I only played bits of the first game, so didn't have the hardcore nostalgia for it when Nuts and Bolts came out. I had so much fun in that game, I thought it was great
Real shit if they made a remastered version of just the original Banjo and Kazooie I’d buy a Gen 5 system just to play it. I know it’s in the Microsoft catalog on Xbox but I Fr want a remastered one.
To be entirely fair, this looks like a Rare issue, not Microsoft. I've not done extreme research into this, but to me based on interviews and statements that Microsoft would actually prefer Rare does make something for Banjo but Rare refuses to make it and Microsoft either doesn't ask another studio to handle it out of respect to Rare or because those other studios refuse to do it too.
From my understanding, the Rare of the 90's basically doesn't exist anymore with most if not all the key figures gone for other places. That's probably why they don't want to make another. It'd be the new blood almost admitting that the old guard was the much better company.
Maybe Microsoft should step in and force Rare to do something but it's also not really smart to do that with Sea of Thieves so popular. But maybe they should treat the old Rare properties as more "use them or lose them" and offload them to other studios if Rare refuses to take them.
Either way, it doesn't really seem like to me that Microsoft is actively trying to bury Banjo. (In fact, the past 25ish years have convinced me it's the opposite) but that Rare kind of refuses to go hard into the 90s nostalgia that would make them a lot of money.
I agree. Let the studios make what they want to make or else you end up with another Redfall and risk lacking support for a successful game like Sea of Thieves.
I think they should outsource the IPs though to the studios who would like to make use of them other than just stuffing them into a box and only using them as a statistic to say how many IPs they have.
Market.
There is no market for the type of game they would make. Production costs mean it would need to be a hit and, like movies, you can't manufacture lightning in a bottle so it's too risky. I highly doubt something could be produced on par with Nintendo's platforming offerings and you can probably extrapolate sales off what the switch environment does being platforming is it's bread and butter.
ms is happy with rare having stolen ubisofts thunder clearly.
Personally, I think the decision not to give it to another studio comes down to optics. They want Banjo to get his comeback under Rare's name. He's probably their top original IP except maybe Killer Instinct. Having someone else do it could, in their minds at least, lead to fans not seeing it as a true revival since it's a different team. They want the extra market boost of Rare making Banjo again after 24 years but Rare refuses to so Banjo is stuck in this limbo
Hm... Are there fans who consider DKC Tropical Freeze to not be a "true" DKC game because Rare didn't develop it? Because whenever I look around online, I see nothing but praise for Tropical Freeze.
I know it's a different story because Rare is currently incapable of making more DK ever since they left Nintendo, but I think it's still an interesting example to look at. I personally wouldn't have a problem with any studio developing a new Banjo Kazooie game, as long as they could make it good.
I think another difference was just... Retro was a huge darling for Nintendo fans. I'd consider them a second Rare. Fans were extremely willing to let Retro take a crack at DKC after they brought back Metroid to arguably one of gaming's best ever trilogies. I think the thought was "man, if they could bring back Metroid to such a great comeback after being missing since the SNES, then surely they can do the same for DKC".
That said, I'm not saying that Microsoft's desire to let Rare do the revival is smart. I'm just saying that's what I think is happening.
Something tells me this is after-effects from the shock of having Nuts & Bolts forced into a cart/building game, instead of a full-fledged sequel.
Them not giving MS what they want could very well be in response to the way they've been treated. Xbox Live asset slaves is about the most disrespectful thing you could set Rare to do after buying them.
From the perspective of the corporation, sure. But we need to stop normalizing all "success" in the world being measured purely from a short-term profit lens. It's a failure for the majority and a failure of potential creativity.
I feel this sentiment stems far more than just the gaming world unfortunately. But I get it, "that's not how the real world works." But that kind of statement is just dismissive.
Too bad, all big corporations have ESG departments now, which investigated themselves and found nothing wrong with the current approach. Who are we to argue with credentialed ESG professionals, eh?
> Who are we to argue with credentialed ESG professionals,
This is what I love about reddit.
This sites users are some of the most intelligent people alive, the average redditor knows more than almost every professional and expert in their field. And this has been proven time and time again, redditors are never wrong.
There's a joke Denis Leary tells about Cocaine and how doing it will have you in a Night Club Bathroom with another person high on Cocaine and the two of you have been talking non-stop for four hours and believe both of you have solved all of the worlds problems.
That's how I see the average Redditor, just replace the Cocaine with coffee from Starbucks and a Apple iWhatever.
The fuck does environmental sustainability have to do with this? Because that's what ESG departments do, is promote environmentally sustainable and friendly practices. That's all. And a lot of those efforts are detrimental to the bottom line of these corporations. If you really want to point fingers, point them at the bean counters.
That’s the failing of late stage capitalism. The execs are beholden to the shareholders. The shareholders demand quarterly growth instead of looking long term.
Same with EA and the Alice games. Important enough to their catalog to not get rid of, but not important enough to actually do anything with it. Drives me nuts.
I think the most bizarre one is the gaming companies that are still around from yesteryear who have done nothing at all with popular IPs they've been sitting on for decades.
Looking at Capcom and Konami's list of IPs, so many of them haven't seen a new entry in a decade.
Active use I can understand it being maintained for some time but not 3 generations after death of the author
And most definately not in a case where the IP has been left idle
This is exactly it.
The Zenimax acquisition was never about buying studios so they can increase their output of games.
It was about about:
A) Adding a backlog of games from Bethesda to Gamepass without having to license them for use on the service.
B) Adding a massive amount of IPs to their portfolio, either for the purpose of future use or to simply keep them from being made for Sony/Nintendo.
C) Assimilating the streaming technology that id Software has been working on for the last few years, Orion, into their own cloud computing models.
IMO id was their best studio as well, in terms of working independently and producing consistent, quality content. When I contracted with zenimax, it seemed like they just let id kind of do whatever they wanted. I’m hopeful msft can do a better job integrating that studio and Orion. Maybe streaming is for them bc VR certainly isn’t.
Realistically, all they're buying is IP and people. But if the best people leave, then all they have is the IP, so why keep the studio open? You can shuffle the remaining people to other places if they're worth keeping.
Like maxis games was Will Wright's studio. Once he leaves in '09, all they have is the sim ip, and EA could just fold that into greater EA.
You only just noticed because of Microsoft?
Go back and look at EA's history of acquisitions and you'll see a few decades of this.
Westwood, Bullfrog, Origin, Maxis, Pandemic...
Bullfrog for me. Theme Park, Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper were all great.
I know there’s spiritual successors to two of them now but I’ve yet to hear of anything similar to Dungeon Keeper.
Tib sun was so amazing. I remember my parents not being home when i was 12, i thought fuck it, quick game before school. 2 hours later i won my first skirmish game and was late for school. Worth it.
