Insomniac, the dev team behind the wildly successful Spider-Man games just had a leak. In the leak, it's discovered that they were strong-armed by Sony (who owns Insomniac) to downsize staff despite exceeding sales targets and hitting goals. They needed to downsize to help balance Sony's books, who have acquired a slew of failing or underperforming studios.

Sony owns Studio A, and Studio B. Studio B have underperformed for the last few years, whilst Studio A has outperformed their targets. Because of the shortcomings in Studio B, Sony are now out of pocket, even accounting for the earnings of Studio A. Studio A are forced to eliminate staff roles to make up for Studio B's mismanagement. A well oiled and well performing Studio have to butcher their teams to balance their parent entity's books. It's so fucking short sighted and stupid.

This isn't just a Sony/Insomniac issue either, I guarantee this goes on throughout the industry whenever there's a parent company. It's just how it will always be in those circumstances.

[–] isles@lemmy.world 31 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Corporations shouldn't be able to own other corporations.

[–] gataloca@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's quite radical. But I agree, speculation is a big problem and dysfunctional.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 0 points 9 months ago

Having a brain is quite radical these days. Not wanting to pay for breathing is also quite radical.

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