37
votes
Microsoft closes Redfall developer Arkane Austin, Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks, and more in devastating cuts at Bethesda
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Published
- May 7 2024
- Word count
- 1039 words
Yup, welcome to games. You make a critical stinker and you're probably laid off, even if your contributions are purely technical. You make a dark horse game of the year contender and you're still not guaranteed job security, maybe because a completely unrelated game didn't completely soar with success.
If I had to guess, location may have been one factor for these studios:
Anyways this all sucks and I doubt this is the end of the culling. It's just going to be a very rough 2024 for games, with much less scapegoating of the slurry of high quality games to sugarcoat it (which mostly came as delays due to the pandemic).
For more information on that, Japanese law requires layoffs to only be enacted when a company has been running in the red for a very long time, and even then they have to have executive firings/demotions/massive paycuts before it can reach the worker layer. Which, honestly, is how it should be everywhere.
On that note, I also heard a rumor that there is a clause that if there was a 'layoff' initiated in Twitter Japan, then the corporation out there can take the entirety of the tech and company itself entirely independent, one of the benefits of being one of the most popular and income generating segment of the business I suppose. No idea how it would work, but its something that has been mentioned once or twice in my tech exec circles.
There's pros and cons to Japanese style labour law.
It makes labor mobility very difficult; getting a job is hard when there's little churn, so if you do get either laid off or the company goes under, good luck. If your manager sucks and hates you, well, sucks to suck. If you want to try a different industry because you feel the current one is soul-sucking - deal with it.
Over time it can make companies non-competitive in the international market because they have a bunch of employees that either really aren't just that good, or have the wrong skillset for the job.
It incentivizes companies to hire contractors instead of full time employees. It's well known that Nintendo of Japan hasn't had a layoff in decades, and it's true - but what's not known is that that they legions of contractors working for them, and you don't have to lay them off, just not to renew their contracts.
Finally, there's a lot of things a company can do to make your life so miserable you'll want to quit. Take, for example, the story of a developer at Konami, who they considered useless. They reassigned him from being a developer, to working in a pachinko parlor, which made him suicidal. Vice. At some point it'd be better to just be cleanly let go with a severance rather than be harassed until you either leave the company or this world. This compounds with the difficulty of getting a job.
God... just t he having to have executive firings/demotions/paycuts first would do a lot for the US. Instead of blaming the people who don't control what direction the company is going and laying them off first while CEOs at worse fail sideways and just get hired somewhere else. That is if they don't just give tehmselves a huge congratulations package for making it look profitable again by laying off all the low end employees.
Not particularly surprising.
Tango has a history of middling to poor releases, which is why Bethesda had to acquire them in the first place. Hi Fi Rush had critical acclaim but once again sold horribly. With interest rates as they are, I guess bankrolling prestigious but poorly selling games is over.
Not to mention Shinji Mikami already left by the time Hi Fi Rush came out. Mikami was the only reason anyone heard of Tango.
Arkane Austin was basically a husk after redfall. Almost none of their talent stayed with the company, not to mention the huge flop Redfall was.
It makes sense why Microsoft would clean house.
Not surprising, but depressing all the same. Blizzard took a huge hit, so nothing is sacred in Microsoft. If you aren't working on a huge IP right now, you're in the redzone. Wouldn't be surprised if Ninja Theory gets a hit next when Hellblade II doesn't get 10m sales at launch, while being a day one gamepass release.
This is all to say that I've seen the past year and a half of game layoffs and that this is still completely unacceptable for a publisher who'd ideally want to retain talent and foster new IP's, instead of relying on Marvel and whatever else Hollywood throws at them. But maybe that's what these billion dollar studios prefer with the current short term strategy. Relying on Disney has historically ended well...
I think the saddest part was that more consumers would be justifying the shutdowns if Tango wasn't here and made a critical darling last year, out of nowhere.
To list a complete contrast: https://twitter.com/maxnichols/status/1716315408784085022
Nintendo has its own shares of contractor hell, but when they see talent, they do their darnedest to keep you in for life.
Doesn't seem correct, although just barely.
I hope he and the newly terminated employees, together or independently, manage to keep creating games like Hi-Fi Rush wherever they end up going. Microsoft has the money, but they have the skill and creativity, no matter who they work for.
Mikami already has a new company. Regardless of the timing, it’s hard to imagine Tango with much of a future without Mikami. He’s not easy shoes to fill when he’s the only reason the company exists. It’d be like if Kojima left Kojima studios. I’d expect the company to be shuttered in short order.
Fair point about Tango. I meant about the other employees who had not left, who were instrumental to creating the studio's games.
I think this is going to be a turning point for Xbox and specifically Phil Spencer. Hi-Fi rush was critically acclaimed and was very successful on Game Pass, Phil's one big win. If Hi-Fi rush isn't seen as valuable to the company I don't think Game Pass is as valuable to the company as Microsoft thinks. Once that becomes more apparent, I think it'll force Phil to step down and we'll get new and probably radically different leadership from Xbox.