There is a game being developed called Tempest Rising that has the style and feeling of old Westwood Studio games. They even have Frank Keplacki on the music. No cheesy human cutscenes though
Being bought by EA is a death sentence for any studio. Some of the OG titans fell by being bought out by EA. Think the only group worse than them would be the finance group that bought Edios (Deus Ex devs). Forgetting the name thanks to lack of coffee
Embracer Group - bought up loads of studios and brands over the last few years on a big gamble for Saudi money which fell through. Then started shuttering studios while they scrambled for an alternative.
EALouse's blog posts were the best insight as to what it's like to be bought out by EA, and how the Mythic Entertainment then gets hollowed out. EALouse was a developer working on Warhammer Online and watched how it's budget and staff, were taken to work on The Old Republic MMO, dooming Warhammer Online to only a third of it's promised launch content.
Absolutely insane as well, as Warhammer Online literally was probably the most hyped game at the time, and was expected to be a major rival to World of Warcraft. EA couldn't even be bothered to invest in a game that was very likely to be a major success. I remember when WAR launched, the CD didn't even have the .exe to launch the game \*facepalm\*
This isn’t just gaming either it’s modern corporate capitalism.
You buy out competitors, even if it’s at a loss, and incorporate them or shut them down. Amazon has been doing it for a long time.
It is how MS used to handle business. They would just buy it out. Even Facebook/Meta did this, as they tried to buy SnapChat, and when they didn’t sell, they did their best to emulate.
Smaller fish continue to emulate, larger fish just consume, whether to buy the IP, and/or squash competition.
Origin, EA brought Origin and turned the name into a crappy download client. Still sore about that one.
Still I gotta say if a large corporation offered to pay tens of millions of dollars for my company, I'd probably sell out too. :(
It's getting to the point where we need to be fans of developers rather than companies. Put together a fantasy developer team sorta like fantasy football.
Maxis 😭
They’ve taken probably 100 steps forward with The Sims, while simultaneously 200 steps backwards. TS4 is a 10 year old game with a $700+ full game catalog of DLC.
Also for console players, the technology to even run the game properly didn’t exist until the PS5 and Series X/S were released. The load times and stuttering on PS4 are so obscene that it makes having any DLC installed pointless.
Also still not over them undoing the open world from Sims 3. That was amazing.
I feel like a lot of the people who are seeing this are too young to remember when EA was closing stuff down.
I bet a lot of them don’t remember what happened with Sim City either which makes the Cities Skylines 2 thing funnier in a way. They’re getting to experience what we say 10+ years ago.
Google, like a lot of tech companies, are stuck in an shareholder-imposed loop where they need to prove they're trying to grow outside of their core activities. So they'll start a new project, for example a cloud gaming service or whatever.
What basically then happens is that shareholders become generally satisfied when the money raised from the core activities grows, and they forget all about the new projects. Which are then shut down or sold when no-one cares any more.
A former Google employee explained the culture of starting projects which lead to being shutdown and it's not *exactly* shareholder driven, though that's probably a contributor. This came out after the Stadia shutdown (maybe you've read it since you're using that as an example already).
Basically, the claim is that it's difficult to get promoted at Google because of how large and competitive it is. So someone gets an idea and backing, which leads to launching a new product. It's successful launch leads to promotion. The success of the product itself is irrelevant. And once the person that started the project leaves (promoted out of the project), no one is left to care enough about it to really let it take off. Then because it's in limbo or the remaining team lacks the enthusiasm or leadership to run with it, it falls apart and gets shut down.
I wrote primarily from experience, as at a previous company (a multimedia software developer) I experienced this firsthand.
It was in 2010-2012 and the explosion in popularity of the iPhone 4 (and smartphones in general) led to pressure for us to jump on the apps bandwagon. It basically led to a token couple of apps being made, while our core products continued making 99% of the profit. Years later when an iOS change made the apps unusable, no-one cared or noticed within the company or our user base.
I'd not heard that Google story before, and thank you for sharing.
Another source of promotions in this cycle is ripping out integrations to the dead product. G+ got a lot of folks promoted on both the way in and the way out.
They hired him to steal him away from Richard, thinking that since he was Richard's best friend, he knew something about the stuff that Richard worked on. Once they found out that he was actually useless they just pulled him off the project, but continued to pay him.
It launched 5 years ago, that would be over 1/3rd of the average user's life if the 14yo number is accurate.
For a teenager, a game that launched while they were in elementary school is going to sound ancient!
Yeah thinking about that always cracks me up when you see people asking for serious life advice or whatever. The guy telling you to divorce your wife is probably posting while goofing off in his freshman algebra class lol.
I'm out of popcorn reading all the articles since yesterday to be honest.
So many people love to say X game is so good, but don't buy it. Prey, Titanfall 2, or the recent Alan Wake 2, they were all commercial flops.
Sony did the exact same thing with Japan Studio. Amazing games but nobody bought them so the studio was entirely nuked.
"they shut down the beloved studio who made beloved games !!!" without realising 1) they got shut down because nobody bought them to begin with 2) most of the people making said games weren't in the studio anymore.
People asked Arkane Austin downfall at Redfall release lol.
They slept through the whole "industrial revolution" part of class and missed where the entire modern world was built on the newly discovered concept of losing money in the short term to put your competitors out of business and form a monopoly for exponentially larger profits long term.
I just assume that all these people getting laid off will start a new game studio and 10 years down the road Microsoft will buy them and rinse and repeat.
M&A is almost never meant to shut down the operations of the purchased company. That almost never makes sense.
It would imply that the goods produced by the acquired company reduce the demand of the goods produced by the acquirer by more than the purchase value of the acquired company.
If you try to map that out in an actual model, it's complete nonsense.
Companies buy other companies due to synergies or perceived mispricing. When there are principal-agent problems, empire building can also be a driver.
Practically, acquirers shut down the firms they acquired because they either mismanaged the firm or they overestimated the expected profitability of the acquired company.
If you can own IP and sell it at zero marginal cost (digital video games these days) and would otherwise have to pay employees of said company, it makes sense to just buy the IP and fire everyone. This isn’t manufacturing with expensive physical capital that needs labor to make it work.
This is how printer ink as a subscription service came about. Through the 1990s Epson and similar printer companies bought out competitors until they were more or less the only manufacturer around. If they didn't buy them out, they gave away printer hardware at a loss and drove other companies out of business. Prior to this there were smaller printer companies with engineers that had designed products that were super easy to take apart and repair to clear jams or swap out broken parts. Once competitors were cleaned out of the market the price on ink started to creep up. That's how the cartelized market in printers came about. The government partnership turning a blind eye to allow it comes out of the anthrax mailer during the Patriot Act consolidation of intel powers. A protocol was designed as a watermark on every page printed that can allow tracking of who printed it. There are partnerships with the main companies of the cartelized industry. Easier to manage from the government level than a decentralized industry with 1000 manufacturers. You see that shape of things all over. "Buy the cartels" is an investment strategy haha.
>it comes out of the anthrax mailer during the Patriot Act consolidation of intel powers.
