Video Game Developer Shutdown Watch Thread - Game Company Death Pool

[Dewierra Mist]

So now that Monolith and Vivendi are both gone, will we ever see a spiritual successor to F.E.A.R. that takes itself seriously and isn't a wannabe Tacticool COD clone?

I mean a FPS that doesn't insist on using exclusively contemporary firearms but having light sci fi elements and original weapons in it too. A tall order for the discordfags of the 2020's i know. Gotta compulsively ban creativity and enforce mediocrity.

 

[oh no its pipkun]

Yeah, I got on to talk about Monolith.

It's been 8 years since their last game, it's been like 4 years since they announced Wonder Woman. We hadn't even gotten a fucking screenshot.

They patented the Nemesis system for abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Good riddance.

how are you supposed to make non batman dc super heroes fun? superman games are terrible because he's impervious to everything but kryptonite and something similar applies to Wonder woman, the flash. Monolith got fucked by terrible ip

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Wasn't Sony an all-Japanese company in the late 20th century?

 

[Vassal]

Bioware is the most likely candidate for collapse and bankruptcy. Ubisoft, shitty as they are, simply aren't in the same dire straits. Ubisoft will be bought out and gutted/remade by Tencent, Bioware is going to be shot in the back of the head (figuratively speaking) by EA at some point.

Yep, I think that, at least for now, Ubisoft is viewed as too big to fail. Bioware was too, at one point, but they haven't had a good game (and I use that in terms of sales, not quality) since DA: Inquisition, which was over ten years ago now. Maybe not, a quick look at Wikipedia suggests that both Andromeda and Anthem made in excess of a hundred mil of profit. Still, it feels like general player sentiment about Bioware is that they've been on the decline for a long time now, and after the disaster that is Failguard, hopefully EA realises that they're a wounded beast best put down before they can further humiliate themselves and sour their good memory even more. (Then again, it's fucking EA...)

Unless AC: Shadows sells unexpectedly well, that's probably the game that's going to be putting Ubisoft on a slow walk down the well-trod road to oblivion. My money's on Obsidian being the next to go.

 

[Newcomer 42]

how are you supposed to make non batman dc super heroes fun? superman games are terrible because he's impervious to everything but kryptonite and something similar applies to Wonder woman, the flash. Monolith got fucked by terrible ip

Give them enemies that can pierce their invulnerability or weaken them somehow. Ie: For Supes, wizards or magical creatures as he's conveniently vulnerable to magic, or have a doomsday plot that turns the sun red. Or maybe you have a life bar that is about preserving the city from destruction (there's a VR game that did this). For Wonder Woman, just make her Kratos with a whip and have her fight mythological creatures.
For Flash... I'm not sure. Make him be voiced by an objectively horrible actor so that players want to see him dead? Xp

Of course, all of these options require work and talented devs, who are becoming increasingly scarce nowadays.

 

[PeruvianPerun]

Game journo ( once a journo always a journo) and industry advocate Alanah Pearce made a video about totally unfair business practices of Netease. She decries layoffs of american "game director" and his totally wonderful and talented team, before backtracking and clarifying what he isn't THE director and we don't really know what his team was responsible for. But moving away from US developers is really bad and industry is becoming worse and viewers should feel bad because China won't make games westerners love. She is also threatens to release bigger video about problems in industry. I bet she won't talk about woke staff, and even if she will, it will be portrayed as problem with gamers not developers and something-something bg3.

Spoiler: Video

 

[PipPipCheerio]

I'm not even sure what this is or if anybody cares about some disposable multiplayer slop dying, but it's funny to see things die fast - 6 months

Had some backing by Shroud, apparently? Or maybe he's pretending to be a dev like Alanah Pearce

 

[Breadbassket]

Had some backing by Shroud, apparently? Or maybe he's pretending to be a dev like Alanah Pearce

He did not own the game or have control over its feature but was apparently its official lead gameplay advisor.

He was also one of the developer's numerous investors:

 

[TrainWreckWatcher]

Bioware is the most likely candidate for collapse and bankruptcy. Ubisoft, shitty as they are, simply aren't in the same dire straits. Ubisoft will be bought out and gutted/remade by Tencent, Bioware is going to be shot in the back of the head (figuratively speaking) by EA at some point.

If Tencent saves ubisoft they have to deal with the French faggots at the helm. They've already been dealing with them for quite some time already and from what I can gather - they don't like it.
If Tencent lest them die, they can just scoop up the properties and build their own teams to make them.
Either way Bioware or Ubisoft is next. It is just a question of who bleeds out faster. No one is saving either.

 

[Thiletonomics]

He did not own the game or have control over its feature but was apparently its official lead gameplay advisor.

He was also one of the developer's numerous investors:
View attachment 7124684
View attachment 7124685

What would Zedd get out of investing in what turned out to be a flopped game? Unless he composed music for the game, which I don't think he did.

