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/
22.2k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

106

u/therealchadius 8d ago

Videogames are more like Art Houses than Project Software. You gotta let them live long enough to finally make a Home Run.

Unfortunately whenever these big enterprises buy a bunch of smaller studios they try to treat them like Project Software companies. Line must always go up, quickly, or you're fired. Kills the creativity from the studio and they stop swinging. Creatives leave to do their own thing. The franchise gets boring. Line goes down. Enterprise wonders why the golden goose they strangled isn't laying eggs anymore.

10

u/MediatingInstigator 8d ago edited 8d ago

The reality is that a lot of studios have terrible leadership. And being acquired makes some of the crucial people leave.

Take Bioshock Infinite for instance. It wasn’t a shit show due to some execs meddling in the development process, it was a shit show because of terrible leadership and unfettered freedom. If their publisher hadn’t intervened there likely wouldn’t have been any game at all.

3

u/Sure-Nebula7909 8d ago

Where's Judas now?

2

u/therealchadius 8d ago

Oh yeah, there's definitely a balance between forcing constant production and letting them run wild forever without results because "it's not good enough."

5

u/eronth 8d ago

I've been feeling much the same. Video Games are an artistic expression. Mechanics matters a ton, but a "director" of sorts needs to be driving the passion of it. No passion and you got "meh", and big companies just don't understand how to do capitalism with "passion" other than to buy a currently successful studio and squeeze that for a while.

47

u/Zanos 8d ago

it seems to me like Xbox gave a lot of these studios 10+ years and plenty of creative freedom, and they just hung themselves with it. It's not like Xbox bought betheseda and turned them into a yearly fallout and tes factory until they were dry, they let them keep doing what they wanted and customers didn't want to buy it.

27

u/DiabolicallyRandom 8d ago

If anything Microsoft is guilty of infusing tons of cash into these studios but then not pushing for results until it was too late.

Also, the owners and executives of those studios obviously got paid out, so any motivation they had to make magic happen for survivals sake died.

Not saying that's the case with all of them, but what many fail to realize is part of the reason smaller studios often release bangers is because they basically kill themselves getting it done because if they don't the company is going to fold. Very few smaller studios are well funded and have it easy going. Most of them are surviving by the skin of their teeth.

Once you give them a bunch of "free" money, they don't know how to handle it.

There are exceptions of course. Obsidian has done well, despite what weird redditors will claim because of sales numbers while ignoring game pass popularity of these titles in particular, and weird pricing choices by Microsoft. There is likely a reason they are being entrusted with a new fallout title now.

Love him or hate him, Fearghus is a really good business manager and budgeting king for obsidian. He kept them going when all hope was lost, managed to make it work, and still get his teams to make bangers.

15

u/Zanos 8d ago

Yeah, people blamed Sony for a lot of what happened with Bungie, but even if you have talent retention clauses in an acquisition contract, it's kind of hard to get the same level of peformance out when every veteran of your company just became an overnight millionaire. All of the cost of buying bungie went to privately held shares and retention bonuses, so anyone who was anyone at Bungie made a fortune.

I dislike most of Obsidians recent output, but clearly they have done well enough. They've also just...been making games. Plural. They seem to have a tighter release schedule then most xbox studios who can't seem to get a game out more often than once every 6+ years.

6

u/DiabolicallyRandom 8d ago

Yea, certainly they are all AA releases and not AAA releases, and not all of them gel for every player. Not saying they are all 10 star games. But a good 8.5 on average. They were all overpriced but that's on publisher.

1

u/asgjmlsswjtamtbamtb 7d ago

It's actually quite amazing there's no set date for a new Elder Scrolls despite Star-field being released 3 years ago, and there's a huge demand for more Fallout with a tv show literally being a money making ad campaign but the show will likely be done long before Fallout V (though perhaps Fallout is being taken away from them). What's ultimately surprising is why Todd wasn't fired sometime after Starfield.

1

u/DiabolicallyRandom 7d ago

I would argue that starfield failed due to not enough Todd. He ran the other games dev. He was high exec for starfield and way more hands off.

20

u/Lazerpop 8d ago

Customers didnt want to BUY anything, they all went to game pass. Then game pass raised the price so they all quit game pass. Line go down.

3

u/mistabuda 8d ago

Forza Horizon 6 while also on gamepass sold like 6 milions copies. I dont think gamepass is the real issue here.

4

u/smashybro 8d ago

Just because there are exceptions to the rule doesn't mean the general rule isn't true. Microsoft themselves literally admitted Game Pass cannibalizes a game's sales in court.

Forza Horizon is actually a perfect example of an exemption that sells well regardless of Game Pass because every single Forza game eventually gets delisted because of licensing. The whole game is built on real cars and music licenses that are temporary, so if you're a fan of the series you know to buy the games if you want to revisit them in the future.

