Oh for fuck’s sake… what the hell are they doing ?
I can’t read it yet, but my guess this has to do with EA’s AI sell to Saudi. There’s always of course the getting rid of temp positions to help build the game.
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Yeah, I know, but I would have hoped they were working on the next game. There were rumors of that, I think, but I really hope they are working on BF7 right now. They have brought back the franchise in a big way that you can do WW2 and Modern every couple of years imo. I hope they don’t expect Fortnite numbers though.
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That sucks. Even a successful game isn’t a defense against getting laid off.
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It feels like publishers (and really the economy on the whole) doesn’t want to invest in long term employees anymore. Especially in the tech industry. They just want to hire people, get them to get the job done, and then get rid of them and have the bare minimum maintain the game. It’s difficult to see especially when this results in a lack of studio identity and longer development time. It also sucks because whether a game is financially successful or not the publisher & shareholders pocket that money while developers deal with this.
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This is one of the reasons why it doesn’t seem like games have progressed relative to the hardware. Why current-gen still feels underutilized when you look at what was achieved on last-gen, the truly expert programmers, artists, and engineers who made those games possible on old hardware are not valued by the companies, are not paid enough to stay, therefore they either quit the industry due to burnout or outright laid-off.
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Yeah, I remember watching a video going over Halo Infinite’s technical debt which blamed Microsoft insistence on using temporarily contracted developers, but 343 was on a new propiterary engine. The newly hired devs had to keep learning a new engine while 343 themselves (what veterans they had) were also not proficient in the engine. Now they have switched over to Unreal which should make hiring easier, but that doesn’t fix the underlying issue that constant employee turnover just is not good for the quality of work done: it lowers morale, fails to build a studio identity, and leads to less skilled and experienced developers.
The loss of more proprietary engines has been truly sad. It’s just so much cheaper to switch to UE and not bother keeping a highly paid team of senior engineers, I guess is the understanding, as well as hiring especially with contract work.
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Completely agree. Xbox at least has the coalition helping studios out. But yeah, man, yeah. Ideally I’d love every studio (at least the ones that can afford it) to have their engine that works for them and let’s them build out their unique game identity. Also for them to create those veterans at the studio who have experience with the engine. Gosh I just hope this trend never reaches Id. Though Bethesda seems safe. Games like Doom and Quake and Elder Scrolls partially ONLY work due to their proprietary engines and unique feels. Though I do constantly want to see a Halo game in the id engine (even if just like a singular level).