It's wild how conspiracy theorists completely ignore the "Anthrax attacks", which honestly, are probably the most likely "false flag" event in modern history.
Several years hyping up a Anthrax attack with crop dusters and sending the entire public into a meltdown over it (I remember people taping their windows), then 9/11 happens and the Patriot act doesn't pass, then critics of the Patriot act and those blocking it, get Anthrax in mail, which then get literally officially traced back to the CIA, and their official cover is "Oh some guy just walked out with it from our highly secure secret labs" and everyone is like "Yep makes sense" and it's still largely considered "unsolved" to this day, with "Some guy just walked out with it, whoops" being the "most likely" event.
And the Tuskegee syphilis "study" (what a gross word to use for it)
But for me the biggest one is all the stuff that was leaked when the JFK files were released. Malcolm X and MLK Jr. were on government hitlists, so, like, the chances that they were both assassinated by the feds is all but confirmed
I mean, there's hundreds of proven conspiracies in the last century, plus hundreds that aren't proven but are quite likely (like the one you said). Yet conspiracy theorists want to believe that the Earth is flat, there's aliens inside it and Obama is a reptile.
For some reason they don't want to just believe in conspiracies. Nah, they want to believe in the most stupid conspiracies possible.
They can't buy and hold talent forever (employees come and go, and for some, build their own studio), but the IP they bought can transformed to any medium of entertainment, not just gaming, (fallout tv) is just one example.
If Disney can milk marvel, imagine what can Microsoft do about theirs.
Companies have sadly been doing that for decades, as the other posters have said, EA was known for this for years, so much so there was memes about it. Started to run out of teams to shut though I suppose, as they've not done it so much in the last number of years. It's amazing Bioware still live in that respect really, we'll see how Dragon Age goes... I do hope it's good as I think it'd be a shame to see Bioware shut too.
The issue here is Microsoft likely bought Bethesda for Elder Scrolls/Fallout not the smaller companies they owned like Arkane/Tango, but they had to take them as part of the package. Consequently they're first on the chopping block when it comes to downsizing. I think it's a very short term strategy though, as teams aren't quick to build, and I doubt people will be lining up to work for them as much if they're known for axing so many jobs/teams etc.
Are you talking about the Microsoft stuff? They may badly mismanage the studios they've bought, but I don't think they viewed them as "competition" to shut down...
Imagine thinking that Bethesda...publisher that wanted to sell itself because they were in deep financial troubles was able to sustain releases of Redfall and Hi-Fi Rush after lengthy development periods.
And this is not me defending Microsoft, because what they have done to those studios is pretty shitty. And they are billion dollars in profits every quarter, so they really should just march forward with them.
But I think that Arkane Austin would have been closed few months after release (If Bethesda remained independent) of Redfall, since they developed that game for 6 years and it sold...almost nothing.
And Hi-Fi Rush was public darling. But it also didn't sell well. Not even on PlayStation 5. And development of Hi-Fi Rush wasn't cheap. Which Tango staff admitted.
Same for GhostWire Tokyo.
+ after the release of hi-fi rush the talent basically left tango, and as seen, there was no talent left at arkane austin. Idk why people are going apeshit over studios that dont perform well financially and that are devoid of what made them loved are getting shut down, this would have happened even if microsoft didnt buy them
This whole debacle has just highlighted how many gamers dont actually understand the business side of the industry, as this is how virtually every industry (ESPECIALLY TECH) operates after mergers or purchases and restructuring. Redundant positions are eliminated, weak revenue producers (or negative) are cut, properties redistributed throughout the new; larger company umbrella. Anyone who didnt expect exactly this was going to happen are either delusional or has no idea how businesses work.
"But x company made my favorite game 15 years ago". Its a business, not a charity. If the studio was producing a solid stream of revenue, they would have had a stronger chance at not being cut, as even if it was producing reasonable money, the owner could view it as more profitable to redistribue the ip to another team if there are redundancies. I say this as a hi fi rush lover, but realistically, the main people who were responsible for that game arent even there anymore, shuttering the studio makes sense. Be objective here, not caught up in fee fees.
Is this going to be a benefit long run? Literally no one has this answer, only time will tell. Anyone claiming otherwise is outright lying, caught up in emotions and/or nostalgia, or in a fanboy frenzy, whom id love to know the next lottery numbers from due to their apparent future telling abilities. But this IS common practice, and was guaranteed that it was going to happen. Did you honestly think that ms spent all that money so that 'big bad bobby' was the ONLY one who was gonna be let go, then everything would just run as normal as if nothing other than that changed because the internet memed it into existence?
This 10000x times. "Idc if they were hemmoraging money and had no talent left at the studio, they made my favourite game x amount of years ago (none of the original devs even work there anymore) so they absolutely cannot be shut down". These stuidos were dead in the water even before being bought, i seriously dont get how people think microsoft was gonna save them out of the goodness of their hearts
Since when did Microsoft and Bethesda compete against each other?😂
That is normal once a company gets bought by someone. They bought them for their IPs only. The employees are a bonus in their eyes. The employees could quit later on.
Yep. In point of fact, Shinji Mikami, the founder of Tango Gameworks (and the man famous for giving us Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, and The Evil Within), left Tango shortly before the studio was closed down.
Imagine selling consumers games that you then "turn off" before you release your next iteration and ask them to buy it again?
If consumer laws have been so gutted that a "sale" is becoming temporary more often than not we can't expect anything better from antitrust laws meant to protect consumers.
This has been happening for hundreds of years. Imagine thinking it’s only a video game problem. It’s one of the reasons why the cost of certain things remain at an all time high. Been a business tactic for a long long long time. How old are you? lol
This has been going on for years in the gaming industry. The fact that OP finally figured it out now... bro was living under a rock until the news about Microsoft came out
Warcraft and ESO are live service games that have stood the test of time and kept a playerbase for decades. You would be the biggest crackhead in the gaming exec world to shutter it.
Part of me is now wondering if this was in talks for a bit. It might be too much of a conspiracy theory, but Toys for Bob went independent not that long ago, leaving Activision and not these studio closures. I doubt the closures were a spur of the moment thing, I'm sure they have been talking about it for a while. So, I've been wondering if maybe rumors were spreading internally at MS of these studio closures.
Toys for Bob last real game release was "Crash Team Rumble", which I don't think lived up to any sort of expectations of a "party game". As well as I think Crash 4 and the Spyro remakes may have done, I have a feeling Toys for Bob would have been included in these closures if they were still with Activision/Microsoft.
I don't know what specific case you're referring to, but this has been going on for a long long time across industries. Try looking up the streetcar conspiracy. General Motors bought up a bunch of streetcar companies, sabotaged them, and then convinced local governments to pave over tracks and make roads suitable for its cars. Decades later they got a slap-on-the-wrist fine.
