Video game companies are bad | Microsoft wields the axe again; Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog closed

They will need to change their name now.

Sad. Always appreciate publishers taking a punt on indie developers.

Stephanie Sterling's Jimquisition video this week covers everything I have been mulling over in my mind about video game companies and capitalism in general. Super stuff and well worth watching in it's entirety!

Eurogamer wrote:Team17's company restructure is expected to see layoffs across the business, Eurogamer now understands - on top of the deep cuts to the company's QA department reported yesterday.

The developer's usability team is another set to see job losses, sources close to the company say, with further cuts expected in the studio's programming and marketing departments.

Dang, there could be even more people out of a job than initially expected.

twitter.com/ethangach/status/1709161543743496501

It's shocking just how many gaming companies are cutting staff. That report of no severance pay and "keep the news quiet" has also been backed up in Eurogamer's report:

Eurogamer wrote:The Last of Us studio Naughty Dog is the latest company to announce layoffs internally, with at least 25 developers to be affected.

Contractors for a range of departments, including art, production and QA, are being impacted, according to a report from Kotaku, with sources claiming at least 25 developers will be affected.

Naughty Dog is cutting contracts short for outsourced developers, and sources say no severance pay is being given to those laid off. Both remaining employees and laid off developers are allegedly "being pressured to keep the news quiet".

As a redundant employee with no severance pay, what motivation would you have to "keep the news quiet"?

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:As a redundant employee with no severance pay, what motivation would you have to "keep the news quiet"?

You'd be labelled as a troublemaker and find it hard to get work elsewhere. Word would get around.

jawa_ wrote:It's shocking just how many gaming companies are cutting staff. That report of no severance pay and "keep the news quiet" has also been backed up in Eurogamer's report:

Eurogamer wrote:The Last of Us studio Naughty Dog is the latest company to announce layoffs internally, with at least 25 developers to be affected.

Contractors for a range of departments, including art, production and QA, are being impacted, according to a report from Kotaku, with sources claiming at least 25 developers will be affected.

Naughty Dog is cutting contracts short for outsourced developers, and sources say no severance pay is being given to those laid off. Both remaining employees and laid off developers are allegedly "being pressured to keep the news quiet".

They're contractors so severance pay isn't really relevant but it's strawberry floated up they don't have to pay out the contract and can just cancel it at a moment's notice.

twitter.com/GameAnim/status/1238199242256052224

Let’s just sack everyone and let AI make our games instead :datass:

Horrid industry to work in by the sounds of it what with regular job cuts, crunch etc…

Everyone bandwagoning while it’s a good time to bury bad news.

rinks wrote:Everyone bandwagoning while it’s a good time to bury bad news.

I feel there's probably also an element of purposefully trying to demoralise remaining workers in a company. It's much easier to keep people employed if you carry out some redundancies at the same time as other developers are and make it seem hopeless or pointless to look elsewhere.

Another for the List o' banana splits.

The team of bug-fixing quality assurance (QA) staff who unionised while working on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf have all been laid off.

That's according to a Polygon report which states that the 13 staff are no longer working on BioWare's long-awaited RPG project.

These staff were formally employed by QA outsourcing giant Keywords, which was contracted to assist BioWare on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. The group faced something of a fight to form a union, after quibbles around the ability to work remotely. Keywords has now confirmed the team members' departure from the project, which it says follows "the end of a fixed term client contract".

The group's union, the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada Union, has now filed an employment standards complaint for offering "minial severance".

https://www.eurogamer.net/all-dragon-ag ... n-laid-off

rinks wrote:...
The team of bug-fixing quality assurance (QA) staff who unionised while working on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf have all been laid off...

This really does suck. Gaming companies hate unions

.

That is just a dick move

jawa_ wrote:
rinks wrote:...
The team of bug-fixing quality assurance (QA) staff who unionised while working on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf have all been laid off...

This really does suck. Gaming companies hate unions .

...hehe, I'd forgotten that there was actually a band called Strawbs :lol:

. EA and BioWare are strawbs

.

twitter.com/jjonahjonahson/status/1709979363608039784

Telltale again? What the hell is going on the last couple of weeks, so many devs getting laid off

Video game companies are bad | Microsoft wields the axe again; Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog closed

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