Failure of The Walking Dead Infuriates CEO, He Blames His Devs

Starbreeze CEO was fired last month for poor sales & failure of The Walking Dead. In His last email to the staff of game, he shifted the whole blame on devs

[porkChop]

He should have accepted some of the blame. As CEO he was overseeing everything that was going on at Starbreeze, so he absolutely has some fault here.

However, he does bring up a valid point. The game sold poorly because it was a bad game, and it was bad because the devs clearly didn't put much effort into it.

It's lazily slapped together, as if the devs didn't care to push themselves creatively. If devs come in every day and do the bare minimum it won't result in a good game. They worked on the game for four to five years, they had more than enough time to make a good game.

[Cmv38]

Devs possibly didn't care because they rather work on payday 3 instead of this walking dead crap.

[81BX]

It's still their job. If you don't like your job then go find another one. It's called having pride in your work. They should want their name to be taken seriously. Maybe I'm just old school like that?

[Godmars290]

Sounds more like they were given little to no time to make a good product, switched games engines, and lost even more time they didn't have.

[porkChop]

But they worked on the game for four to five years. That's two years longer than the average game.

But even if they were somehow strapped for time, that doesn't excuse the complete lack of creativity. Every aspect of the game is essentially bare minimum.

And as shloobmm3 brought up, Payday 2 suffered from many of the same issues. So this wasn't just some one time thing.

[DarXyde]

I don't have much sympathy for him, honestly.

I'm willing to bet that if the game was great, he would gladly accept the credit for that. But it's a dud of a game that got him fired, so of course he's going to shift the blame entirely.

[Godmars290]

"And as shloobmm3 brought up, Payday 2 suffered from many of the same issues. So this wasn't just some one time thing."

Industry burnout then. No matter how much effort and passion the dev team thought they were putting in, they were just going through the motions while being run ragged. Then the game engine change, crunch time to satisfy execs and stockholders, but though they knew it was only a wet turd they pushed it out regardless.

Its not like it the only case of a so called AAA production utterly failing. If anything its becoming typical which is only a bad thing.

[Fearmonkey]

If you read the Eurogamer article, the sad part is the devs weren't really lazy. The CEO and upper management killed the game because they bought a half baked engine called Vahalla and worked on making the game with it, only to much much later decide it isnt working and switch to the Unreal engine, causing alot of work to have to be redone. The dev team warned upper management that they should switch much earlier and were ignored.

[Sirk7x]

If you're heading a company, it's also your responsibility to make sure proper management is in place to hire decent employees, train them well and make sure work gets done.

[Bismarn]

It's so strange: the blurb here, the actual article, and the quotes in the article all have the same horrible grammar, like english as a fourth language. In My comment to writer of story, I shift whole blame on devs.

[Kabaneri]

Its a foreign website.

[Godmars290]

Rather odd how someone who made the gaming industry a thoroughly passionless assembly line complains about it being a thoroughly passionless assembly line.

[bluefox755]

When you're in charge, part of your responsibility is having the right talent. So even if his devs were incompetent, it's still his fault.

[PoopsMcGee]

...And keeping your talent properly motivated and engaged by making good decisions and creating an atmosphere where creative juices can thrive.

The suits are to blame. Always.

[Stanjara]

I didn't even know this game was out.

[ziggurcat]

I was gonna say: is this game released yet? We keep seeing articles about this, and it always seems like the game is still in development.

[KeeseToast]

I think the console version is still not out, yet. On PC it's been available for a while now

[saimcheeda]

I came here to write the same

[bigmalky]

CEO's need to be gamers and join the QA team in sessions to see that the games their team is making is fun to play and finished.

The men in suits need to go, with their ideas of infinite money, lack of creativity, value for customers and ruining the passion devs had for creating good games.

[Anthotis]

They had the opportunity to create something awesome with the IP but instead made a cash grab coop shooter.

I'm glad they failed.

[chris235]

on this level devs do what they are told to receive their paychecks. when a brainfart like this gets greenlighted not the devs make that decision.

[T2X]

That's ok. We already gotvan excellent Walking dead game: Resident Evil 2.

[Smitty2020]

Pass the blame on, classic

[OffRoadKing]

What a class act.

[opc]

maybe they tried their best

[Bleucrunch]

Attitude reflects leadership..Attitude reflects Leadership....ATTITUDE REFLECTS LEADERSHIP..This CEO is copping pleas and blaming other people for his failures as a CEO...He is a lame...he earned being fired....

[Blu3_Berry]

It's really unfortunate because when Overkill's Walking Dead was first announced, I was so hyped for it. The CG trailers were extremely high quality and made me think this was going to be the first real good walking dead game with a high budget. Then when the actual gameplay was reveal, my heart just dropped. The gameplay was extremely rough and clunky. The AI was horrendous, utterly stupid/unfair and outdated. Not to mention it also seemed buggy/glitchy.

Even the graphics were subpar at most. The game just didn't look very appealing and seemed very repetitive with the melee weapons. They need to take notes from Dying Light. That is how you do melee combat. That game was very fluid but this, the walking dead just seemed very clunky and stiff.

I really don't understand why it's so hard for someone to make an actual good walking dead game. Just give them a decent budget and as much time as possible with positive feedback.

[InTheZoneAC]

If you're CEO surely you can see the products before they're put out. If you can't tell the game is not looking up to par then maybe you should stick to simple things in life, like where's the salt on your fries instead of waiting until after the fact to cry about your terrible oversight.

[OC_MurphysLaw]

When you have personal crisis you often lash out and blame others around you. Seems like his personal life is falling apart so no doubt that has added to his anger and he is funneling some of that toward the failure of the game. I think there is blame to go around on the game and it doesn't rest at any one persons shoulders. Devs and management all play a role in how well a game is crafted and put to market.

[TorpeAlex]

Every shareholder and higher-up at companies like these involved with the Walking Dead TV show, game, Days Gone, etc needs to take a course on market saturation and its effect on your potential sales. Zombies are so incredibly played-out in our media.

Games like RE2 Remake are succeeding *in spite of that* due to incredible production values, brilliant game design and its prior reputation as a top-of-its-class horror game.

[slavish0]

Great dev bad management. Where is payday 3, why do raid ww2, dead by daylight sell?, Payday 2 updates. I hope they get new upper management that is competent. I bet the devs let management know walking dead wasn't ready for release.

[CanadianTurtle]

Maybe people are just getting sick of zombie games?

[DaveZero]

You only have to look at how they operated with payday 2 on consoles to see how the walking dead game was going to turn out.

For anyone who went through that mess on the 360 and was left in limbo, I can't say as i blame them, I knew I wasn't going to be sucked in by lieing developers let along lazy ones.

I watched the gameplay and what looked the worst was the fact that as soon as you stepped out of cover you were sighted by enemy's as if they instantly had a radar on you no matter where you were. Another bad thing in the gameplay was a guy was locked inside of a toilet for about half n hour trying to dwindle enemy units down, the fact his only safety was behind a toilet door said it all.

I knew to miss this game despite it visually looking ok, the gameplay just rang alarm bells.

I really hoped for the developers to of learned there lesson from the way they treated us all, yet it looks like they tried to cut corners again. While they may of made some effort in trying to apologise, it took way to long to bring payday 2 up to scratch to what pc payday 2 was at.

They are a dev I strictly stay away from to the point any game they make is avoid until I see that they really try and make amends.