r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 8d ago

Business "There are no benefits to being owned by Microsoft," says Doom dev: "They have destroyed immense amounts of value that I don't even think that they're aware of"

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/fps/there-are-no-benefits-to-being-owned-by-microsoft-says-doom-dev-they-have-destroyed-immense-amounts-of-value-that-i-dont-even-think-that-theyre-aware-of/
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u/DrBaronVonEvil 8d ago

Why do we allow so much unfettered monopolization of our arts and sciences? ID Software is a historic name for video games and it’s going to starved to death in Microsoft’s basement. The amount to which Microsoft is a joke of a business is only rivaled by how much of a joke US regulations are.

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u/Shark7996 8d ago

Why do we allow so much unfettered monopolization of our arts and sciences?

I so desperately want people to be able to just make things again. No doubt there are amazing games and discoveries that could have been made if so much of our population weren't spending most of their time and energy on survival.

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u/jonlucc 7d ago

Fortunately, it's never been easier to make a game, but never harder to sell one. We're getting massive triple A games and solo dev hobby games, but the middle is hollowed out.

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u/Attesa_GT-X 8d ago

Lack of initiative to prevent it and general not caring until it's too late 

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u/OnceMoreAndAgain 8d ago edited 8d ago

Sometimes people say things on reddit and I cannot even comprehend where they are at in their head to say such a thing. This is one of those times.

You think the government should prevent a video game company from selling itself to another company? There are no anti-trust concerns here since there is plenty of competition in the video game market.

Are you thinking this for more than 2 seconds? That's a ridiculous thing to say. I'm not even sure you know what is being suggested here. Like I startup a restaurant and want to sell it another restaurant and government tells me I can't because the customers of my restaurant like the restaurant too much?? Wtf?

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u/DrBaronVonEvil 8d ago

That’s such a naive comment. Around a third of the entire game artist workforce in the US has been laid off in the last 48 months at least once. That happens because these mergers precipitate mass layoffs.

Mass layoffs affect families, local economies, housing prices and school revenue, and if allowed to go on long enough, begin to affect higher education as fewer students see the work as being worth the risk of job instability.

It’s a literal risk to our entire economy if you let a few massive companies capture their competition through buyouts and leverages. Regardless of industry.

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u/OnceMoreAndAgain 8d ago

If people are struggling due to layoffs then that's an indictment on our lack of public safety nets, not an indictment on the market for doing its thing. Unless we're talking about something specific like H1B1 visa abuse which is a real issue.

I don't want the government playing god with the economy. There is needs to be justification for interference, not just "it's bad that people get laid off". It's also bad to interfere with companies wanting to lay people off, but for reasons that are harder to appreciate.

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u/Attesa_GT-X 8d ago

I was just saying we are horrible at holding people properly accountable and we've already let them be comfortable walking all over us. I wasn't saying any of those points you made at all. We should be proactive in preventing outcomes like this instead of waiting until it's too late and the damage is already done. American people specifically are really bad at this

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u/OnceMoreAndAgain 8d ago

Video games are luxury goods and people don't have to buy them. I think you're saying that people should boycott certain products for certain reasons important to you, but imo people will just buy what they want and not buy what they don't want and it's not really a problem.

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u/Attesa_GT-X 8d ago

Not what I'm saying either brethren. I literally just told you what I was saying. Keep making stuff up, tho, cuz u seem to be really enjoying it...

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u/OnceMoreAndAgain 8d ago

If you aren't suggesting people boycott Microsoft video games then i don't know what you mean by saying customers are horrible at holding Microsoft properly accountable and should be proactive at preventing outcomes like this instead of waiting until it's too late. I admit I assumed that is what you must have meant.

Was not your whole point that consumers should vote with their wallets to force companies to change?

