The creators of the Evil Within games, mobile game Hero Dice and the critically acclaimed Hi-Fi Rush was shut down in May of this year by Xbox along with the developers behind Redfall Arkane Austin and many more studios from Bethesda as a way of maximizing profit, cutting costs.
“Cutting Costs” As They Say.
The phrase “cutting costs” is such a dirty, insulting way of escaping blame and accountability that it would boil anyone’s blood if they get to know what the word hides. The gaming industry is seeing a number of job losses from when the world started to reel back from the effects of the covid pandemic. Meaning people weren’t stuck at home and thus couldn’t play games as much and this along with rising costs of living meant that people were spending less time and money on playing and buying games due to working to earn that money to spend on priorities.
These company board members at this point are faced with a question, “How do we get back to the heights of revenue we were earning back in 2020-2021?”. They can try and increase the price of games but since the price had already risen from 60 dollars to 70 dollars which already left a bad taste in every consumer’s mouth, raising the price isn’t an option. They can try and increase the price or amount in microtransactions from their games but knowing people keep a laser focus on any change in prices means customers who already pay for these transactions will not pay anymore and any potential customers will be deterred off and the backlash will make them lose more money than whatever they think they can earn, so what can they do?
Morality? No No, You’re Spelling “Money” Wrong.
The answer is to cut jobs, fire people and shut down talented groups of developers who have performed and shown they are masters of their craft. TakeTwo Interactive (They own Rockstar Games) did that when they shut down Roll7 and Intercept games, TakeTwo Interactive generated 2 billion dollars in revenue last year. TakeTwo Interactive decided that these developers who are responsible for making Rollerdrome, Outer Worlds, OlliOlli world and No Rest For The Wicked should now be out of a job. OlliOlli World is an amazing game with a unique cell shade style and brilliant gameplay with a 97% on steam, Rollerdrome is a combination of Tony Hawk games with that same cell shade and engaging shooting mechanics that felt new and original compared to how it gets done by other studios.
Yet in the name of “cutting costs” these talented, skillful, creative individuals that produced these gorgeous looking, mechanically impressive games have their jobs taken away from them by board members who see their work as nothing but numbers on a screen. To be clear, they could have sold them to someone else to buy or ask the developers themselves if they want to buy it but no, they just chose to cut off their source of income in the name of “cutting costs”.
Now we come to Xbox, as mentioned before they shut down the studios that work on the brilliant, runaway success Hi-Fi Rush and Arkane Austin the developers behind the Dishonored games and the sleeper hit Prey and its exceptional expansion. It seems that the jobs of these skillful developers only depends on their most recent work, it doesn’t matter the developers of Arkane worked on the iconic Dishonored games, it didn’t matter for the artists of Roll7 and it also seemed like it didn’t matter for the visionaries at Tango Gameworks, it stung and boiled the blood even more when a day later, Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios after shutting the Tango Gameworks down had the gall to say they needed smaller games which gave them prestige and rewards, something that Hi-Fi rush did in no small feat.
Krafton Acquires Tango Gameworks.
Krafton, the parent company who owns the studios that work on PUBG and Subnautica along with a number of mobile games, recently announced it acquired Tango Gameworks along with the Hi-Fi Rush Intellectual Property(IP). They have since stated that they are working with Xbox to ensure a smooth transition to main continuity at Tango Gameworks. Krafton also stated that this is their first significant investment in the Japanese video game market.
But alas, it’s only a happy ending for Tango Gameworks but not Roll7, Arkane Austin or the most recent job cuts at Bungie. Board members would rather take away livelihoods of actual people than have some modicum of humility and take a lesser paycheck, Nintendo’s former CEO, Satoru Iwata’s action of taking a 50% pay cut to avoid laying off workers seems to be the only isolated incident of a board member showing some morality and humility. Who knows if there will be any accountability for their actions or decisions, Arkane Austin did not want to make Redfall but were told to do so and then they are now let go. Same thing with Bungie, they make these grand decisions and when it doesn’t work out the people who are told to work on said decisions are one that suffer, yet the CEO of Bungie will happily tell you about his 2 million dollar car collection after cutting his workforce by 40%.
