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[Draugoth]

"Greed has been fucking this whole thing up for so long, since I started," Vincke said, while collecting the GDCA Best Narrative award for Baldur's Gate 3. "I've been fighting publishers my entire life and I keep on seeing the same, same, same mistakes over, and over and over.

"It's always the quarterly profits," he continued, "the only thing that matters are the numbers, and then you fire everybody and then next year you say 'shit I'm out of developers' and then you start hiring people again, and then you do acquisitions, and then you put them in the same loop again, and it's just broken...

"You don't have to," Vincke went on. "You can make reserves. Just slow down a bit. Slow down on the greed. Be resilient, take care of the people, don't lose the institutional knowledge that's been built up in the people you lose every single time, so you have to go through the same cycle over and over and over. It really pisses me off."

Source - Eurogamer

 

[mansoor1980]

 

[Arsic]

Source - Eurogamer

And nothing will change.

 

[A.Romero]

Self publishing studios have survived without layoffs?

Not saying publishers are not greedy, they are by nature however I think it's too simplistic. Why would a company invest money in a project if not to see a good return?

 

[Hudo]

He's not wrong.

 

[FoxMcChief]

Many of us have said this.

 

[cartman414]

Cannibalizing talent for short-term profits is nothing new, sadly.

 

[DrFigs]

they make 1 super successful game and feel like they're above it. relax.

 

[Topher]

 

[nush]

Close down a studio, make a new one and hire staff back at a lower rate. Every time.

 

[Jinzo Prime]

Yeah, I'm sure the economy has nothing to do with all this

 

[Salty Popsicle]

A publicly traded company will always be beholden to shareholders, not customers. Shareholders only care about ever increasing ROI quarter after quarter and these companies will bend themselves backward to make the financials look agreeable to this metric. Customers may receive good products/services for a time under this structure, but the quality of the final output will always take a back seat to revenues and profits.

 

[FinalBossWithTheMostPower]

But that's the cause of layoffs in every industry, right now, not just gaming.

 

[Skifi28]

He just put himself in the spotlight in case they happen to fire people in the future. I think they should take it easy, they had a huge success that not all studios often have. It's too soon to act smug and above everyone else.

 

[Mr Hyde]

Next year he will be ebaying that shiny suit for a nickel when Embracer has gobbled up Larian and sold them off to MS.

 

[Lord Panda]

Swen continues to be based.

 

[Saber]

At this point I can only say no shit. The amount of garbage quality in contrast to the amount of monetazation is absurd.

 

[DaciaJC]

Next year he will be ebaying that shiny suit for a nickel when Embracer has gobbled up Larian and sold them off to MS.

What makes you think Swen would ever entertain the idea of selling Larian to Embracer?

 

[Braag]

The other CEOs hate him!

 

[Sentenza]

He just put himself in the spotlight in case they happen to fire people in the future. I think they should take it easy, they had a huge success that not all studios often have. It's too soon to act smug and above everyone else.

Especially given that one of the first statements he made when BG3 was close to shipping is that "They are considering to aggressively scale down after the game is done" and that a lot of the old guard at the studio weren't particularly comfortable with how fast the company grew during development.

I remember this distinctly because some users on the Larian forum joked "That's a nice way for current Larian employees to learn they are about to lose their jobs".

 

[MiguelItUp]

1000%. It's also why deadlines are so incredibly stupid, and other negative issues.

 

[makaveli60]

Yeah, why do these corps are led by retarded people all the time? I guess, there might be reasons unknown to the plebs, but I’ll never understand why does it worth it for companies to let go experienced, good value workers for larger profits at the moment and then start looking for inexperienced replacement who will likely only come for higher salary than the one they let go.

 

[SlimySnake]

"It's always the quarterly profits," he continued, "the only thing that matters are the numbers, and then you fire everybody and then next year you say 'shit I'm out of developers' and then you start hiring people again, and then you do acquisitions, and then you put them in the same loop again, and it's just broken...

yep. I pointed out the same thing when sony laid off those 900 developers. They will need them in a year or two when they need to ship the game.