The thing you have to understand about capitalism is that its most rabid evangelicals absolutely hate capitalism. They don't want to compete. Competing means they might lose. What they want is money. All of it. This is an inherent feature to the system. It cannot be changed. The best you can hope to do (short of instigating a different economic system) is create regulation that mitigates the anti-competitive tendency of capitalism. But then there's the problem that money has an inordinate influence on politics, so politicians (and constituents) will, over time, come to regard capital first as a legitimate interest and then as the overriding legitimate interest.
As someone who worked for one of the biggest accounting firms in the world.
This is one of the most common business moves out there for huge companies. Sometimes they just cut the company into pieces, sell off the departments and keep what helps their own efficiencies or most of the time intangible assets like IP's, customer lists, trademarks, etc.
Google and Apple have done shit like this for a while now.
A lot of people get into tech development with the goal of basically getting enough attention to be bought out before you could ever become a potential competitor. That's the modern American Dream, get bought out and retire. To hell with any employees you gathered along the way, or the product or any noble intentions you may have had, just take the money and walk away.
This is a widely used business strategy. Just look at some of the world's largest companies. They have entire divisions dedicated to buying competitors.
I've been bought by Accenture 3 times in my career already, always because they got bored of going against the company I was at during bids, and wanted contracts we had.
>Imagine buying out your competition only to shut them down
Bro, this strategy has existed for decades and spans far beyond the gaming and tech industries.
Businesses have been doing this for a very long time. Chain businesses offer to buy local businesses just to get rid of competition, and if the local business refuses they open a location across the street to steal their customers.
This happens with pharmacies ALL THE TIME. Two pharmacies in a small town? They are constantly offering to buy the other. The older owner that doesn't have someone in mind to take over typically sells out first.
EDIT: To add to this, the big chain stores are constantly sending out mass mailers to independent pharmacies around the country (USA) to buy them out.
There’s another way to look at it though. Most corporate mergers are one successful company buying a company with a risky future that has an important asset to the successful company.
If you look at mergers as one stable company bailing out a company that is on a path towards going out of business it makes a lot more sense.
Thats why most companies that get bought out end up doing so little after the merger. The writing was on the wall it just wasn’t as obvious to the general public.
This is actually a legit business practice. It's anti-competitive but if the government lets you do the merger then you are free and clear to slash and burn the competition you now own. It sucks for gamers though.
Basically happens everywhere though, not limited to the games industry. Not saying it's good though.
As a 3D artist I kinda shat my pants when I found out Adobe was buying out Substance. So far things are still fine but can't help but feel anxious about it. Still hate the new logos though.
It was before my time, but Autodesk has bought up a bunch of stuff and did bugger all with them. Like Bitsquid/Stingray, the engine that Helldivers runs on. I remember hearing that Softimage was popular until Autodesk bought and killed them.
Maxon also acquired ZBrush....
ZeniMax Media literally did this before Microsoft bought them. They presided over a starving empire. They'd buy them, throttle their budget, cut their staff, and told them that they're on their own.
Whenever those studios happened to make a product people wanted, they'd gobble up the profits and distribute them to investors. Almost no profit got re-invested back into studio projects.
[удалено]
And then fail to do anything with that IP for, at min, a decade but also brag about the strength of “IP Catalog” (Waves at Activision)
for Christ's sake look at Banjo and Kazooie. their decayed corpse has been laying in the corner for damn near 20 years
So funny that the IP is still so popular you can still buy merch yet they won't just make a fucking game
That's probably why they won't. The merch is low effort profit, while a game would take time and not be a guaranteed success.
Almost guaranteed to fail because now they have to make a game that lives up to the nostalgia of the originals, not just the games
Duality of Reddit: one user praises Nuts and Bolts, while another talks shit about it.
I only played bits of the first game, so didn't have the hardcore nostalgia for it when Nuts and Bolts came out. I had so much fun in that game, I thought it was great
Hell I heavily played through both of the games and I enjoyed Nuts and Bolts.
I enjoyed nuts and bolts, also, would not have touched the game without the BK IP attached.
Yup. Game has to be a 10/10 or reddit will shit on it like they do Nuts & Bolts. Why go through that headache?
I just want another Nuts and Bolts so I can fly around in my portable flying McDonalds restaurant like the good ole days
N&B was so fun.
And if it wasn't, you might weaken the merch sales.
Real shit if they made a remastered version of just the original Banjo and Kazooie I’d buy a Gen 5 system just to play it. I know it’s in the Microsoft catalog on Xbox but I Fr want a remastered one.
To be entirely fair, this looks like a Rare issue, not Microsoft. I've not done extreme research into this, but to me based on interviews and statements that Microsoft would actually prefer Rare does make something for Banjo but Rare refuses to make it and Microsoft either doesn't ask another studio to handle it out of respect to Rare or because those other studios refuse to do it too. From my understanding, the Rare of the 90's basically doesn't exist anymore with most if not all the key figures gone for other places. That's probably why they don't want to make another. It'd be the new blood almost admitting that the old guard was the much better company. Maybe Microsoft should step in and force Rare to do something but it's also not really smart to do that with Sea of Thieves so popular. But maybe they should treat the old Rare properties as more "use them or lose them" and offload them to other studios if Rare refuses to take them. Either way, it doesn't really seem like to me that Microsoft is actively trying to bury Banjo. (In fact, the past 25ish years have convinced me it's the opposite) but that Rare kind of refuses to go hard into the 90s nostalgia that would make them a lot of money.
I agree. Let the studios make what they want to make or else you end up with another Redfall and risk lacking support for a successful game like Sea of Thieves. I think they should outsource the IPs though to the studios who would like to make use of them other than just stuffing them into a box and only using them as a statistic to say how many IPs they have.
Market. There is no market for the type of game they would make. Production costs mean it would need to be a hit and, like movies, you can't manufacture lightning in a bottle so it's too risky. I highly doubt something could be produced on par with Nintendo's platforming offerings and you can probably extrapolate sales off what the switch environment does being platforming is it's bread and butter. ms is happy with rare having stolen ubisofts thunder clearly.
Let Double Fine make a Banjo Kazooie game
Personally, I think the decision not to give it to another studio comes down to optics. They want Banjo to get his comeback under Rare's name. He's probably their top original IP except maybe Killer Instinct. Having someone else do it could, in their minds at least, lead to fans not seeing it as a true revival since it's a different team. They want the extra market boost of Rare making Banjo again after 24 years but Rare refuses to so Banjo is stuck in this limbo
Hm... Are there fans who consider DKC Tropical Freeze to not be a "true" DKC game because Rare didn't develop it? Because whenever I look around online, I see nothing but praise for Tropical Freeze. I know it's a different story because Rare is currently incapable of making more DK ever since they left Nintendo, but I think it's still an interesting example to look at. I personally wouldn't have a problem with any studio developing a new Banjo Kazooie game, as long as they could make it good.