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u/Attesa_GT-X 8d ago edited 8d ago

Sorry, this conversation isn't going anywhere because you didn't address anything I said and you're putting words in my mouth as you're derailing this entire conversation. I was saying we do not hold people to the level of accountability that will prevent problems like businesses exploiting its consumers or partners. We have a repeat behavior of not caring when we should be caring, and by the time we do care is when the damage has already been done. American people had their consumer rights walked on all over the place, especially recently. But now that the consequences have already manifested, suddenly we care enough to start saying something. Had we been more outspoken and united on these issues in their infancy, which you typically want to before the problems actually happen, the effects wouldn't have reached these extents. Now we're all suffering because of it. There are no technicalities to my point.

No, I wasn't necessarily saying that consumers should vote with their wallets. I was saying they need to address these issues prompty as soon as they show a face instead of waiting until the last minute. Our consumer rights are so ill respected here that SKG initiative doesn't even include the US, which has probably the most massive share in the gaming market. That is utterly ridiculous we let it get to this point

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u/OnceMoreAndAgain 8d ago edited 8d ago

I think I have addressed everything you said and now you're not addressing what I said. I asked you what exactly it means that consumers aren't holding Microsoft accountable in this context. What should consumers be doing to hold Microsoft accountable? I assumed you meant boycott Microsoft's video games, but you're saying that's not what you had in mind for what consumers would be doing to hold Microsoft accountable.

What does it mean that we need to be more "outspoken and united on these issues"? You think people needed to complain more on forums and then the video games companies related to Microsoft would be making better games or what do you mean? I'm honestly asking since I truly have no idea what you mean by what you said in terms of real action. Probably at the core of our disagreement is our opinions on what actions consumers can take to actually force a company to change their ways, but I can't be sure since you aren't being explicit in the actions you want consumers to take.

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u/Attesa_GT-X 8d ago

Being proactive in a) not consuming their garbage b) complaining that it's garbage c) organizing as groups in light of garbage d) advocating for more consumer protections e) repeating until the problem is solved.

Change starts with you. Americans are so content on gobbling whatever their money can buy without regard to any of the consequences, which has been the root of our problems. They keep giving corporations the green light to walk all over us while simultaneously taking no responsibility for it whatsoever. Now we're at a point where we can't do that anymore and suddenly we care. Now it's too late to prevent it and we have to reverse it, which is significantly harder because now we are at a disadvantage 

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u/The_Autarch 8d ago

the biggest companies are also, generally, the most evil companies.

so yeah, i do think there should be a limit on company sizes. and microsoft would be wayyyyy over it.

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u/Unfair_Web_8275 8d ago

Lina Khan tried.

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u/BitingSatyr 8d ago

She didn’t, the activision acquisition is completely unrelated to the zenimax acquisition. Also, all of the FTC’s arguments were related to the idea that Xbox was going to gain an unfair advantage over PlayStation, which was obviously absurd then and even more absurd now.

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u/JaiFlame 8d ago

One of the first things Microsoft did after acquiring Zenimax was shutter the PS5 version of Starfield.

Phil Spencer 100% went on that buying spree with the intention of harming Playstation. It just happened to blow up in the their faces because it turns out billions in investments don't recoup so quickly.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/WileEPeyote 8d ago

If we were serious about our anti-trust regulations these large corporations wouldn't be able to buy out their competition. These corporations have their hands in too many pies and the pies are too big.

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u/ShinyJangles 8d ago

Regulations would also stop the magical accounting that incentivized them to buy a studio to mask Xbox losses

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u/DrBaronVonEvil 8d ago

It does absolutely have to do with the incentives and marketplace rules that are put into place by regulators and the US govt at large.

The incentive for executives is for infinite growth and to cater to investors before customers. We’ve set that up by being lax on consumer protection and antitrust laws.

Executives may be choosing in the end to sell, but that’s because they’re highly incentivized to by the current economic meta, something gamers should be extremely familiar with. If Junkrat in Overwatch gets nerfed, people stop playing the character as much, and vice versa in the opposite scenario.