Only problem is that they would have moved on and sony would need to hire from a newer younger less experienced pool of workers who will need to be retrained from scratch leading to more unproductive workers.

On twitter some devs were talking about how the industry nowadays is full of inexperienced developers who are simply not good at their craft. its because of this ridiculous layoff cycle. it takes people years to get good at something. The first two years are training. Took me 4 years to get good, and over 8 years to get experienced enough where i could say im an expert and that too in a very specific product.

An employee is an investment. You have to cultivate talent. Not everyone is a genius from day one.

 

[ZehDon]

Hard to disagree with him.

Record profits? Fire 5% of the workforce.
Slightly less profits? Fire 15% of the workforce.
Company goes bankrupt because of the above? Fire everyone, CEO moves on to the next company, and does it all again.

 

[Lucifers Beard]

Yeah, it's probably a bit more complex than that but he's not far off.

 

[ProtoByte]

Speedrunning the CDPR arc, are we?

On twitter some devs were talking about how the industry nowadays is full of inexperienced developers who are simply not good at their craft.

As per the Insomniac leak, wasn't it those people who they were planning to let go?

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

tl;dr: public traded companies were a mistake and the prospect of infinite growth is lunacy.

 

[Red5]

they make 1 super successful game and feel like they're above it. relax.

They've been on a streak of successful cRPG's since Divinity Original Sin, they've been steadily growing for more than 10 years and they're faring better than most developers out there.

 

[MrTroubleMaker]

 

[Mr Hyde]

What makes you think Swen would ever entertain the idea of selling Larian to Embracer?

I'm not. It was just a cheeky joke in response to him being cocky all of a sudden due to the success of BG3. He above all people should know how volatile the industry is and next thing you know, Larian will be downsizing and he will have to eat up his own words. Wouldn't be surprised if he too gets greedy now that Larian is the hottest studio in the biz. They all cave under their own success sooner or later.

 

[onQ123]

I said this a few weeks ago

 

[LiquidMetal14]

I want money

 

[Agent_Nobody]

I want money

No, it’s all mine!

 

[Ozriel]

Doesn’t address the studios that are shutting down or firing people because they can’t get a publisher for their games.

 

[kiphalfton]

I said this a few weeks ago

You go girl!

 

[WitchHunter]

Doesn’t address the studios that are shutting down or firing people because they can’t get a publisher for their games.

Why start developing a game when you have zero ideas how to distribute your product in the end?

 

[kikkis]

I really detest guys like vincke who are really just gaming equivalent of populist after one hit game. Lets see how vincke fairs when its next big game goes into dev hell.

 

[adamsapple]

 

[Sakura]

I really detest guys like vincke who are really just gaming equivalent of populist after one hit game. Lets see how vincke fairs when its next big game goes into dev hell.

BG3 isn't their first successful game, I'm sure they know what they're doing.

 

[Ozzie666]

Developers answer to Publishers, Publishers usually answer to Share Holders and expected return on investment.

 

[mckmas8808]

Self publishing studios have survived without layoffs?

Not saying publishers are not greedy, they are by nature however I think it's too simplistic. Why would a company invest money in a project if not to see a good return?

That's the problem. How much is considered a good return? I've seen people that said a 25% ROI is bad. And that it needs to be at least 50%, if you are spending over $100 million. That's just pure greed.

 

[mckmas8808]

yep. I pointed out the same thing when sony laid off those 900 developers. They will need them in a year or two when they need to ship the game.

Only problem is that they would have moved on and sony would need to hire from a newer younger less experienced pool of workers who will need to be retrained from scratch leading to more unproductive workers.

On twitter some devs were talking about how the industry nowadays is full of inexperienced developers who are simply not good at their craft. its because of this ridiculous layoff cycle. it takes people years to get good at something. The first two years are training. Took me 4 years to get good, and over 8 years to get experienced enough where i could say im an expert and that too in a very specific product.

An employee is an investment. You have to cultivate talent. Not everyone is a genius from day one.

Shareholders are the devil. They don't care about employee's experience if that experience doesn't generate a 50% ROI.

 

[ProtoByte]

Shareholders are the devil. They don't care about employee's experience if that experience doesn't generate a 50% ROI.

