• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Bad News for Zipper

element

element

Member
Word is spreading here in Seattle that Zipper has been hit really hard tonight with layoffs or perhaps worse.

Light on real details, but lots of twitter talk and some people updating linkedin.

Confirmed Departures (via linkedin):
Lead Designer
Lead Programmer
Graphics Lead (went to Bungie)
Audio Lead
 
they got shafted by psn being down in a big way. Not sure about the sales numbers but i cant imagine it was real good.
 
Really, really sucks. Just bought Socom 4 a week ago and beat the campaign. Thoroughly loved every second of it and am really liking online too. Curious to see what Zipper's next game will be. MAG 2 or new IP?
 
I blame the hackers for what they did , they screwed a lot of people. Socom isn't CoD popular but it had its dedicated fanbase that couldn't play the game online.
 
I really hope we can have almost all MP shooters be multi-platform and the console versions cross-platform. Online FPS' live and die by their community, and they need to have one large cohesive community, at least on consoles. Hopefully in the future this can happen. Sucks if this news is true.
 
We know SOCOM 4 made more than 190k in sales last month...I'm sure this month was a deadzone thanks to PSN being down.

Doesn't seem like a total bomba to me, but I dunno. I think the gears were already in motion before the game's release.
 
Booshka said:
I really hope we can have almost all MP shooters be multi-platform and the console versions cross-platform. Online FPS' live and die by their community, and they need to have one large cohesive community, at least on consoles. Hopefully in the future this can happen. Sucks if this news is true.
Click to expand...
I would love this to happen.
 
Marleyman said:
Another casualty of the COD craze. Sad.
Click to expand...

Not even that.

Clunky shooter series (lose some sales, but had a niche hardcore base) + PSN downtime (lose said niche hardcore base because they can't play) = perfect storm of lost sales.

Sucks for Zipper, as Socom 4 wasn't bad (not $60 or investing in multiplayer to me, but~).
 
LevityNYC said:
This news is a month old.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/04/24/socom-4-lead-designer-leaves-zipper-interactive/
Click to expand...
Interesting.

Maybe the positions laid-off "tonight" were the usuals "people being laid-off after releasing a big game". So that combined with the Lead Designer leaving to form his own team, and probably a few others that followed him.

So far it seems to be something "normal" rather then "Socom 4 bombed..start packing!!". But not too many details out..yet.
 
PSN being botched definitely stole SOCOM 4's thunder. If I were Sony, I'd definitely give them some latitude. Talented team, no doubt and it will be sad to see it let go of its workforce.
 
maxxpower said:
Damn, I really hope MAG 2 sees the light of day. MAG is best online shooter I have ever played.
Click to expand...
You haven't played many shooters than. Regardless I hope Zipper isnt in bad shape, they SOCOM 4 looked good.
 
One of my friends worked at Zipper and was one of many in the "bad meeting" Seems all told, 33 people were let go.


http://twitter.com/#!/MizzSmartyPants/status/71064781095841792
 
Cobra1 said:
One of my friends worked at Zipper and was one of many in the "bad meeting" Seems all told, 33 people were let go.


http://twitter.com/#!/MizzSmartyPants/status/71064781095841792
Click to expand...

Man, that is tough . Especially in this market.

Does anyone know what was the total number of Zipper prior to this?

When you loose so much and especially at the top. Is this studio pretty much dead?
 
Cobra1 said:
One of my friends worked at Zipper and was one of many in the "bad meeting" Seems all told, 33 people were let go.


http://twitter.com/#!/MizzSmartyPants/status/71064781095841792
Click to expand...
That really sucks, does anyone know how many people work at Zipper?
 
Oh man, 33? That seriously sucks.

Ah well, such is life. Hopefully, they can share some of the secrets to their amazing netcode to other Sony 1st-party devs before they go :(.
 
Shame, Socom II was one of the best online shooters on consoles, the series only got worse from there but it's still a tough break with the PSN outage and all that.
 