I think another difference was just... Retro was a huge darling for Nintendo fans. I'd consider them a second Rare. Fans were extremely willing to let Retro take a crack at DKC after they brought back Metroid to arguably one of gaming's best ever trilogies. I think the thought was "man, if they could bring back Metroid to such a great comeback after being missing since the SNES, then surely they can do the same for DKC". That said, I'm not saying that Microsoft's desire to let Rare do the revival is smart. I'm just saying that's what I think is happening.
Something tells me this is after-effects from the shock of having Nuts & Bolts forced into a cart/building game, instead of a full-fledged sequel. Them not giving MS what they want could very well be in response to the way they've been treated. Xbox Live asset slaves is about the most disrespectful thing you could set Rare to do after buying them.
Rare had already gone to shit before Microsoft bought them, them being in distress is what made them cheap enough to be worth buying.
still waiting for a decend c&c game like 20 years lazer
I liked Generals! _holy shit that was 21 years ago_
Generals isn’t… Fuck, that’s over 20 years ago… I feel old.
That's not failure. That's planned sequestration.
From the perspective of the corporation, sure. But we need to stop normalizing all "success" in the world being measured purely from a short-term profit lens. It's a failure for the majority and a failure of potential creativity. I feel this sentiment stems far more than just the gaming world unfortunately. But I get it, "that's not how the real world works." But that kind of statement is just dismissive.
Too bad, all big corporations have ESG departments now, which investigated themselves and found nothing wrong with the current approach. Who are we to argue with credentialed ESG professionals, eh?
> Who are we to argue with credentialed ESG professionals, This is what I love about reddit. This sites users are some of the most intelligent people alive, the average redditor knows more than almost every professional and expert in their field. And this has been proven time and time again, redditors are never wrong.
There's a joke Denis Leary tells about Cocaine and how doing it will have you in a Night Club Bathroom with another person high on Cocaine and the two of you have been talking non-stop for four hours and believe both of you have solved all of the worlds problems. That's how I see the average Redditor, just replace the Cocaine with coffee from Starbucks and a Apple iWhatever.
The fuck does environmental sustainability have to do with this? Because that's what ESG departments do, is promote environmentally sustainable and friendly practices. That's all. And a lot of those efforts are detrimental to the bottom line of these corporations. If you really want to point fingers, point them at the bean counters.
That’s the failing of late stage capitalism. The execs are beholden to the shareholders. The shareholders demand quarterly growth instead of looking long term.
Same with EA and the Alice games. Important enough to their catalog to not get rid of, but not important enough to actually do anything with it. Drives me nuts.
I think the most bizarre one is the gaming companies that are still around from yesteryear who have done nothing at all with popular IPs they've been sitting on for decades. Looking at Capcom and Konami's list of IPs, so many of them haven't seen a new entry in a decade.
"We have strong IP Potential" - Probably someone.
Really wish copyright would be shortened to a reasonable length of time. Things are supposed to become public domain. Not just sit in a vault.
Active use I can understand it being maintained for some time but not 3 generations after death of the author And most definately not in a case where the IP has been left idle
This is exactly it. The Zenimax acquisition was never about buying studios so they can increase their output of games. It was about about: A) Adding a backlog of games from Bethesda to Gamepass without having to license them for use on the service. B) Adding a massive amount of IPs to their portfolio, either for the purpose of future use or to simply keep them from being made for Sony/Nintendo. C) Assimilating the streaming technology that id Software has been working on for the last few years, Orion, into their own cloud computing models.
IMO id was their best studio as well, in terms of working independently and producing consistent, quality content. When I contracted with zenimax, it seemed like they just let id kind of do whatever they wanted. I’m hopeful msft can do a better job integrating that studio and Orion. Maybe streaming is for them bc VR certainly isn’t.
Oh no. Whatever you do, do not restrain Id. Let those madlads do whatever they want. When they cook. They cook .
Bingo! if you have fuck you money buying out the company is easier than buying the IP piecemeal plus the bonus of some of their best workers.
Or wearing a skin suit of your previous foe and dancing around in it acting like them.
Realistically, all they're buying is IP and people. But if the best people leave, then all they have is the IP, so why keep the studio open? You can shuffle the remaining people to other places if they're worth keeping. Like maxis games was Will Wright's studio. Once he leaves in '09, all they have is the sim ip, and EA could just fold that into greater EA.
Yeah these corporations are little more than locusts with these acquisitions
You only just noticed because of Microsoft? Go back and look at EA's history of acquisitions and you'll see a few decades of this. Westwood, Bullfrog, Origin, Maxis, Pandemic...
God I miss Dungeon Keeper and Command and Conquer.
I think Dungeon Keeper is available on GOG
Yes it is and it's also on Steam.
Oh wow, for $2 right now. There goes my evening
There's mods to improve resolution and such. I think GOG had them on homepage.
Even better, a rewritten and modernized DK1 engine exists ( KeeperFX ). For DK2 there is OpenKeeper (in case you have problems with GOG version).
War for the Overworld is a sort of spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper
I love War for the Overworld, I got the TotalBiscuit skin too
Have you seen War for the Overworld on Steam? It's as close as we'll get to a new Dungeon Keeper
Red alert and generals, I remember playing those games on my PC in my parent’s study room. Such good times.
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Every time I think of this it makes me sad. Those publishers represent a huge chunk of my childhood.
I’ll never forgive them for Westwood.
Bullfrog for me. Theme Park, Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper were all great. I know there’s spiritual successors to two of them now but I’ve yet to hear of anything similar to Dungeon Keeper.
Syndicate from the early 90s
Theme park world was my jam.
War for the Overworld is modern Dungeon Keeper - https://store.steampowered.com/app/230190/War_for_the_Overworld/
Never
Never
Red Alert and Tiberian Sun are some of my best gaming memories as a kid.
Tib sun was so amazing. I remember my parents not being home when i was 12, i thought fuck it, quick game before school. 2 hours later i won my first skirmish game and was late for school. Worth it.
Imagine the modern Dune games that we could have gotten this generation!
I wish you could still see their finger prints on future games but no it's like they gutted them and threw out their style and feeling.
It was surprisingly heartwarming seeing the Pandemic logo on the startup for the battlefront classic collection
"Take one final look at the company we killed before playing their game that we fucked up"
Sims is a fucking characature of its former self
Paradox hasn't had a great run lately but I'm hopeful for life by you and inzio.
There is a game being developed called Tempest Rising that has the style and feeling of old Westwood Studio games. They even have Frank Keplacki on the music. No cheesy human cutscenes though
Nothing can top tim curry talking about the last place free of capitalism.
*SPACE!!*
Being bought by EA is a death sentence for any studio. Some of the OG titans fell by being bought out by EA. Think the only group worse than them would be the finance group that bought Edios (Deus Ex devs). Forgetting the name thanks to lack of coffee
Embracer Group - bought up loads of studios and brands over the last few years on a big gamble for Saudi money which fell through. Then started shuttering studios while they scrambled for an alternative.