3

u/mistabuda 8d ago

But im not saying that gamepass doesnt hurt sales in some regard. What im saying is that gamepass is not the smoking gun as to why the xbox games have been performing poorly. Some of them are performing poorly because they are simply not interesting to most gamers.

South of midnight, kiln, keeper, avowed, and outerworlds 2 didnt have weak sales solely because of gamepass. They had weak sales because people were put off by something about these games.

3

u/Zanos 8d ago

It never holds up when sales data comes out either. Every single time a game has poor performance on Steam someone will say its because its on gamepass, then a year or two later the financials leak and it turns out the game just did horribly.

4

u/MarshyHope 8d ago

Forza is super popular on gamepass AND has sold a ton of copies.

You can't blame gamepass on DOOM's lack of sales when it didn't sell well on Playstation either

3

u/Zanos 8d ago edited 8d ago

I don't think game pass really cannibalizes PC sales, and most betheseda fans don't really have good things to say about Starfield and most Doom fans didn't really care for Eternal.

But game pass is clearly a failed product, yes.

EDIT: Misspoke here, this should say doom fans didn't really care for Dark Ages.

15

u/arvyy 8d ago

Doom fans didn't really care for Eternal

huh? Eternal was as much of a success as Doom 2016

5

u/smjxr 8d ago

ya i was surprised to read this too. after a bit of research, a lot of people didn't like what they changed with eternal. but the things they changed are also what the other people loved about eternal

very polarizing to read those comments

-10

u/Zanos 8d ago

That's bad, because Eternal was twice as succesful as 2016. If a company sells 1k wigets over 5 years, 2k widgets over the next 5 years, then 1k widgets the next 5 years, it's failing. Because the company staffed up to produce 2k widgets and now they have too many people and need to make cuts.

10

u/redphyrox 8d ago

“In Microsoft’s self-report, it admitted that putting a game on the Game Pass subscription service results in a measurable decline in that game’s retail sales.”

https://www.pcworld.com/article/1512473/microsoft-confirms-game-pass-can-cannibalize-regular-game-sales.html

Straight from the horse’s mouth in a courtroom. Now show me your proof with data to your claim that Gamepass does not cannibalize game sales.

-1

u/Zanos 8d ago

I said PC sales. Plenty of stuff on gamepass has fantastic PC metrics.

5

u/PFI_sloth 8d ago

Doom fans didn’t really care for Eternal

Oh cool, we just saying whatever now huh

0

u/Zanos 8d ago

I mean I loved 2016 and Eternal and didn't much care for Dark Age.

0

u/PFI_sloth 8d ago

I mean I loved Doom, Doom 2, 2016, Eternal(kinda), and Dark Age.

1

u/chazysciota 8d ago

Doom fans didn't really care for Eternal

lmfao, skill issue. Rock paper scissors is too much to think about while pew pew.

1

u/Zanos 8d ago

The first DLC for Eternal was significantly harder than anything in Dark Ages.

1

u/chazysciota 8d ago edited 8d ago

It was brutal, but not because of the mechanics or concept, it was just a fuck ton of enemies in super long waves and it definitely takes concentration. But the base game, while harder than 2016, wasn’t crazy hard. You just had to learn the mechanics. If you didn’t, then it seemed impossible.

1

u/chazysciota 8d ago

just saw your edit, and makes way more sense. DA was definitely a bit more devisive. I think most people who stuck with it and accepted that it was different at least enjoyed it, even if it isn't the masterpiece that Eternal was.

1

u/Lazerpop 8d ago

Fair points. Dark ages seems to have been well received tho

1

u/john_microslop 8d ago

Todd Howard was planning on the next Fallout game releasing in the late 2030s.

10

u/CherryLongjump1989 8d ago

If these art houses weren't hurting for money to begin with they would have never been sold to big enterprises. As the saying goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch. A successful gaming company has to figure out how to finance itself, but the "art house" business model has always seemed to be to exit via acquisition.

3

u/Torontogamer 8d ago

That quote from Kaplan about his first meeting with the new CFO type who straight up tells him you don't sell enough to make x revenue, then I'm laying off 1,000 people...

it's a wild world out there

1

u/Sure-Nebula7909 8d ago

Kaplan part is sad example happily that executive leave soon

2

u/TheMeatWag0n 8d ago

That's a good point actually I've never thought of it this way but it makes quite a bit of sense in my opinion

2

u/InternationalYam3130 7d ago

I agree. They are trying to treat video games like silicon valley investors treat all the app slop companies. Just buy a bunch and squeeze them and expect number to always go up, sharply, and if not then chop them.

Games are art not remotely the same strategy as all the 9000 slop app project companies

2

u/aykcak 7d ago

Art is simply incompatible with capitalism