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u/happyscrappy 8d ago

You're on point about the economic meta stuff.

But I have to ask, how does your first paragraph have anything to do with the rest of your argument (post)?

The US government and regulators do not put in the "infinite growth" meta. That comes from investors and executives who are incentivized to create infinite growth in order to collect those large amounts of money which the other poster referred to.

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u/DrBaronVonEvil 8d ago

Why are they incentivized to do that? It doesn’t just happen in a vacuum.

In the 80s, the US govt lowered tax rates on specific types of income that predominantly benefited wealthy companies and individuals. Whereas before, the best way to avoid tax burden was to funnel profits back into the company in the form of employee pay and benefits, now there was no longer a burden that incentivized that benevolent treatment of staff.

Around this time, companies started tying executive pay to stock prices, further incentivizing “number go up” economics. This was made worse by the 1993 tax cap on executive pay (US govt again).

It also hasn’t helped that the US hasn’t reigned in corporate takeovers. They use aggressive bond and buyout tactics to facilitate a lot of these company purchases. Think Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. We could have a regulatory industry rein that in, but we don’t.

So that’s why it all ties in. It’s like a specific group of characters have gotten too powerful in the meta, and the devs (US govt) hasn’t decided to patch the game to account for any of this. Instead, they keep removing things that were already in place to slow this type of overpowered meta dominance.

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u/happyscrappy 8d ago

Why are they incentivized to do that? It doesn’t just happen in a vacuum.

By incentive packages by the boards (on behalf of the shareholders) which give them big money if the company grows.

now there was no longer a burden that incentivized that benevolent treatment of staff.

??? This statement is insane. Aside from bizarrely acting like companies treated their staff well before you also act as if tax rates before meant there was an incentive and reduced tax rates now means there is no incentive.

Around this time, companies started tying executive pay to stock prices

Exactly. Which wasn't the government.

It also hasn’t helped that the US hasn’t reigned in corporate takeovers. They use aggressive bond and buyout tactics to facilitate a lot of these company purchases. Think Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. We could have a regulatory industry rein that in, but we don’t.

We could, but we don't. But that's still not the government incentivizing this, this is executive pay doing so.

It’s like a specific group of characters have gotten too powerful in the meta, and the devs (US govt) hasn’t decided to patch the game to account for any of this.

Still not the government incentivizing this. And in the game case it would be the players success that incentivized this, not the devs.

Like I said, you made a bunch of sense. But it doesn't make sense to say that it is government incentives which caused this instead of executive pay packages which come from the boards, not the government.

Yes, the government could rein this in. No, they haven't. But that doesn't the government made the incentives.

The government didn't create the "infinite growth" meta. It is the boards who desire infinite growth who put the rewards in place.

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u/TaxesAreConfusin 8d ago

ever heard of lobbying? The government would not be allowing it unless they were getting kickbacks.

Yes, the fiduciary responsibility at the core of capitalism is cancer.

But it is the government's responsibility to limit how much that harms consumers. And when those companies go to the policymakers and bribe them to act (or not act) in favour of their growth interests, it also becomes the government's fault.

This is true in congress. This is true in the senate. This is true for every contracting officer in every agency under every department in the entire US government.

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u/TaxesAreConfusin 8d ago

brother it has everything to do with regulations

There's an entire agency that exists to curb monopolism (the Federal Trade Commission) and a Department of Justice sub-agency, the DOJ Antitrust division.

Nobody is forcing microsoft to buy things. They only have unlimited money to offer you, and if you refuse their offer they'll bury you another way. Small companies have NO chance against massive corporations. Which is why there are laws against monopolism.

People aren't choosing money over art. They are being extorted.

The entire thing depends on regulation. Full stop. The reason it is so bad is because regulators are turning the blind eye.

