By shutting down a studio instead of selling it off or even letting it buy itself out, Microsoft ensures that no studio it has ever owned can become viable competition. Who cares about a diverse industry when you can keep all the IPs developed under your umbrella and shelve them for decades, instead of letting the studios that made them go on to work on their creative visions?
Article also mentions that it breaks the employees of those studios up so there is less chance of a competitor that makes another successful IP
Ironically if the developers band together and start another studio they would probably have Microsoft knocking on their door with an acquisition offer in a few years.
Microsoft getting back to the business strategy that made them successful
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The real culprit is, surprise, late stage capitalism and unbridled greed. Who would’ve guessed?
An article that recognize the problem with our current economical system and didn’t circle around the issue? Color me surprised
I looked everywhere in the box, but didn’t find that color.
Burnt Sienna
He’s asking for a water color painting of his surprised face looking at the article. Color him surprised please.
EEE (embrace, extend, extinguish)
I know a lot of indy game developers do their thing hoping to get rich from it. And there’s nothing wrong with that. And they don’t all do that. Some people just really love coding and creating, and just want to make a cool game. Nothing wrong with that, either.
But for once, I’d love to see some brilliant founder create a game studio that has some kind of poison pill clause that prevents it from ever going public or it’s IP ever being purchased by a large mega-corp. And in my wettest of wet dreams, that idea becomes a meme.
Something tells me that here in the United States of Greed, such a thing is ‘un-possible’, legally speaking. Our whole corrupt system is set up to make half a dozen business bros get wealthier. They won’t tolerate anything that jams a wrench into that machinery.
There are plenty of small indie studios that won’t sell out, we just don’t know who they are.
That’s true. I would like to hear about them…
There are two ways to solve for this: private ownership by a dedicated individual, and worker cooperative ownership with a strong culture.
Glad you brought up worker cooperatives. I have watched a few Richard Wolff videos and they sound awesome to me.
There’s also this guy, who looks legit on paper, but I can’t figure out if he really is legit or not. I hope he is…
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/employee-ownership-life-changing-for-family-60-minutes/
I am Lemmy’s token syndicalist lol. I love democracy so much I think we should have it at work too.
I mean, Larian is pretty much that. Instead of just doing Baldur’s Gate 4 although Hasbro fired all their contact people and probably would have urged Larian to rush a sequel, they are instead during an IP of their own next and refuse to go public and/or get bought.
I’ve been doing some market analysis on the viability of indie projects. My brother and I are starting to develop a game after he’s finished up his computer science degree (Im a graphics major BTW). Anyway I slice it, the only way to remain profitable would be to have a small team as possible.
I have no idea why a lot of these companies think that growth is actually going to be better for them in the indie space.
This is why I don’t care about IPs anymore. As soon as one gets traction some suit shows up and fucks it up. Indie one-offs are best.
Not surprising. Also fucking Bethesda shelving their own best selling IP lol.
Fallout, Elder Scrolls, or Both?
Mostly Elder Scrolls but Fallout now too is basically counting as shelved. And before anyone asks, no, MMO’s aren’t cutting it.
Should the US corporate tax system have a cap on declareable losses?
Who knows?
The lesson for those folks selling out to Microsoft? This can never be undone.
