On March 1st, 2010, Activision fired Infinity Ward heads Vince Zampella and Jason West. Things were said, lawsuits were filed, Zampella and West formed Respawn Entertainment, half of the Call of Duty studio’s staff walked out, EA jumped in and got sued too, then Yakety Sax played until everyone got tuckered out. Amid all that, Respawn seems to have developed a very blurry game, which may come into focus at E3 according to a pair of tweets from Zampella.
EA senior staff has been investigated for sexual misconduct involving female coworkers, and these said people have been named publicly.
Aye just call Phil, i mean he somehow made Bobby Kotick's scandal disappear and gave him a few million dollar high five on the way out.
Microsoft did, Phil Spencer played a minor part. He instigated the buyout that led to Kotick escaping all his controversies while getting a golden handshake.
Someone on Twitter calculated that the people hired in Tango and Arkane Austin could get a decent salary for roughly 17 years for the money Kotick was paid.
EA about to go down like Activision and then Phil saves the day saying.this is good for the industry and consolidation will help create competition. /s.
Then they shutdown Codemasters and studio behind Jedi Survivor.
Atleast they could hardly do much damage that EA hadn't allready done. EA has shut down most of their studios by now.
What's up with all these horny creeps. You gon be horny, fine. Just not at work take care of that shit before you go in. Rub one out if you have to. Don't be a creep at all. ESPECIALLY at work. But don't be one AT ALL.
You think deviants care where they are? Work sometimes makes it an even better situation for them because they can abuse their power.
"it seems that according to EA, given the events transpired outside of work between two adults, and the fact that once investigation has started that the alleged perpetrators didn’t do it again, the investigation is considered closed. [...] The victim still has to work with the people that harassed her."
Yep, EA is disgusting.
I mean the fact stuff happened outside of work puts EA in quite a difficult position legally. These women don't seem to have reported the matter to the police which kinda ties EA's hands on what they can do. If they don't file reports of the crimes then yeah from EA's perspective it is stuff that happened outside of work. The only exception is the guy that apparently referenced things in the slack channel for work, spending on what he said proving it may be very hard and he may well be able to get away with plausible deniability. I don't like EA and I think these people need to be dismissed but without any legal action being taken, EA can't really do much without risk of being sued themselves for unfair dismissal etc.
EA has announced it will engage in a shareholder-pleasing share buyback program just a couple of months after mass layoffs at the studio.
Respawn Entertainment faces major layoffs as part of an industry-wide trend, impacting key titles like Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi.
"Game Industry Faces Changes"
So true we went from dozens and dozens of game makers in the ps1-3 era with so many playstation games to this crap gen.
Game companies went from millionaires to billionaires but still act like they are homeless if a game makes a few million its a disaster of apocalyptic proportions now.
I fired up the ps5 the other day say dragons dogma 2 for $93 cad regular version just a yep sure do not even get the full game $33 more than the last game new a version that was full but i paid like $13 for the first game.
I can see gta 6 getting a ubisoft chart of version's in which it will cost you hundreds to get the full experience.
Greed greed greed
They act like they are losing money.
One year they make 40 million
Next year they make 37 million
Instead of looking at that and saying “We made 37 million year 2”, they look at it and say “We lost 3 million year 2. Time to make layoffs”
Greedy Companies & Shareholders
exactly except they are basing it off of covid days.
They are making billions yet cry when it close to the million mark
Embracer had a 4% growth yes mass layoffs and all that but 12 billion? so what they could not survive on 8ish billion if they kept all those jobs.
https://embracer.com/releas...
I mean thats business isnt it, share holders get less on their return than last year. New investers see a downward trend. Projections are cut.
Its rainbows and sunshine to celebrate the positives (yay 37mil), but if you took 7.5% drop of youre income next year would you be thankful or look to find a positive?
Not saying its cool, just saying thats life, in every industry.
Gaming industry has grown so much and so fast that way too many suits got involved who don’t understand the business. Unless a company is private geeed will be next level. It’s not longer about hobby and developers being gamers themselves
Now it’s about AAA games costing $200-$300 million. We went from a lot of mid size developers and publishers to now having AAA or indies
As always, not seeing any VP+ departures or sacrifices (aka no bonus this year). Great deal...
It’s clear to me that these industry wide layoffs are because the game makers expect AI to do this work for less. Companies that are not struggling and not seeing lower sales are laying people off. It’s not market driven.
This! I've said this before. All these mass layoffs and in droves too. All to do with AI. They won't admit it. But it's cutting them costs. I mean even for a simple thing such as art they're taking over.
SImple greed. When Share holders interest come first than company goals is when everything starts going south. Companies forget what they started business for... to do games, to make movies, to build hardware. to bring something to the endo consumer. Sure, profit is to be had in exchange, after all it is a business. No one is denying that.
But when profit becomes the end all be all... this starts to happen. Companies cut costs, they look at less than stellar earnings as total failure, they fire people, they lower the quality of their product. And, in the long run, they hurt their reputation.
I guess it´s OK as long as shareholders made their projected earnings, what do they care for long term health of their investments... right?
The lack of long erm vision is nerve wrecking. This tendenc of maximizing revenue above all and shareholder worship is literally killing entire industries.
Games, movies... at the end of the day the worst that will happen is people say: this game sucks. And sadly, people get fired. But damn... plane and car manufacturers do the same with far more dire end results... cost cutting and cutthroat business practices where they have no place.
Repawn Entertainment
EA and MS partnership
I smell a new KOTOR...this would be a dayone buy for me.
YES! Give me! Goddamn this E3 is going to be crazytown.
I hope it's not a generic FPS. please bring something new to the genre guys!
Let me guess.....a shooter.
Can't wait