Hi-Rez Studios, the people behind the free-to-play MOBA Smite, had recently announced the Alpha version of their sequel Smite 2 around the start of September. This week Hi-Rez announced a series of job cuts for a number of their in-house studios. Hi-Rez was founded in 2005 and has steadily released a bunch of titles in the past decade such as Smite, Paladins, Rogue Company and many more.
Its Yet Another Studio Making “Difficult” Decisions
On 3rd of this month the CEO Stewart Chisam announced that Hi-Rez will have to let an undisclosed number of employees, stating that these job cuts are mainly affecting those in publishing and marketing roles as well as also affecting those who work on cosmetic skins and system features.
The tweet then also mentions the usual about how “difficult” it was and how it was the solution that came after a “comprehensive” review of their strategy and operations. He also mentions that while the job cuts are across their various in-house studios, the team that is currently working on Smite 2 is still larger than the team that was working on Smite 1 ever was.
He then mentions that the main focus now remains the quality of gameplay for Smite 2 as well as making improvements as they prepare for its launch next year and prioritize the cosmetics and minor features later.
Hi-Rez is just another member in this long line of studios who for some reason, can’t seem to keep their employees around. While Ubisoft and Bungie have conducted job cuts because their management can’t be asked to take accountability and instead bury their heads in the sand when they see that following trends isn’t the path to success.
The difference here is that Hi-Rez may have done this to safeguard itself in case they don’t meet the sales numbers they anticipate when Smite 2 launches. It goes to show that no matter how friendly and forthcoming a company may be, it will have no issues kicking anyone to the curb to maintain ideal numbers.
Meanwhile FromSoftware Announced Salary Increases
While companies that are chasing the trends are going in the red, FromSoftware the creators behind the Dark Souls games and their most recent release being a DLC for Elden Ring have announced an approximate 12% increase in salary for all their new graduates, which will start around April of next year.
Bungie should take a page out of FromSoftware’s book of how to run a company into the sky instead of into the ground. Bungie had released one of the most anticipated DLC called “The Final Shape” before its round of job cuts and it went on to become one of the of praised and acclaimed pieces of content for Destiny 2 and yet because they cannot for the life of them actually manage a company they still had to let go around 40% of their employees.
Developers who poured every bit of their soul into the DLC and all its features had to in the end be let go while Bungie’s CEO was seen happily buying vintage cars at auctions before publishing a blog post that contained the words “..With a heavy heart..”. There were no heavy hearts, just heavy wallets.
Hopium On Them Learning From Their Mistakes
Sony, Ubisoft, Bungie and many more are companies that will at every point try to minimize costs to keep their investors happy and/or try to keep their numbers up. Ubisoft in recent years has proved their creativity budget has fully gone in the direction of building price ladders.
Looking at the various “editions” that were on sale for Star Wars: Outlaws only for them to later realize it hasn’t performed as well as they hoped. Looking at what they have done to their once golden goose franchise of Assassin’s creed, introducing characters and plotlines that are so far removed from the original people have stopped considering them to be anything related to the original.
Bungie, while promising to keep all their employees following Sony’s acquisition of them, they still managed to break the promise kept after releasing “The Final Shape”. They faced even more backlash when it was learned that the mobile version of Destiny is still a continuing project and their next project is set to be a Battle Royale.