Boo, that really sucks. I really enjoyed Socom 2. Socom 3 was trash IMO and I was contemplating whether to get Socom 4 since it's on sale on amazon.
 
Cobra1 said:
One of my friends worked at Zipper and was one of many in the "bad meeting" Seems all told, 33 people were let go.


http://twitter.com/#!/MizzSmartyPants/status/71064781095841792
Click to expand...
Though she also said that she didn't worked on Socom 4, till later:
lol. I didn't work on S4 until it went live, so I didn't have any vision about it at all.
Click to expand...
So it kinda gives the impression that some of the positions laid off were added later in development, and the layoff was the result of that, more than "the game bombing".


Still sucks, heck I'm still unemployed..so it really sucks.
 
Damn. Socom4 is tons of fun for me. The move controls are one of my favorite of the attempts for move games so far. Sorry to hear people are losing their jobs. I liked MAG too so it surprises me they had lay offs.
 
While I didn't agree with many of the changes made to Socom 4, its never good to hear so many people being out of work. Most of them probably had no control over the games direction and the circumstances of the last month were obviously out of their hands.
 
Hate to see anyone in a tough spot job wise. However Socom 4 is sub par and really hurt itself by its poor quality. This coupled with psn loss seems like it could be this companies cyanide pill
 
fernoca said:
Though she also said that she didn't worked on Socom 4, till later.

So it kinda gives the impression that some of the positions laid off were added later in development, and the laidoff was the result of that more than "the game bombing".


Still sucks, heck I'm still unemployed..so it really sucks.
Click to expand...
Yea, it could have been some of the people that worked on MAG that then helped get SOCOM 4 out the door. Maybe trimming some of the excess from having the two teams?
 
Booshka said:
I really hope we can have almost all MP shooters be multi-platform and the console versions cross-platform. Online FPS' live and die by their community, and they need to have one large cohesive community, at least on consoles. Hopefully in the future this can happen. Sucks if this news is true.
Click to expand...

You don't need to be multiplatform to have a cohesive community, HALO was extremely successful without being multiplatform, very few multiplatform shooters can hold onto its base after a few months nowadays.

It comes down to having a high quality product with it's own unique twist, accessibility and effective marketing, without all of those qualities you can have a multiplatform game and it would still bomb.

The problem with SOCOM 4 was that it was not accessible (you don't need COD-type lock-on to be accessible), it did not impress graphically, and it didn't have a compelling single player campaign.

It absolutely sucks that some folks at Zipper lost their jobs, but between SOCOM 4 and MAG they're just not cranking out high quality products, you can blame poor sales on marketing but as far as the quality of the products goes they have to bear the bulk of the responsibility.
 
scoobs said:
they got shafted by psn being down in a big way..
Click to expand...
OR, this could be the result of two big budget games that were met with low market reception.

I highly doubt PSN has anything to do with this. A small ripple at best.
 
MalboroRed said:
You don't need to be multiplatform to have a cohesive community, HALO was extremely successful without being multiplatform, very few multiplatform shooters can hold onto its base after a few months nowadays.

It comes down to having a high quality product with it's own unique twist, accessibility and effective marketing, without all of those qualities you can have a multiplatform game and it would still bomb.

The problem with SOCOM 4 was that it was not accessible (you don't need COD-type lock-on to be accessible), it did not impress graphically, and it didn't have a compelling single player campaign.
Click to expand...

This. It attempted to beat its competition and failed to even match games from years ago.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Bad April Fools Attempt
News Spoilers 
7
376
SantaC replied
Marathon looks really, really bad
News Cringe  4 5 6 7 8
350
6K
Johnny Concrete replied
[DF] Steam Machine's Impact: Good Or Bad News For Microsoft And Xbox?
49
1K
Tobimacoss replied
Life is painful news: Micron locks (high) memory prices for 5 years.
News  2 3 4
181
1K
Sanepar replied
Bad Times For Ashes of Creation
2
92
2K
Darchaos replied
Top Bottom