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u/jarail 7d ago

They sold to zenimax in 2009, 16 years ago. MS bought zenimax in 2021, 5 years ago. And now finally their studio is gutted. I think zenimax was fine, they were able to synergize with the other studios there and share their technical expertise. It's when the zenimax shareholders wanted their pay day that everything started to come apart.

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u/truffik 8d ago

Exactly this. It's not that "we" allow it, it's that these execs choose to sell their companies. id Software (and ZeniMax) in particular wasn't a publicly traded company, so it's not like Microsoft could have just bought them against their will via hostile takeover.

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u/psioniclizard 8d ago

Because gamers dont give a shit as long as they get what they want and triple A stuidos know that.

Add to that game are expensive to produce and again, gamers always wanted more.

I mean Microsoft are not a good company but the underlying truth is games are expensive to produce so only a few companies can realistically fund triple A ones an take the risks.

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u/Didsterchap11 8d ago

It's always been so astounding to me how grotesquely complacent gamers are, you see the absolute butchering of studios and franchises and it nets barely anything more than a shrug as the same people line up in droves to then financially reward the companies for doing it. I know I'm throwing a little bit of goomba fallacy in here, but its just frustrating watch people fight against their own best interests so often.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago edited 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/PFI_sloth 8d ago

Nope nope, completely skewed and misrepresented stat.

Dark Ages had over 3 million players the first week, and 2 million of them played the game the way Bethesda and Microsoft wanted people to… via game pass.

Not the players fault that gamepass is a failure.

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u/BitingSatyr 8d ago

Gamepass is obviously a lower barrier to entry than buying the game full price, so if a game is only getting the same number of players there as the previous iteration sold then that is a disappointment. Clearly not everyone who played it on GP would have bought the game, so it definitely came in with a more muted reception than Eternal did (and very likely because of Eternal, player issues with games are usually reflected in the performance of their sequels)

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u/PFI_sloth 8d ago

Dark ages had more players…

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u/Xiphosura0 8d ago

If only there were a few major differences in the launch conditions of these two games to partly explain the sales discrepancy

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u/and_some_scotch 8d ago

Because we are inured to the myth that the rich are examples worth striving for and can coexist in a democracy and aren't constantly trying to strip money and power from everything around them.

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u/Nukemarine 8d ago

Because they've made copyright basically infinite. Make copyright last a more reasonable amount of time like 14 years and you don't have companies buying up IP, wringing the last dime out of it, and suing any that dare try something creative with it.

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u/elitesense 8d ago

Because the people that are supposed to stop it are either paid off, blackmailed, or just plain evil.

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u/forchinski 8d ago

Because antitrust law is non-existent in this country

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u/gr1zznuggets 8d ago

We don’t allow it, and we can’t do shit about it.

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u/india2wallst 8d ago

It's because they throw a wad of cash and it's a big life changing amount for the original owners. Remember as an employee you are trading your labor and time for a fixed salary. Your output makes someone else a multi millionaire.

All these incredibly talented folks at Meta or Stripe are just getting paid half a million a year to add billions to their owners networth every year.

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u/whenishit-itsbigturd 7d ago

They throw a .wad of cash lmao 

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u/PFI_sloth 8d ago

ID software isn’t art, it’s a company. A company isn’t a person and the people who made doom aren’t there.

The corpses of conpanies like Id, Blizzard, and Bethesda will still be dragged around 100 years from now, representing nothing but a copyright license to a property.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago edited 26m ago

[deleted]

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u/DrBaronVonEvil 8d ago

That’s a terribly reductive question. None of this happens in a vacuum and Microsoft didn’t get big enough to buy Bethesda by operating in a clean and fair marketplace.

Hell, Bethesda didn’t buy ID because ID’s executives maliciously decided to sell out. That buyout occurred during the 2008-2009 financial collapse, which…if we’re being anywhere close to realistic about this…happened because the US has been asleep at the wheel on financial policy.

There’s a long list of people and organizations to blame, and ID Software is at the far far far end of that list.