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Via Kotaku:
Bloomberg previously reported that the vampire shooter’s [Arkane’s Redfall] troubled development grew out of a push by top Bethesda leadership to make a live-service game, a decision that ultimately led to sky-high attrition and multiple delays.
All reward, no risk for the executives demanding that their best-in-class immersive sim developer create an empty live service shooter. Stupid decision led to predictable outcome and the workers feel the ax for it.
And they’re probably carving themselves a nice bonus out of the tax write-off for the studio closure.
Honestly wild they would close Tango, of all developers, after they delivered maybe Xbox’s only coveted exclusive (though it has since gone multi-platform). Redfall and Starfield were both duds, and I’m not sure if Xbox has had any other exclusives at all (coveted or otherwise).
Having said that, it’s pretty bad that Xbox is closing these studios regardless of if they have put out a hit recently or not. As Arkane Lyon chief Dinga Bakaba points out:
You say we make you proud when we make a good game. Make us proud when times are tough. We know you can, we seen it before.
Microsoft certainly has the money that they don’t need to be making these cuts. This is clearly the result of Line-Go-Up syndrome, and will only hurt them in the long run.
PlayStation is already eating Xbox’s lunch since Xbox has no console selling exclusives. How are they going to make any good exclusives after cutting so much of their staff? (Also as a side note, I find it wild how much Microsoft spent on Bethesda just to cut so many of those studios.)
Overall, a cruel and short-sighted move from Microsoft.
Overall, a cruel and short-sighted move from Microsoft
That depends on who and how many they decide to merge into other developer teams and who is let go.
I mean, I doubt most MS higher-ups would know talent if you threw it at them. But whenever there’s big acquisitions, there’s gonna be some house cleaning. So who gets to stay (if they want to) is likely down to last things they have produced.
Redfalls team is done for sure. But Tango Works I don’t know… I can imagine overseas based companies are a more tricky beast to handle. So that’s probably down to some cost/benefit analysis if they go or stay.
There’s a statement on this ign article that says arkane Austin will have devs go to other studios, but nothing on the tango front. They’re just closing it.
From what I just skimmed on Twitter, it sounds like the Tango Team is already working on making a new studio.
So they had a bit of a heads-up at least, it would seem.
Redfalls team is done for sure.
which is wild, because there’s clearly a lot of talent there that was just spunked up the wall trying to create a game that any idiot could see right from the outset was conceptually awful
Agreed. It’s sadly often the demands of the higher-ups reflects poorly on the guys who has to implement it.
I don’t know any of the Creative Directors on Redfall (or who else might have poked their head in with bright ideas).
(Also as a side note, I find it wild how much Microsoft spent on Bethesda just to cut so many of those studios.)
It’s easy to understand when you realize that purchase wasn’t about talent, it was about IP.
Now sure, closing these studios and preventing the development of new exclusives is leading to Sony eating their lunch now, but longer/very short term it leads to them developing exclusives with their IP at a cheaper cost. It’s just all about cost cutting to make pretty line go up.
Microsoft has certainly made games based off IP they owned without the original developers. But the only examples of that I can think of is Halo, which I don’t think was highly regarded.
Similarly (though not at Microsoft), when Shu Takumi took a break from the Ace Attorney franchise to do Ghost Trick, the quality of the franchise was widely regarded to have a dip as well (though now he has returned for the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, the quality is considered to have returned). Ghost Trick was considered to be a very high quality game as well.
While IP is valuable; as an outsider to the industry, the skilled game devs seemed infinitely more bankable. I was certain that Microsoft wanted Bethesda for its quality devs, but clearly I was wrong.
You don’t sack the team responsible for your best regarded game in years, if you’re concerned with making good games.
You’re probably right. Microsoft is probably not worried about the quality. People will still buy their favorite IP, even with a notable quality dip
Man, the state of the games industry is just sad to see. Also makes me question my career working in an adjacent field, despite my job being safe for now…
Absolutely devastating. Prey, high fi rush, evil within. All amazing games. Hate this shit. Love that one of the wealthiest companies in the world bought these studios and are still closing them. Fuck this shit
Arkane Austin was hemorrhaging talent before and during Redfalls development. In the end, there wasn’t much left of the studio that had developed the Prey reboot. Hi Fi Rush and Evil Within are critical darlings, but the former only got its player base thanks to Game Pass and both didn’t sell enough to keep a studio of more than 130 people alive (for perspective, that’s about as many people as worked on Skyrim).
I get how sad it is to see these studios disappear and it’s of course devastating for individual employees (at least in the short term), but it isn’t all that surprising. Also keep in mind that the talent doesn’t evaporate into thin air. We as players should pay far more attention to game credits and individual developers than the studios these people are working for. Talented developers are very likely to reappear elsewhere and continue making great games.
I think the blame for the demise of these studios is at least equally shared between Zenimax, Microsoft and the studios themselves. Blaming it all on Microsoft is a bit simplistic.
Idk id argue it is surprising. Say what you want about the performance of these games financially, but these studios were bought by one of the wealthiest companies in the world. Sure maybe the games weren’t a huge hit, but like… So? You have money. One flop and they’re axed? Xbox said they want to be bigger in the Japanese market, yet they closed their only Japanese studio. A studio with a bunch of talent and training that is gone now. Xbox has a huge problem bringing studios up and getting good output. Their best exclusive (at the time) of 2023 is now without a developer. Why not eat that cost? Yes I get a lot of studios are closing right now but that shouldn’t be happening at a company like Microsoft. But line must always be going up I guess
One flop and they’re axed?
