This is factually untrue. Artists have already been paid for their work and have possibly already been let go. (in many big gaming companies majority of the dev teams are let go on release, they operate on a hire-and-fire cycle) Artists pretty much never have a stake in the company or profit sharing. So there’s no real way the # of copies sold has any bearing on their income.
At worst this is Bethesda having 150 copies stolen. Not even tiny devs would blink at that as they get copies stolen through places like G2A constantly. A huge company like Bethesda is worried more about early copies breaking embargo date that shows bad or buggy gameplay, negatively harming sales. Which, TBH, I am 100% not sympathetic towards. Review embargos any more restrictive than a week prior to launch is just trying to hide something.
in many big gaming companies majority of the dev teams are let go on release, they operate on a hire-and-fire cycle
This is absolutely no longer the case. I’ve worked in the industry for 10 years and have never seen a team release then get laid off. Imagine any other business working this way. It just doesn’t make sense. In some cases though, smaller studios miscalculate how long between publisher funding and release income. You get money from a publisher to make a game, then you release and for a while, a lot of studios made the mistake that the release income would come immediately. Publishers have clauses in their contracts to recoup all the money they gave the studio with the release money. So the studios assume they’ll make money the first month of release and realistically depending on the publishing contract, that’s not the case all of the time. So they are forced to lay off people. In larger studios though, this is never the case.
To put it in business terms, imagine your restaurant staff just served one of the best dishes they could to a well-known reviewer and got rated well. Do you think that business is going to lay off their kitchen staff or do you think they’ll try to keep the team together and make another dish? It doesn’t make sense for them to lay off people and never has. It doesn’t happen if the studio can avoid it. Even when games completely tank, I’ve only seen people quit because of studio frustrations, not laid off.
This is factually untrue. Artists have already been paid for their work and have possibly already been let go.
A lot of studios still give profit sharing and bonuses to those who worked on high-profile projects. Also no, again, they don’t just get let go. They at most get moved to other projects. That’s why there are people at Bethesda/Epic/Ubisoft/etc who have worked there for decades.
At worst this is Bethesda having 150 copies stolen. Not even tiny devs would blink at that as they get copies stolen through places like G2A constantly.
Hi, I am a tiny dev and I constantly fight against G2A and other shitty websites that steal from me. I am not alone and multiple studios have straight up come out against G2A. I am one who will say instead of buying something off of G2A, just email me for a Steam key. I’d rather give away my product than see G2A profit from it. Larger developers clearly care as they have pressed charges against people who pirate. Saying no developer cares is ignoring the entire discourse of developers on the subject.
As a developer myself, I just find it funny as fuck that people just spout off about shit like this. clearly do not understand what they are talking about.
Imagine the support nightmare alone if the dev team is dismissed on release. For example, Baldur’s gate just released 1000+ bugfix patch 20-some days after release, good luck doing that with a brand new team.
Especially today with things like day1/week1 patches which have become the usual almost, cutting the dev team loose on release would just be wild from any informed perspective
What’s your source on this? Even if Bethesda had any idle hands during the development of Starfield, it already has another huge project coming down the pike in Elder Scrolls 6. Why would it fire off developers who are already familiar with the revised engine that it needs to make another massive open world game?
I’ve worked in the games industry for 10 years, this has been a rumor about release layoffs. It doesn’t happen if the studio can prevent it. You typically don’t lay off a huge team if you can avoid it, even if the game did terribly. A terrible game is a learning opportunity and if you just lay everyone off then everything they learned during that game is lost knowledge. You’ll never make a profitable studio filled with experts in their craft if you lay people off after every release. Even small studios have another project going so when they near release they don’t have idle hands.
So, this rumor comes from a couple of places. 1) At the release of a project a lot of people will quit. This is usually because they are fed up with the studio or the studio’s next project doesn’t interest them. 2) Smaller studios during the indie boom assumed that they’d get paid on release. This has changed but before, the release was an unpaid publisher milestone. Some indie studios assumed this to mean they’d get profits on release which also isn’t the case because the publisher typically takes 80% to 100% (usually 100% if you are small) of the profits until they recoup all the money they spent during development. So the studio goes unpaid for 1-6 months or longer. They then are forced to lay off their team because they can’t pay them even if the game does well. There are delays in payments from Storefronts, Publishers, etc. when it comes to these things, and when smaller studios forget that, they lose people. So sometimes now, people write into the publisher contract that release is a paid milestone or they go for DLC milestones or they start another project nearing release and hope to get it funded and move the team over.
Overall, no large studio lays off a whole team on the verge of release if they can avoid it. It doesn’t make sense and it’s a myth.
As far as I understand Bethesda have actually got a relatively small team for the size of games they make but it’s made up of lots of people who have been there for a long time so they have a good knowledge base with less people, rather than just brute forcing it by throwing 5000 people at a game like Ubisoft. Also we have no way of knowing what their contacts with Zenimax/MS say about sales bonuses.
