Could you imagine the state of their poor devs being abused by both CDPR and a shitty publisher? I don’t think anyone would make it out alive
I totally understand the appeal of money, in situations like this, but we’ve seen the history repeat itself time after time.
It’s really great news, that they’re saying no. Look at what happened with Blizzard, immediately after acquisition. Or Bungie (multiple times now). Lionhead too, the makers of Fable. Or Volition, the recently shutdown studio behind Saints Row. The list of these is endless
Being absorbed by a gigantic corporation, just to be told they’re not interested in anything you do, is not helping anyone, except for those who are lining their pockets in the upper management and shareholder ranks
The appeal of money already stung them once. I maintain that the reason they had to release Cyberpunk before it was ready was because of contractual obligations and penalty clauses from a Hollywood actor they enlisted, in the hope of selling more copies with his name. Movies have much more fixed release dates than games and the actor’s agents were the big dog at the negotiating table, setting the terms to suit themselves. I’d like to think they’ve learned their lesson.
Also, CDPR own GOG and have a stable income, one that relies on their current structure. I doubt anyone buying them would look to keep them DRM free.
Perhaps this is an unpopular opinion, but I think cyberpunk would have been just as good with somone else playing Johnny. Let’s be honest, it probably would have been better.
Keanu may be a great guy, although I assume we mainly think that because of his PR company, but he’s not a particularly good actor. Film actors are also often worse at stuff like this than professional voice actors. It’s not an uncommon complaint.
Not that I blame them, I assume they mainly hired him for marketing purposes, and he absolutely did help generate hype.
I completely agree with everything you’ve said. Also, I don’t blame Keanu if he did have harsh contractual penalties with CDPR, as it’s his agents who negotiate contracts.
However I would say that, while his PR team no doubt influence things, by all accounts he is a very stand up dude.
Selling your company is also the quick and easy cash-in. For most people that just want a good life that’s a solid choice, but for someone who really believes in what they built and their product they not only betray their vision, they also give all that future growth potential to that nameless investor or corp who will just milk it to death.
CDPR has several titles and IPs with great name recognition and future growth potential, cyberpunk for example. They also are not in any financial trouble as far as I know, so they would be fools to sell that off now.
Reminder that CDProjekt is a public company, so this basically doesn’t mean anything. There’s a number where they can’t say no (because the board would force it), and no one has offered that number (yet? microsoft is looking pretty desperate after their buyouts thus far haven’t exactly set the world on fire)
Insomniac, the dev team behind the wildly successful Spider-Man games just had a leak. In the leak, it’s discovered that they were strong-armed by Sony (who owns Insomniac) to downsize staff despite exceeding sales targets and hitting goals. They needed to downsize to help balance Sony’s books, who have acquired a slew of failing or underperforming studios.
Sony owns Studio A, and Studio B. Studio B have underperformed for the last few years, whilst Studio A has outperformed their targets. Because of the shortcomings in Studio B, Sony are now out of pocket, even accounting for the earnings of Studio A. Studio A are forced to eliminate staff roles to make up for Studio B’s mismanagement. A well oiled and well performing Studio have to butcher their teams to balance their parent entity’s books. It’s so fucking short sighted and stupid.
This isn’t just a Sony/Insomniac issue either, I guarantee this goes on throughout the industry whenever there’s a parent company. It’s just how it will always be in those circumstances.
Everyone is so happy now that Activision is part of Microsoft. That’s going to change the moment Microsoft starts the layoffs. And they will happen.
I only warned you all for the past two years while this deal was allowed to go through.
Nah, nobody is going to cry if the C-suite of Blizzard gets sacked. There absolutely should be more layoffs, in order to fully eradicate the bro culture that enabled Kotick to be as rotten as he was.
ActiBlizz has some fat to trim. People will only be upset if the cuts focus on current developers, which seems very unlikely.
With the state that Activision Blizzard was in before the acquisition, the company being gutted was one of the reasons I supported the acquisition. Sucks for the low level employees that will be caught in the fire, but the leadership absolutely needs to go for multiple reasons.
This is how any corporate ownership happens. Success is expected and exploited to cover the non successful units. Rather than retool bad units or invest in changes in them, they will squeeze the successful units as much as they can to power the rest of the business.
I have seen it personally in the travel industry. My spouse is seeing it in the food industry.
No one should be happy that Microsoft and others are buying up the game studios.
Activision Blizzard was a special case for me because they were already shit so new ownership might get them back to a neutral. I hate hating a company whose products I used to love so much.
Think about that for more than a half second.
You know ownership results in degradation of better teams.
Why would you think buying a liability will be good for the performing teams? Do you like seeing good teams suffer?
Blizzard should be dissolved. Let the IP die and talent can move onto other teams.
No one should be happy that Microsoft and others are buying up the game studios.
Correct, and we’re seeing the consequences of these buyouts occur now with Embracer imploding. Its worse because the console makers expect their first party titles to move consoles, which indies need to get into homes. When they start to fail to move units due to dwindling quality, the house of cards will collapse for them.
We’re watching the 1970s video game crash in slower motion, which occurred due to an excess of lower quality, costlier projects.
That’s quite radical. But I agree, speculation is a big problem and dysfunctional.
The difference is that in Poland, the laws for public corporations don’t require them to constantly hound for a fucking profit for shareholders.