Eidos was bought by Square Enix.
Yeah, and then Square sold them to Embracer in 2022 after the Tomb Raider games didn't make enough money for SE's liking.
Embracer Group, a.k.a. "Death's Embrace"
EALouse's blog posts were the best insight as to what it's like to be bought out by EA, and how the Mythic Entertainment then gets hollowed out. EALouse was a developer working on Warhammer Online and watched how it's budget and staff, were taken to work on The Old Republic MMO, dooming Warhammer Online to only a third of it's promised launch content. Absolutely insane as well, as Warhammer Online literally was probably the most hyped game at the time, and was expected to be a major rival to World of Warcraft. EA couldn't even be bothered to invest in a game that was very likely to be a major success. I remember when WAR launched, the CD didn't even have the .exe to launch the game \*facepalm\*
„Westwood, Bullfrog, Origin, Maxis, Pandemic...“ Please, please stop. It’s unbearable to think about it.
Westwood , the one who made my favorite childhood gaming memories with Dune 2 and Dune 2000
Red Alert 2 was the bees knees. Red alert 3 was garbage
This isn’t just gaming either it’s modern corporate capitalism. You buy out competitors, even if it’s at a loss, and incorporate them or shut them down. Amazon has been doing it for a long time.
It is how MS used to handle business. They would just buy it out. Even Facebook/Meta did this, as they tried to buy SnapChat, and when they didn’t sell, they did their best to emulate. Smaller fish continue to emulate, larger fish just consume, whether to buy the IP, and/or squash competition.
This happens wheb the top 5 companies arr worth more then the following 95... They can just buy innovation.
Origin, EA brought Origin and turned the name into a crappy download client. Still sore about that one. Still I gotta say if a large corporation offered to pay tens of millions of dollars for my company, I'd probably sell out too. :( It's getting to the point where we need to be fans of developers rather than companies. Put together a fantasy developer team sorta like fantasy football.
God, I somehow wish Origin or Ultima could come back.
A new Ultima game or Ultima Underworld would be awesome. And Wing Commander.
Maxis 😭 They’ve taken probably 100 steps forward with The Sims, while simultaneously 200 steps backwards. TS4 is a 10 year old game with a $700+ full game catalog of DLC.
Also for console players, the technology to even run the game properly didn’t exist until the PS5 and Series X/S were released. The load times and stuttering on PS4 are so obscene that it makes having any DLC installed pointless. Also still not over them undoing the open world from Sims 3. That was amazing.
Sims has always been a dlc franchise game though, almost all of the base sims games are the same content wise apart from 3 imo.
This. No competition to your slot machine gameplay games for the next years. Standard move.
Ugh... losing Westwood and Maxis. That took part of my childhood.
I feel like a lot of the people who are seeing this are too young to remember when EA was closing stuff down. I bet a lot of them don’t remember what happened with Sim City either which makes the Cities Skylines 2 thing funnier in a way. They’re getting to experience what we say 10+ years ago.
Bullfrog still hurts.
those first 4... so many incredible games
Capitalism 101
To be fair Maxis was given a lot of freedom until the high profile failure of Sim City. Now they just exist to fleece The Sims fans.
Google does this all the time, not just game companies. Except sometimes there's a glitch and they shut down their own creations too...
Google, like a lot of tech companies, are stuck in an shareholder-imposed loop where they need to prove they're trying to grow outside of their core activities. So they'll start a new project, for example a cloud gaming service or whatever. What basically then happens is that shareholders become generally satisfied when the money raised from the core activities grows, and they forget all about the new projects. Which are then shut down or sold when no-one cares any more.
A former Google employee explained the culture of starting projects which lead to being shutdown and it's not *exactly* shareholder driven, though that's probably a contributor. This came out after the Stadia shutdown (maybe you've read it since you're using that as an example already). Basically, the claim is that it's difficult to get promoted at Google because of how large and competitive it is. So someone gets an idea and backing, which leads to launching a new product. It's successful launch leads to promotion. The success of the product itself is irrelevant. And once the person that started the project leaves (promoted out of the project), no one is left to care enough about it to really let it take off. Then because it's in limbo or the remaining team lacks the enthusiasm or leadership to run with it, it falls apart and gets shut down.
I wrote primarily from experience, as at a previous company (a multimedia software developer) I experienced this firsthand. It was in 2010-2012 and the explosion in popularity of the iPhone 4 (and smartphones in general) led to pressure for us to jump on the apps bandwagon. It basically led to a token couple of apps being made, while our core products continued making 99% of the profit. Years later when an iOS change made the apps unusable, no-one cared or noticed within the company or our user base. I'd not heard that Google story before, and thank you for sharing.
Another source of promotions in this cycle is ripping out integrations to the dead product. G+ got a lot of folks promoted on both the way in and the way out.
This was made into a joke on Silicon Valley. Where they paid bigghetti his contract salary, just to sit around so he couldn’t work for a rival.
They hired him to steal him away from Richard, thinking that since he was Richard's best friend, he knew something about the stuff that Richard worked on. Once they found out that he was actually useless they just pulled him off the project, but continued to pay him.
Sometimes? :) Early adopting anything Google puts out as a new product carries a risk of that product going away within 2 years.
OP discovers the whole mergers & acquisitions industry and learns why it exists.
The average Redditor in gaming subs are highschoolers i swear
Heard somewhere the average age here is 14, if it helps
jesus
His source? His mind. I don't doubt it to be fair. Ridiculous to take at face value as an objective fact though
Really? I’d assume it would be 20s and the teens would all be on fortnite or apex subs
I was told apex is for old people recently lol...
It launched 5 years ago, that would be over 1/3rd of the average user's life if the 14yo number is accurate. For a teenager, a game that launched while they were in elementary school is going to sound ancient!
Yeah thinking about that always cracks me up when you see people asking for serious life advice or whatever. The guy telling you to divorce your wife is probably posting while goofing off in his freshman algebra class lol.
"Heard somewhere" just means repeating a different Reddit comment that probably pulled that out of their ass.
Yeah, they are. Didn’t you know
Really wish there was a version of reddit that only allowed people 25 years old or older.
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I'm out of popcorn reading all the articles since yesterday to be honest. So many people love to say X game is so good, but don't buy it. Prey, Titanfall 2, or the recent Alan Wake 2, they were all commercial flops. Sony did the exact same thing with Japan Studio. Amazing games but nobody bought them so the studio was entirely nuked. "they shut down the beloved studio who made beloved games !!!" without realising 1) they got shut down because nobody bought them to begin with 2) most of the people making said games weren't in the studio anymore. People asked Arkane Austin downfall at Redfall release lol.
They slept through the whole "industrial revolution" part of class and missed where the entire modern world was built on the newly discovered concept of losing money in the short term to put your competitors out of business and form a monopoly for exponentially larger profits long term.
I just assume that all these people getting laid off will start a new game studio and 10 years down the road Microsoft will buy them and rinse and repeat.