This is factually untrue. Artists have already been paid for their work and have possibly already been let go. (in many big gaming companies majority of the dev teams are let go on release, they operate on a hire-and-fire cycle) Artists pretty much never have a stake in the company or profit sharing. So there’s no real way the # of copies sold has any bearing on their income.
At worst this is Bethesda having 150 copies stolen. Not even tiny devs would blink at that as they get copies stolen through places like G2A constantly. A huge company like Bethesda is worried more about early copies breaking embargo date that shows bad or buggy gameplay, negatively harming sales. Which, TBH, I am 100% not sympathetic towards. Review embargos any more restrictive than a week prior to launch is just trying to hide something.
This is absolutely no longer the case. I’ve worked in the industry for 10 years and have never seen a team release then get laid off. Imagine any other business working this way. It just doesn’t make sense. In some cases though, smaller studios miscalculate how long between publisher funding and release income. You get money from a publisher to make a game, then you release and for a while, a lot of studios made the mistake that the release income would come immediately. Publishers have clauses in their contracts to recoup all the money they gave the studio with the release money. So the studios assume they’ll make money the first month of release and realistically depending on the publishing contract, that’s not the case all of the time. So they are forced to lay off people. In larger studios though, this is never the case.
To put it in business terms, imagine your restaurant staff just served one of the best dishes they could to a well-known reviewer and got rated well. Do you think that business is going to lay off their kitchen staff or do you think they’ll try to keep the team together and make another dish? It doesn’t make sense for them to lay off people and never has. It doesn’t happen if the studio can avoid it. Even when games completely tank, I’ve only seen people quit because of studio frustrations, not laid off.
A lot of studios still give profit sharing and bonuses to those who worked on high-profile projects. Also no, again, they don’t just get let go. They at most get moved to other projects. That’s why there are people at Bethesda/Epic/Ubisoft/etc who have worked there for decades.
Hi, I am a tiny dev and I constantly fight against G2A and other shitty websites that steal from me. I am not alone and multiple studios have straight up come out against G2A. I am one who will say instead of buying something off of G2A, just email me for a Steam key. I’d rather give away my product than see G2A profit from it. Larger developers clearly care as they have pressed charges against people who pirate. Saying no developer cares is ignoring the entire discourse of developers on the subject.
As a developer myself, I just find it funny as fuck that people just spout off about shit like this. clearly do not understand what they are talking about.
Imagine the support nightmare alone if the dev team is dismissed on release. For example, Baldur’s gate just released 1000+ bugfix patch 20-some days after release, good luck doing that with a brand new team.
Especially today with things like day1/week1 patches which have become the usual almost, cutting the dev team loose on release would just be wild from any informed perspective
What’s your source on this? Even if Bethesda had any idle hands during the development of Starfield, it already has another huge project coming down the pike in Elder Scrolls 6. Why would it fire off developers who are already familiar with the revised engine that it needs to make another massive open world game?
I’ve worked in the games industry for 10 years, this has been a rumor about release layoffs. It doesn’t happen if the studio can prevent it. You typically don’t lay off a huge team if you can avoid it, even if the game did terribly. A terrible game is a learning opportunity and if you just lay everyone off then everything they learned during that game is lost knowledge. You’ll never make a profitable studio filled with experts in their craft if you lay people off after every release. Even small studios have another project going so when they near release they don’t have idle hands.
So, this rumor comes from a couple of places. 1) At the release of a project a lot of people will quit. This is usually because they are fed up with the studio or the studio’s next project doesn’t interest them. 2) Smaller studios during the indie boom assumed that they’d get paid on release. This has changed but before, the release was an unpaid publisher milestone. Some indie studios assumed this to mean they’d get profits on release which also isn’t the case because the publisher typically takes 80% to 100% (usually 100% if you are small) of the profits until they recoup all the money they spent during development. So the studio goes unpaid for 1-6 months or longer. They then are forced to lay off their team because they can’t pay them even if the game does well. There are delays in payments from Storefronts, Publishers, etc. when it comes to these things, and when smaller studios forget that, they lose people. So sometimes now, people write into the publisher contract that release is a paid milestone or they go for DLC milestones or they start another project nearing release and hope to get it funded and move the team over.
Overall, no large studio lays off a whole team on the verge of release if they can avoid it. It doesn’t make sense and it’s a myth.
They’ve got a FO4 next gen patch due at some point two that some of them are probably working on.
As far as I understand Bethesda have actually got a relatively small team for the size of games they make but it’s made up of lots of people who have been there for a long time so they have a good knowledge base with less people, rather than just brute forcing it by throwing 5000 people at a game like Ubisoft. Also we have no way of knowing what their contacts with Zenimax/MS say about sales bonuses.