Shareholders are the only reason a lot of employees have jobs.

And it's not their responsibility to care. They give the funding, it's up to management to figure out how to use it most effectively.

 

[kikkis]

That's the problem. How much is considered a good return? I've seen people that said a 25% ROI is bad. And that it needs to be at least 50%, if you are spending over $100 million. That's just pure greed.

Game industry is hit driven business. If you can't make hits you are just waiting for your turn to go bankrupt. Ubisoft, ea or acti doesnt have 50% profit margin because lot of games fail and there is additional costs than the games budget.

 

[reinking]

 

[mckmas8808]

Shareholders are the only reason a lot of employees have jobs.

And it's not their responsibility to care. They give the funding, it's up to management to figure out how to use it most effectively.

That's the problem. Shareholders should care. It's in their long-term interest that a company that they invest in; are also investing in their number 1 cost. The labor! Retaining quality talent should be something shareholders care about. Unless........they only care about the stock price for the next quarter to increase the dividends passed out to them.

Game industry is hit driven business. If you can't make hits you are just waiting for your turn to go bankrupt. Ubisoft, ea or acti doesnt have 50% profit margin because lot of games fail and there is additional costs than the games budget.

Yeah, but sometimes you make something that's good and not a "Hit" per-say. But then you double back and try it again and the 2nd game becomes "the hit".

 

[ProtoByte]

That's the problem. Shareholders should care. It's in their long-term interest that a company that they invest in; are also investing in their number 1 cost. The labor! Retaining quality talent should be something shareholders care about. Unless........they only care about the stock price for the next quarter to increase the dividends passed out to them.

Shareholders don't care and don't really have control as long as its hurting the company's bottom line. They have and will excise regimes that run inefficiently.

It's not like these 900 people (not all actually game devs, by the by) were working in poor conditions while they were at PlayStation. Retaining "low performers" and people they have elected do not bring enough benefit to keep on (quoting from the internal Insomniac documents) in the name of "retaining talent" is asinine. There's still 92% of the post coof workforce left. Ie a record number of employees. Relax.

More than anyone else, Playstation probably had to make the cuts they did. That giant puplic leak makes it clear that they understand that margins are thinning and efficiency is low without the help of shareholders opinions.

Yeah, but sometimes you make something that's good and not a "Hit" per-say. But then you double back and try it again and the 2nd game becomes "the hit".

In relative terms, maybe. Ie you make a game that isn't a smash-hit commercially, but critically a hit, and reasonably successful relative to its budget.

Making flops or a string of mediocrity is not gonna work out for game studios today. There's too much competition between backlog titles, forever live services and contemporary new releases, and the industry is at a place where there's really no excuse to make a boilerplate title.

 

[Sinfulgore]

A publicly traded company will always be beholden to shareholders, not customers. Shareholders only care about ever increasing ROI quarter after quarter and these companies will bend themselves backward to make the financials look agreeable to this metric. Customers may receive good products/services for a time under this structure, but the quality of the final output will always take a back seat to revenues and profits.

I don't agree. In many cases when dealing with non-essential items like video games, the quality of the product will correlate with revenue and profits. No one has to buy your video game and there is so much competition now you can't prioritize revenue/profit if you don't have a quality product. And as quality starts to dip the audience will move on.

I don't think publishers are as greedy as gamers think, I think they are just dumb and have very little knowledge of the games industry. They let developers fool them into thinking their new project would be the next big thing so they make crazy deals and they get burned like that Activision Bungie deal. After being burned so many times I can understand why they would want to focus so much on the numbers. When you don't focus on the numbers you end up with studios like Blizzard that spent 6 years on their unannounced survival game that went nowhere, no publisher wants to waste millions and get nothing in return.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

And it's not their responsibility to care. They give the funding, it's up to management to figure out how to use it most effectively.

This. It's pretty much how business works.

If you make a lot of money, you have to invest it at some point.
Once you do, you want your investment to grow, otherwise you've flushed money down the drain.
Business isn't charity.

 

[Tomeru]

Why would a company invest money in a project if not to see a good return?

Why for the good of the land ofcourse.