Microsoft firing all those people after they made the awesome Dark Ages dlc is mind blowing. How does a gaming company play that and think “Yeah these guys gotta go.”
It makes headlines, but they've only closed a handful. Letting those teams go back to being independent isn't the same, and is unfortunately not something these other pubs seem to want to do.
Arkane Austin didn't go independent. Tango Gameworks didn't go independent. Arkane Lyon is in "negotiations", which just means that MS is waiting for the deadline to let them go without getting into legal trouble, since they are based in EU. BioWare ist gone now.
Ninja Theory and Undead labs got sold off, and in case of Ninja Theory we don't even know to whom.
This all happened in less than 5 years by the way.
Independence is also not some silver bullet. A lot of these studios will have to let people go after the cashflow from MS isn't there anymore.
Double Fines or Compulsions futures don't look all that rosy.
Yeah sure, I'm not really trying to salvage Microsoft or anything. They were woefully mismanaged ever since the Mattrick days and it shows. It's just that too many people think they're gone for good now.
The only thing from that list I'd probably contest is Arkane Austin, they had something like 70% staff attrition, which mostly came from developing Redfall which afaik had been greenlit before MS took over.
The others going from independent to under MS to independent again provided a solid 7-8 years of financial security in a tumultuous industry. Ideally, they'd never had needed to sell in the first place. But they got lucky in how it worked out.
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u/Wamb0wneD 8h ago
Honestly, not that different from Microsoft these days. The amount of studios they are closing is nuts.