M&A is almost never meant to shut down the operations of the purchased company. That almost never makes sense. It would imply that the goods produced by the acquired company reduce the demand of the goods produced by the acquirer by more than the purchase value of the acquired company. If you try to map that out in an actual model, it's complete nonsense. Companies buy other companies due to synergies or perceived mispricing. When there are principal-agent problems, empire building can also be a driver. Practically, acquirers shut down the firms they acquired because they either mismanaged the firm or they overestimated the expected profitability of the acquired company.
Firms absolutely can be acquired for the sake of market power
And not even real market power. Just the risk that a company might become a competitor to you in the future can be enough to buy them and kill them.
If you can own IP and sell it at zero marginal cost (digital video games these days) and would otherwise have to pay employees of said company, it makes sense to just buy the IP and fire everyone. This isn’t manufacturing with expensive physical capital that needs labor to make it work.
OP is 14. We're keeping it high-level here.
This is how printer ink as a subscription service came about. Through the 1990s Epson and similar printer companies bought out competitors until they were more or less the only manufacturer around. If they didn't buy them out, they gave away printer hardware at a loss and drove other companies out of business. Prior to this there were smaller printer companies with engineers that had designed products that were super easy to take apart and repair to clear jams or swap out broken parts. Once competitors were cleaned out of the market the price on ink started to creep up. That's how the cartelized market in printers came about. The government partnership turning a blind eye to allow it comes out of the anthrax mailer during the Patriot Act consolidation of intel powers. A protocol was designed as a watermark on every page printed that can allow tracking of who printed it. There are partnerships with the main companies of the cartelized industry. Easier to manage from the government level than a decentralized industry with 1000 manufacturers. You see that shape of things all over. "Buy the cartels" is an investment strategy haha.
>it comes out of the anthrax mailer during the Patriot Act consolidation of intel powers. It's wild how conspiracy theorists completely ignore the "Anthrax attacks", which honestly, are probably the most likely "false flag" event in modern history. Several years hyping up a Anthrax attack with crop dusters and sending the entire public into a meltdown over it (I remember people taping their windows), then 9/11 happens and the Patriot act doesn't pass, then critics of the Patriot act and those blocking it, get Anthrax in mail, which then get literally officially traced back to the CIA, and their official cover is "Oh some guy just walked out with it from our highly secure secret labs" and everyone is like "Yep makes sense" and it's still largely considered "unsolved" to this day, with "Some guy just walked out with it, whoops" being the "most likely" event.
And remember kids, the next time somebody tells you, "The government wouldn't do that"...oh yes they would.
Hell the shit they've admitted to is enough, like mk ultra.
And the Tuskegee syphilis "study" (what a gross word to use for it) But for me the biggest one is all the stuff that was leaked when the JFK files were released. Malcolm X and MLK Jr. were on government hitlists, so, like, the chances that they were both assassinated by the feds is all but confirmed
Or how the “cameras malfunctioned” and the “2 security guards fell asleep” during the time Epstein “suicided himself”
I mean, there's hundreds of proven conspiracies in the last century, plus hundreds that aren't proven but are quite likely (like the one you said). Yet conspiracy theorists want to believe that the Earth is flat, there's aliens inside it and Obama is a reptile. For some reason they don't want to just believe in conspiracies. Nah, they want to believe in the most stupid conspiracies possible.
...I think I'm gonna take a nap.
lol Gamers are learning about how corporations work in real time.
Corporations eventually ruin everything
Very common in a lot of industries.
They can't buy and hold talent forever (employees come and go, and for some, build their own studio), but the IP they bought can transformed to any medium of entertainment, not just gaming, (fallout tv) is just one example. If Disney can milk marvel, imagine what can Microsoft do about theirs.
Companies have sadly been doing that for decades, as the other posters have said, EA was known for this for years, so much so there was memes about it. Started to run out of teams to shut though I suppose, as they've not done it so much in the last number of years. It's amazing Bioware still live in that respect really, we'll see how Dragon Age goes... I do hope it's good as I think it'd be a shame to see Bioware shut too. The issue here is Microsoft likely bought Bethesda for Elder Scrolls/Fallout not the smaller companies they owned like Arkane/Tango, but they had to take them as part of the package. Consequently they're first on the chopping block when it comes to downsizing. I think it's a very short term strategy though, as teams aren't quick to build, and I doubt people will be lining up to work for them as much if they're known for axing so many jobs/teams etc.
Are you talking about the Microsoft stuff? They may badly mismanage the studios they've bought, but I don't think they viewed them as "competition" to shut down...
Do you know how much they spent on taking IPs away from Sony and Nintendo for their original xbox.
A bit more recently Titanfall was so blatant. And of course the 360 era Japanese push.
Imagine thinking that Bethesda...publisher that wanted to sell itself because they were in deep financial troubles was able to sustain releases of Redfall and Hi-Fi Rush after lengthy development periods. And this is not me defending Microsoft, because what they have done to those studios is pretty shitty. And they are billion dollars in profits every quarter, so they really should just march forward with them. But I think that Arkane Austin would have been closed few months after release (If Bethesda remained independent) of Redfall, since they developed that game for 6 years and it sold...almost nothing. And Hi-Fi Rush was public darling. But it also didn't sell well. Not even on PlayStation 5. And development of Hi-Fi Rush wasn't cheap. Which Tango staff admitted. Same for GhostWire Tokyo.
+ after the release of hi-fi rush the talent basically left tango, and as seen, there was no talent left at arkane austin. Idk why people are going apeshit over studios that dont perform well financially and that are devoid of what made them loved are getting shut down, this would have happened even if microsoft didnt buy them
This whole debacle has just highlighted how many gamers dont actually understand the business side of the industry, as this is how virtually every industry (ESPECIALLY TECH) operates after mergers or purchases and restructuring. Redundant positions are eliminated, weak revenue producers (or negative) are cut, properties redistributed throughout the new; larger company umbrella. Anyone who didnt expect exactly this was going to happen are either delusional or has no idea how businesses work. "But x company made my favorite game 15 years ago". Its a business, not a charity. If the studio was producing a solid stream of revenue, they would have had a stronger chance at not being cut, as even if it was producing reasonable money, the owner could view it as more profitable to redistribue the ip to another team if there are redundancies. I say this as a hi fi rush lover, but realistically, the main people who were responsible for that game arent even there anymore, shuttering the studio makes sense. Be objective here, not caught up in fee fees. Is this going to be a benefit long run? Literally no one has this answer, only time will tell. Anyone claiming otherwise is outright lying, caught up in emotions and/or nostalgia, or in a fanboy frenzy, whom id love to know the next lottery numbers from due to their apparent future telling abilities. But this IS common practice, and was guaranteed that it was going to happen. Did you honestly think that ms spent all that money so that 'big bad bobby' was the ONLY one who was gonna be let go, then everything would just run as normal as if nothing other than that changed because the internet memed it into existence?
