industry is that time and time again gamers show that there's no such thing as reputational damage with games since there are enough people building their personality around a gaming franchise that even studios with a reputation for consistently putting out mediocre unoriginal crap can count on a mountain of pre-orders.
Exactly. The last year of news full of mistreating game developers caused my to retune my news feeds and Steam wishlist to completely exclude all triple A titles.
There's years and years worth of great gameplay I haven't experienced yet in the Indie game market.
I suspect I'm not alone in that.
I don’t work in the industry and I could be way off here. But aren’t some of the developers hired on as a type of contract worker to finish a big game and well aware that if the next project isn’t lined up perfectly, it’s impossible to house that many employees. That’s how our construction industry is. Companies have to hire on and then trim the fat as needed.
This is true. Some things are completely outsourced to vendor companies with their own employees. You rarely interact with these people at all, or even know their names. All communication goes through a telephone game. Then the primary studio itself will have contract employees and also "permanent staff".
Management likes to go on and on about how staff are "family", but then treat them like shit and lay them off anyway. They also like to be subtly shitty to contract workers whenever possible, like free donuts in the break room! (for staff only)
Really, management is just shitty to everyone. Having been in both positions I honestly prefer contract. At least then I'm not expected to participate in their "corporate culture".
As far as I know, it's usually not so in gaming and in software in general. But since software is easier to abandon when you feel like it (I know buildings, too, sometimes stand incomplete for decades) so it is easier to suddenly close the project and say goodbye to everyone working on that project.
Spitting facts.
How difficult is it to start a gaming company with all those thousands of people who were fired? Can they get together and start something themselves?