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.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 43 points 10 months ago (2 children)

This is how any corporate ownership happens. Success is expected and exploited to cover the non successful units. Rather than retool bad units or invest in changes in them, they will squeeze the successful units as much as they can to power the rest of the business.

I have seen it personally in the travel industry. My spouse is seeing it in the food industry.

No one should be happy that Microsoft and others are buying up the game studios.

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 7 points 10 months ago

No one should be happy that Microsoft and others are buying up the game studios.

Correct, and we're seeing the consequences of these buyouts occur now with Embracer imploding. Its worse because the console makers expect their first party titles to move consoles, which indies need to get into homes. When they start to fail to move units due to dwindling quality, the house of cards will collapse for them.

We're watching the 1970s video game crash in slower motion, which occurred due to an excess of lower quality, costlier projects.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Activision Blizzard was a special case for me because they were already shit so new ownership might get them back to a neutral. I hate hating a company whose products I used to love so much.

[–] isles@lemmy.world 31 points 10 months ago (1 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.

[+] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml -7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

Everyone is so happy now that Activision is part of Microsoft. That's going to change the moment Microsoft starts the layoffs. And they will happen.

I only warned you all for the past two years while this deal was allowed to go through.

[–] djsoren19@yiffit.net 17 points 10 months ago

Nah, nobody is going to cry if the C-suite of Blizzard gets sacked. There absolutely should be more layoffs, in order to fully eradicate the bro culture that enabled Kotick to be as rotten as he was.

ActiBlizz has some fat to trim. People will only be upset if the cuts focus on current developers, which seems very unlikely.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

With the state that Activision Blizzard was in before the acquisition, the company being gutted was one of the reasons I supported the acquisition. Sucks for the low level employees that will be caught in the fire, but the leadership absolutely needs to go for multiple reasons.

[–] panchzila@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You warned us and we didn't listen and we failed to stop the transaction from happening. We are a bunch of fools.

[–] wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one 5 points 10 months ago

Warn? None of us bought the company there buddy

[–] sebinspace@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Who tf is happy about that?

[–] dinckelman@lemmy.world 73 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I totally understand the appeal of money, in situations like this, but we've seen the history repeat itself time after time.

It's really great news, that they're saying no. Look at what happened with Blizzard, immediately after acquisition. Or Bungie (multiple times now). Lionhead too, the makers of Fable. Or Volition, the recently shutdown studio behind Saints Row. The list of these is endless

Being absorbed by a gigantic corporation, just to be told they're not interested in anything you do, is not helping anyone, except for those who are lining their pockets in the upper management and shareholder ranks

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The appeal of money already stung them once. I maintain that the reason they had to release Cyberpunk before it was ready was because of contractual obligations and penalty clauses from a Hollywood actor they enlisted, in the hope of selling more copies with his name. Movies have much more fixed release dates than games and the actor's agents were the big dog at the negotiating table, setting the terms to suit themselves. I'd like to think they've learned their lesson.

Also, CDPR own GOG and have a stable income, one that relies on their current structure. I doubt anyone buying them would look to keep them DRM free.

[–] Hyperreality@kbin.social 32 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Perhaps this is an unpopular opinion, but I think cyberpunk would have been just as good with somone else playing Johnny. Let's be honest, it probably would have been better.

Keanu may be a great guy, although I assume we mainly think that because of his PR company, but he's not a particularly good actor. Film actors are also often worse at stuff like this than professional voice actors. It's not an uncommon complaint.

Not that I blame them, I assume they mainly hired him for marketing purposes, and he absolutely did help generate hype.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I completely agree with everything you've said. Also, I don't blame Keanu if he did have harsh contractual penalties with CDPR, as it's his agents who negotiate contracts.

However I would say that, while his PR team no doubt influence things, by all accounts he is a very stand up dude.

[–] Hyperreality@kbin.social 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

How would we know though?

He's an A-lister and he's represented by a big talent agency and production company.

They can quite easily squash stories, simply by refusing media access to other stars or productions on their roster.

Hell, for all we know he could be on Epstein's list. Or he could be secretly donating money to donkey sanctuaries. Who knows?

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

People knew about Harvey Weinstein, that was an open secret. There are indications, Keanu displays none of them. There are also far too many anecdotes from random people saying how nice he is.

Like I say, I'm sure his PR people help, but he's probably one of their easier clients.

We might not know for certain, but we can say with confidence that tales of his character are probably true.

[–] Crashumbc@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Anything is possible, but A-list celebrities have hundreds of people and even whole news organisations trying expose any possible secrets they have.

Trying to disprove him being a down to earth good person, is probably akin to dispensing the moon landing at this point...

[–] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 4 points 10 months ago

Selling your company is also the quick and easy cash-in. For most people that just want a good life that’s a solid choice, but for someone who really believes in what they built and their product they not only betray their vision, they also give all that future growth potential to that nameless investor or corp who will just milk it to death.

CDPR has several titles and IPs with great name recognition and future growth potential, cyberpunk for example. They also are not in any financial trouble as far as I know, so they would be fools to sell that off now.

[–] Ledivin@lemmy.world 32 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Could you imagine the state of their poor devs being abused by both CDPR and a shitty publisher? I don't think anyone would make it out alive

[–] tacosanonymous@lemm.ee 6 points 10 months ago

That’s what I was going to say.

They literally do a good enough job on their own overworking then laying off staff.

[–] echo64@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago

Reminder that CDProjekt is a public company, so this basically doesn't mean anything. There's a number where they can't say no (because the board would force it), and no one has offered that number (yet? microsoft is looking pretty desperate after their buyouts thus far haven't exactly set the world on fire)

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 10 months ago

As long as they have the majority of shares it's fine.

Else: Hostile takeover /shrug

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 months ago

The difference is that in Poland, the laws for public corporations don't require them to constantly hound for a fucking profit for shareholders.

[–] ekZepp@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Nice news. I'm glad they keep up the good work👍...

...eventually...

... with some path update.