 

[ZMOT]

If Tencent saves ubisoft they have to deal with the French faggots at the helm. They've already been dealing with them for quite some time already and from what I can gather - they don't like it.

they already tried that and tencent allegedly said "lol fuck off". most recent scheme is transfer some IPs to a new shared company, after shadows tencent might just wait and pick it up for cheap tho.

bioware stands and falls how much value EA thinks it still has, even if it's just the name. ubisoft is it's own company which has produced crap for years and hasn't really anything else in the pipeline, nor is there anyone at the top even willing to make the hard choice to get rid of the incompetent DEI rot to get some of their customer's money and goodwill back.

 

[KissMyTaint]

After a couple of days of AC:S being on shelves, how are we feeling about a Ubisoft closure?

 

[TrainWreckWatcher]

Looks like Ubisoft survives by fracturing into a separate entity and getting tencent to invest heavily into that.
Bioware definitely next to be shuttered then.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Looks like Ubisoft survives by fracturing into a separate entity and getting tencent to invest heavily into that.
Bioware definitely next to be shuttered then.

So they're spinning off their best and most marketable properties into the new subsidiary? What are they going to do with the rest of it?!

There have been too many examples where if you sell your best assets to a competitor or another company it just prolongs the death of the parent company, it does nothing to save them. Spinoffs only work if the other business is radically different than your old one. For example, after getting bought by Pharmacia & Upjohn, Monsanto spun off its agri-biotech subsidiary under a new company with the same name (while Pharmacia & Upjohn kept the main medical line). General Mills spun off their non-core side businesses in the 1980s and 1990s. Their toy line became Kenner Parker Toys (later sold to Tonka, which in turn was bought by Hasbro). Their restaurant line became Darden Restaurants. Both Palm and Albertsons suffered heavily after they split the company and their reformed counterparts had worse market share than before the split.

 

[Mayor Cody Travers]

how are you supposed to make non batman dc super heroes fun? superman games are terrible because he's impervious to everything but kryptonite and something similar applies to Wonder woman, the flash. Monolith got fucked by terrible ip

Even Batman suffers from power creep like all the other heroes did, he just had it in terms of intelligence and prep time than physicality or superpowers.

Thatsaid? It doesn't seem like it in the modern day because we're so far removed from when kept actually happening, but DC heroes have suffered from insane power creep over the decades. For an adaption, vidya makers need to grow a pair of balls and tone down the "baseline" powers of everyone, and then otherwise keep the mantra of "strong as they need to be" in critical moments.

Like... Spidey actually has SERIOUS super-strength on par with some non-Hulk/Thor heavy hitters when he's mad, but is usually controlled and relaxed enough he fits in perfectly at street-level on a normal day? Have Superman be like that. Obviously his "baseline" will be quite a good bit higher than Spidey, but he can thus be knocked around by super-strength supervillains, be slowed down or thrown about appropriately, etc. Same for Wondy. Flash can still need to catch his breath or only 'go so fast' normally and feel the pain when somehow knocked down during a run, make Green Lantern drain his ring's energy faster with more complex constructs, Aquaman needs a water bottle every so often, etc. You can level them up the way Batman got access to all his cool gadgets over the course of Arkham Asylum as well while keeping them within that overall baseline. All this in addition to specific weaknesses Newcomer 42 said to particularly de-facto damage them for gameplay purposes as appropriate. Like what he said for Supes but also tying up Wondy/mentally making her feel she's been, GL needing to let his ring recharge (for gameplay purposes I'll allow the retcon it can recharge naturally), slowing Flash down via some form of damage (he's not exactly super-durable in the traditional superstrength sense), Batman even with his kevlar can still be seriously hurt by bullet recoil till he's caught his own breath/regen'd health... blahblahblah. You get it.

Seriously, a good adaption could help break the typical assumption of DC heroes being unbeatable gods, but in a positive way if they went "fuck it" and did that baseline tone-down in addition to the really important detail of an amazing game they're played in.

 

[Breadbassket]

Some recent minor game studio shutdowns:
Studio Fizbin who developed the workplace comedy Say No! More and anti-establishment roguelike Reignbreaker was closed by their publisher.

Battlebound, who made blockchain game called Evaverse and a work in progress monster catcher experience called Anterris is going under.

 

[Xavier Renegade Angel]

Where is square enix on here they make flop after flop?

 

[Kane Lives]

Where is square enix on here they make flop after flop?

Never, so long they got the infinite money glitch that is FFXIV. That one is still a Shadowlands away from spiralling downwards.

 

[TrainWreckWatcher]

Never, so long they got the infinite money glitch that is FFXIV. That one is still a Shadowlands away from spiralling downwards.

From the people who play / played FF14 in my circles. They are getting sick of the game and lack of content. Last expansion apparently was really bad.
Not sure on a scale of overall population how that goes but most of them seem to be not interested in coming back to it anytime soon.

 

[Breadbassket]

Cliffhanger Games, a Seattle-based studio owned by EA that was meant to make a single-player Black Panther game has been shutdown and the title they were working on was canceled.