Not drinking, I've lived through it ;)

Marketing deciding what to add because it makes a nice bullet point on the box for comparisons, even though it's a completely useless irrelevant feature. While actual useful improvements and cool new additions get pushed to next year's update because bullet points get priority. New useful features getting held back as 'sweetener' to sell the inevitable bug fix patches. Got to have positives on the patch list!

What 'broke' me is getting bogged down with patent litigation and basically spending most of my time as the go to bug fixer, not leaving any time to implement new ideas. So since I had the means to quit, I didn't think twice about it. I did stay longer to properly document my work for the next people taking over, yet the will to make new things was gone.

And I even worked at a company with excellent work culture and great compensation! When big money is at stake, creativity and innovation suffer. After the office grew to mega size a lot of the old guard left, dreaming of the simpler times in a small company, getting things done instead of endless meetings. We went from one afternoon meeting every Friday to multiple meetings daily. Exhausting!

New talent coming in was also a problem. Training someone that just leaves again 9 months to a year later is the most unrewarding job. I get it they just want to pad their resume and move on, yet for those needing help it's exhausting to basically have to teach the ropes again and again and again.

I can fully understand why developers want to leave big corporations. Would you rather create something or be another cog in the machine?

Sometimes people might just not want to be just a small cog in a large machine, I imagine. Or any of numerous other reasons, I guess, but it doesn't have to be something bad at the studio.

They dont have to reach that extreme tho, remember not so long ago how many Blizzard employees complained about their working conditions as well. I think there was a strike? I dont recall. 

Good. Look forward to see what they come up with.

Developers working "crunch" conditions will work 80-100 hours per week for extended periods of time. I don't care what occupation you have, working a dozen plus hours a day in a high stress environments for months on end is a miserable existence. Especially if you are a salaried employee, because you aren't even getting over time pay. That's not even getting to other issues. I mean with Cyberpunk 2077 the development team told CDPR they needed more time and were ignored. Then they had to bust their asses to try to fix the game post launch which is much harder to do than fixing a game's issues prior to launch.

These highly corporate major publishers are incredibly risk averse. They are so busy trying to not offend anyone, they produce mundane games experiences that fail to entertain their audience. Games that are sanitized so much they end up lacking any real passion or edge. You can look at Dragon Age Veilguard as the most recent example of that. A game that was made to appeal to everyone and appealed to no one. It had the whole genre to itself this holiday with an established IP and couldn't even match the tepid sales of Star Wars Outlaws.

Meetings where you’re just there to agree with someone.

Meetings to hear about all the stuff everyone plans to do today, when 99% of it doesn’t effect you, and the 1% that does, you already knew.

Meetings to see if everyone achieved their goals, and then SWOT the week… and the same feedback gets relayed that’s been relayed all year. Still nothing gets done.

Meetings to plan other meetings.

Meetings to introduce the new office manager of the season who spends an hour hyping everyone up about the changes, only to see them move out of the spot about 2-3 months later.

Directors rearranging a team and process to increase efficiency, but ends up doing the opposite, slowing down/confusing the process, and then the team gets blamed. Then later on once the team starts to get used to the new system, and gets almost as efficient as they were before, the director gets praised for their successful changes.

Moving resources from one city to another, one country to another, outsourcing, and praising the asshole executive for “making the hard decision” of cutting staff that he/she didn’t even personally know - staff really didn’t need to be cut and really shouldn’t have been cut.

There’s a lot of fucking corporate bullshit that gets in the way of productivity. It’s why small companies can be so much more productive… although, it’s not better - the big problem with small companies is that they don’t necessarily have all the parts or funding in the machine they need, so some employees end up taking the brunt - working for low wages. Those that take the brunt often don’t have the energy to politic their way through leadership positions, and often get stuck in a rut they’re not allowed out of… get all the blame for when stuff goes wrong… chugging alcohol. And suffering one crushing defeat after another until they just wish Flanders was dead.

The name does sound like it has double meaning.

There's far too many reasons why people leave and set up their own studio that it's impossible to put it down to one single reason as a default, like some people leave due to executive meddling, some people don't like working in massive 300+ teams, some people leave because they just want to try something new, some people leave because they want to challenge themselves, some people leave because they disagree with the direction of the company, some people leave because they like being independent, some people leave because they get a better offer elsewhere, the reasons go on. It doesn't necessarily always have to be a negative as to why someone leaves a studio.