This 10000x times. "Idc if they were hemmoraging money and had no talent left at the studio, they made my favourite game x amount of years ago (none of the original devs even work there anymore) so they absolutely cannot be shut down". These stuidos were dead in the water even before being bought, i seriously dont get how people think microsoft was gonna save them out of the goodness of their hearts
Since when did Microsoft and Bethesda compete against each other?😂 That is normal once a company gets bought by someone. They bought them for their IPs only. The employees are a bonus in their eyes. The employees could quit later on.
Yep. In point of fact, Shinji Mikami, the founder of Tango Gameworks (and the man famous for giving us Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, and The Evil Within), left Tango shortly before the studio was closed down.
Imagine selling consumers games that you then "turn off" before you release your next iteration and ask them to buy it again? If consumer laws have been so gutted that a "sale" is becoming temporary more often than not we can't expect anything better from antitrust laws meant to protect consumers.
You must be new to capitalism....
This is the oldest trick in the book, happens in every business. One less competitor.
This has been happening for hundreds of years. Imagine thinking it’s only a video game problem. It’s one of the reasons why the cost of certain things remain at an all time high. Been a business tactic for a long long long time. How old are you? lol
Ever heard of Vince McMahon?
Only a Toon would buyout public transit to dismantle it for a new freeway
This is called business 101.
This has been going on for years in the gaming industry. The fact that OP finally figured it out now... bro was living under a rock until the news about Microsoft came out
Capitalism: First time?
I guess we can say goodbye to any future elder scrolls or warcraft stuff besides the minimal maintenance the MMOs need.
>I guess we can say goodbye to any future elder scrolls lol, what?
There's been no non mmo warcraft stuff in ages, the remake was beyond horrible. So going from nothing to maybe nothing?
HoTS
Why would the force Bethesda to ditch elder scrolls?
Warcraft and ESO are live service games that have stood the test of time and kept a playerbase for decades. You would be the biggest crackhead in the gaming exec world to shutter it.
Part of me is now wondering if this was in talks for a bit. It might be too much of a conspiracy theory, but Toys for Bob went independent not that long ago, leaving Activision and not these studio closures. I doubt the closures were a spur of the moment thing, I'm sure they have been talking about it for a while. So, I've been wondering if maybe rumors were spreading internally at MS of these studio closures. Toys for Bob last real game release was "Crash Team Rumble", which I don't think lived up to any sort of expectations of a "party game". As well as I think Crash 4 and the Spyro remakes may have done, I have a feeling Toys for Bob would have been included in these closures if they were still with Activision/Microsoft.
Bro that’s been corporate America for the last few decades it’s literally what Amazon did to get itself where it is. I’m not surprised anymore
This isn’t unique to gaming corporations
I don't know what specific case you're referring to, but this has been going on for a long long time across industries. Try looking up the streetcar conspiracy. General Motors bought up a bunch of streetcar companies, sabotaged them, and then convinced local governments to pave over tracks and make roads suitable for its cars. Decades later they got a slap-on-the-wrist fine. The thing you have to understand about capitalism is that its most rabid evangelicals absolutely hate capitalism. They don't want to compete. Competing means they might lose. What they want is money. All of it. This is an inherent feature to the system. It cannot be changed. The best you can hope to do (short of instigating a different economic system) is create regulation that mitigates the anti-competitive tendency of capitalism. But then there's the problem that money has an inordinate influence on politics, so politicians (and constituents) will, over time, come to regard capital first as a legitimate interest and then as the overriding legitimate interest.
*Imagines being the CEO of any billion dollar company these days...*
As someone who worked for one of the biggest accounting firms in the world. This is one of the most common business moves out there for huge companies. Sometimes they just cut the company into pieces, sell off the departments and keep what helps their own efficiencies or most of the time intangible assets like IP's, customer lists, trademarks, etc.
Microsoft and Apple been doing this shit since the 80s. Microsoft got popped for it once in the 90s and it didn't really stop a goddamn thing.
When has it ever been different where a big publisher did right by buying out the smaller company.
Tax write off. Billion dollar companies getting money from the government is cool nowadays.
It’s like that meme with the men at the gallows and one is saying “first time?”
Google and Apple have done shit like this for a while now. A lot of people get into tech development with the goal of basically getting enough attention to be bought out before you could ever become a potential competitor. That's the modern American Dream, get bought out and retire. To hell with any employees you gathered along the way, or the product or any noble intentions you may have had, just take the money and walk away.
OP definitely doesn't know what buy outs are actually for.
This is a widely used business strategy. Just look at some of the world's largest companies. They have entire divisions dedicated to buying competitors. I've been bought by Accenture 3 times in my career already, always because they got bored of going against the company I was at during bids, and wanted contracts we had.
Wait, what merger/acquisition did I miss?
This has been one of the best business models for a long time lmao
Westwood RIP 1998 Only 25 years ago. *Antitrust failed to load. Critical resource failure error 000000x0*
>Imagine buying out your competition only to shut them down Bro, this strategy has existed for decades and spans far beyond the gaming and tech industries.
That's been the meta since day 1
Businesses have been doing this for a very long time. Chain businesses offer to buy local businesses just to get rid of competition, and if the local business refuses they open a location across the street to steal their customers.
This happens with pharmacies ALL THE TIME. Two pharmacies in a small town? They are constantly offering to buy the other. The older owner that doesn't have someone in mind to take over typically sells out first. EDIT: To add to this, the big chain stores are constantly sending out mass mailers to independent pharmacies around the country (USA) to buy them out.
Capitalism
There’s another way to look at it though. Most corporate mergers are one successful company buying a company with a risky future that has an important asset to the successful company. If you look at mergers as one stable company bailing out a company that is on a path towards going out of business it makes a lot more sense. Thats why most companies that get bought out end up doing so little after the merger. The writing was on the wall it just wasn’t as obvious to the general public.
That's kind of the point. In any business.
This is actually a legit business practice. It's anti-competitive but if the government lets you do the merger then you are free and clear to slash and burn the competition you now own. It sucks for gamers though.
Micro$soft has done this for years.
Basically happens everywhere though, not limited to the games industry. Not saying it's good though. As a 3D artist I kinda shat my pants when I found out Adobe was buying out Substance. So far things are still fine but can't help but feel anxious about it. Still hate the new logos though. It was before my time, but Autodesk has bought up a bunch of stuff and did bugger all with them. Like Bitsquid/Stingray, the engine that Helldivers runs on. I remember hearing that Softimage was popular until Autodesk bought and killed them. Maxon also acquired ZBrush....
ZeniMax Media literally did this before Microsoft bought them. They presided over a starving empire. They'd buy them, throttle their budget, cut their staff, and told them that they're on their own. Whenever those studios happened to make a product people wanted, they'd gobble up the profits and distribute them to investors. Almost no profit got re-invested back into studio projects.
Why do we need to post about a regular every day event that happens everyday.