I think this comes from the mindset that if someone isn’t generating immediate success. It’s time to fire them. We see this a lot in sports. Team off to a terrible start with a new coach? Fire the coach and start trading players.
It really highlights how organizations see people as disposable. If people don’t make line go brrr, out the door they go.
Yeah, lot of em moved on to make Weird West, as Wolf-Eye Studios.
It’s a good game if an out-there im-sim is what you want.
Jesus Christ, the fuck is wrong with this market
Publishers have massively overspent the last few years, hoping the gaming hype that started during the Covid lockdowns would stay or even grow indefinitely. Investors are only happy when numbers are higher than the year before and the only way to achieve this is to cut expenses. Problem is, cutting expenses almost always leads to worse output in the near future causing these companies to starve themselves to death.
That was rhetorical. I’m sadly aware of all the poor business decisions and practices
Honestly, if history tells us anything, this is probably actually good in the long run. We have to move into this phase where it becomes incredibly clear that corporate game studios are incapable of operating in the long term or putting out a quality product. That way the indie market or some new players can start to pick up steam.
Look at what happened in 1983. There was so much identical garbage shovelware being released by companies looking to make a buck that the game market crashed under the sheer weight of bullshit. But then what happened two years later?
We got Nintendo.
It’s bad right now. Not just in gaming, but across the board. It seems like just about every industry is feeling the impact of unchecked corporate greed all at once.
But that gives us an opportunity. We can replace them.
We can do things right, for the right reasons, and then when they come knocking at the door and ask to buy us out? We say no.
We say we know what we have. We know its value, and we don’t want to sell every good thing in the world to the worst of humanity so they can light it on fire to make a number go up.
I wish you were right, but it may be so that things have changed quite a bit in forty years since Nintendo happened. Indie games of huge quality and popularity still happen, but it looks like they take a lot more time and effort
I think that depends on who’s doing it, what they’re going for, and what approach they take.
For me, I’m aiming squarely at 2d, because I think it’s a better medium for focusing on story. You’re more able to take advantage of human pattern recognition than with higher fidelity, and you literally reduce your design considerations and troubleshooting by an entire dimension.
I think the difference, though, is you have to harness the power of people’s passion for their work. If you try to set up an ‘indie’ studio and you’re basically just running on a big studio’s model with less money, you’re probably not going to flourish. Many of the examples of indies that do well that we see are those who put everything into their work, often working totally solo. They’re people who had an idea and were stubborn enough to make it happen without filtering it through somebody else’s lens or asking anyone for permission to do it.
I think in the current indie market if you’re kind of sitting around waiting for someone to point you at where to go, you’re probably going to be pretty lost. But if you’ve got a strong sense of direction? If you’re not just making the 9 billionth rogue-like platformer this year? I think it’s a prime environment to do pretty well if you have a way to stick out from the crowd.
Maybe not AAA well, but if you’re an indie publisher what do you need AAA money for? Judging by the trend of studios making a great game or two then getting big and slowly watering down their product in favor of homogenized board-driven safe plays and money grabs, large quantities of concentrated money are terrible for art without some kind of protection.
Personally, I think the best way to go about it is by making indie coops with charters that restrict selling out, merging, or going public. Maybe even have some kind of provision that splits the decision making of the coop’s members across inter-related but independent coops. Like an amoeba.
Cell division isn’t just important to maintain a healthy population, it’s important to maintain the health of individual cells. Why don’t we do the same thing with businesses?
Why should the measure of success be toxic growth that adds nothing to the economy when by resisting the impulse to sell off to the literal economic cancer ruining our planet and our own well-being, we can out-compete them en masse with superior products?
What would happen if all these studios Microsoft is liquifying had said no when some corpo met them at a crossroads and gave them a suitcase full of gold for their souls?
What would happen if instead of selling to the highest bidder immediately after becoming successful, companies invested in their own potential and were able to grow healthily while actually caring about the product they put out and the people they employ?
That literally can happen, we just have to do it. We have to decide that the Overton window of economic behavior shouldn’t determine how we act. That it actually is a bad thing to let the giant bully of a company ruining your industry give you a few million dollars to stop existing.
Just like, don’t turn your business into a big fat juicy sheep and sell it to the wolf. Get some wool. Make some sweaters. Let’s all be cozy instead, yeah?
I agree for the most part
It’s just I wish indie could somehow be a developer that also receives enough money during the making of a game. Because passion is often not enough, and it doesn’t seem like that’s impossible because there’s no money to give ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t know if what I said makes sense 😅
I feel you. I’m out here trying to get by driving a cab 3 days a week and throwing myself into my work the other 4. Gotta be stubborn and resourceful.
Fuck this. I would have been STOKED to see another game by Tango.
Same here, I finished Ghostwire: Tokyo for the first time a few weeks ago and have always been a fan of The Evil Within. This sucks.
Arkane is a gem, don’t close it damnit
Most of the beloved Arkane team had left long before the closure.
This is also Arkane Austin, not the one that gave us Dishonored.
I didn’t realize the remnants of Human Head were at a Bethesda subsidiary. Loved me some Rune.
I heard they were basically forced into that situation after Bethesda canceled their Prey sequel (which looked great BTW.)
Pretty sure the studio I work at will have layoffs by the end of the year. Fuck Microsoft.