But I think it's worth pointing out that a lot of these veteran led newly formed studios were created during COVID where investors and publishers were literally throwing cash everywhere, there were many people who were getting millions thrown at them simply based on their name alone, so it provided a great opportunity for certain veterans to leave, set up an independent studio and get millions thrown at them, however that COVID boost was temporary and now investors are spooked and pulling back which is resulting in a lot of these veteran created studios to now shut down before even releasing a single game because the veteran pedigree is no longer relevant in the face of a stagnant market.

I honestly do get a little frustrated how much stock people put into "veterans" though, like sure, they are obviously great at what they do, but I do think fans of the gaming industry obsess far too much over veterans, I never see anything like it for any other industry where people will doom certain companies because they lose some veterans, where people overly speculate about how terrible things must be because someone left this company and went to another, you never see people this invested in veterans in other industries leaving their companies or swapping companies, Lol.

It's also frustrating because quite frankly, some of these veterans do become washed up over time, they lose their touch, just because they were good once doesn't mean they'll be good forever, I also feel like people don't give new people enough of a chance, we've got to actually give new people a chance to prove themselves and not be so focused on veterans saving the day all the time, otherwise this industry is doomed because sadly, one day all these veterans are going to be either retired or dead, but these new people entering the industry will be the next veterans.

Also videogames today are made by literally hundreds-thousands of employees, there's literally dozens of various kinds of leaders in a team, one leader leaves and the person who was working under them takes over, a dozen or so employees leaving over a few years is nothing to panic about in teams of 300+ now, yes the leaders are important but they aren't the only ones who work on the game and there's leaders upon leaders now, Lol. I really hate how people lose their shit at seeing a few people leave a company like they're expected to work there forever.

Pretty sure Pirat is a shitty source too, I remember him back when I used to be on Twitter, I used to avoid him, Lol. CD Projekt Red still has plenty of veterans and ironically, one of these studios that was formed by former CD Projekt Red veterans is working on *drumroll* a remake of The Witcher

I would say Platinum seems a bit abnormal though due to actual reports and the rate of departure but I think saying CD Projekt Red and especially Obsidian have "lost pretty much all of their actual talent" is a ridiculous exaggeration. I'll speak on Obsidian as an example because I know them better than the others but right off the top of my head I can name these employees still at Obsidian.

• Feargus Urquhart - CEO/Studio Head of Obsidian - 21 Years
• Chris Jones - Chief Technology Officer - 21 Years
• Dan Spitzley - Lead Concept Artist - 21 Years
• Adam Brennecke - Programming, Producer, Director of Grounded - 20 Years
• Josh Sawyer - Game Director of Fallout New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity 1/2 and Pentiment - 19 Years
• Daniel Alpert - Lead Character Artist, Art Director - 19 Years
• Brandon Adler - Producer, Production Lead, Designer - 18 Years
• Chris Parker - Chief Development Officer and Senior Producer - 18 Years
• Mikey Dowling - Director of Communications - 16 Years

Some who haven't been Obsidian as long as others but have already made a notable positive impact. Tim Cain was at Obsidian because he joined alongside Leonard Boyarsky as they work well together but Tim Cain has "semi-retired" (his own words) but still provides consultancy to Obsidian and other studios, Tim Cain is also an industry veteran.

• Carrie Patel - Narrative Design Lead on Pillars of Eternity II, Director of Avowed - 9 Years
• Leonard Boyarsky - Game Director on The Outer Worlds - 8 Years at Obsidian But an Industry Veteran (Fallout 1/2, Arcanum, Diablo III)

Most Obsidian veterans come from a studio known as Black Isle Studio which was owned by Interplay back in the day, Interplay was owned by Brian Fargo, who now owns InXile Entertainment, and likewise has veterans like (obviously) Brian Fargo, but also Chad Moore and Jason Anderson, both worked on Fallout 1/2 so Obsidian and InXile both being under Microsoft is like the old band back together again if anything.

I'd take a wild guess that Pirat is a Chris Avellone fanboy and thinks that dude is the whole of Obsidian, Lol.

OP living up to his username like usual heh 😯