Xbox |OT|

[Machiavellian]

EpicRandy said:

That's a damn depressing news, a foreseen one for sure but still.

My thoughts go to all impacted employees. This is one of my big stresses for 2024, my company recently did something likewise on a smaller scale (5% workforce impacted with some being hopefully only temporary), I was not part of the unlucky one fortunately but as interest rates remain high and activity in my sector is still in a slowdown the situation remains stressful.

The industry as a whole is reshaping itself, the cost of making titles has become so high and high budgets have never been as poor a predictor of success as it is now. Palworld is just an example of how silly a 200-300m budget can be and how an insane focus on graphics like that we've seen since the 2000s might not be the way to go forward anymore.

The problem with Palworld is its like Minecraft.  It gains a lot of success but does that mean it will change the game industry.  The real problem is always with the consumer.  Think about it this way, how many games trailers get shone and the graphics isn't on par with most AAA games and it gets panned by the public.  Hell, before the game even make it to market, its already got a lot of negative feedback.  Is the case is that there are to many games, no enough innovation or disconnect with creators and customers.  Palworld is very successful but is it a blue print for any other game, probably not.

As for layoffs, there just was no way it was not coming.  I am surprised that devs got cut but then again there is a lot of scale back in the game market now probably because cost of producing a lot of these games just not brining in the money.  Without actually knowing the inner going on with the merger its hard to say that those teams that did get cut were not holding up to a certain standard within ABK.  While we are only hearing about this now, this all was negotiated months before closing the ABK.