I thought the people fired were executives, not creatives.
Pop it in your calendars
Submitted 9 months ago by sirico@feddit.uk to games@lemmy.world
https://feddit.uk/pictrs/image/b488c5af-8600-4bfa-bcad-f8f3c18178e0.webp
Comments
CidVicious@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yeah, I’m just going to wait and see. If it’s good, I’ll buy it, otherwise I won’t.
Green_Mouse@piefed.social 9 months ago
Yikes!
stupidcasey@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Gotta be honest, I would do the same and worse for 250 million dollars.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Well… Piracy it is, then.
duchess@feddit.org 9 months ago
Or do the boycott right and don’t play the game at all. Getting the best of both worlds, save the money and play the game, is the easy way out.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Doing the boycott “right” means not paying money. Corpos think each pirated copy is a loss. That’s how they explain it to their investors too:
“Look at all this money we’re not making because of those damn dirty pirates!”
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I’ll just watch some let’s play on YouTube
swordgeek@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Probably not really feasible - it will require constant connection to a back-end server to play or some bullshit like that.
But even if you can, that’s not the answer. The proper action is to deny them entirely. Don’t play the game, don’t play PUBG, don’t do anything that expands their reach, money or not.
They need to suffer with NOBODY playing this game. They need to suffer by people deleting their Battlegrounds accounts. Software piracy is what makes games legendary.
CocaineShrimp@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain
ceenote@lemmy.world 9 months ago
This looks less like heroes becoming villains and more like villains (who were always villains) tricking the hero and murdering them.
athairmor@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The founders are the villains of this piece as much as Krafton. They sold out for a big payday. This was all very predictable.
You’d have to really dense to think that Krafton is going to come along with half a billion dollars and just let things carry on as usual.
RadicalEagle@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Definitely died as heroes.
AreaKode@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Arrrr…
paultimate14@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I’m at least willing to wait until it gets reviews to make a sound judgement.
I don’t think the bonus would have been a big enough reason to delay the game. Delaying a game like this relatively last-minute and giving it an extra year of development is waaaay more expensive than the bonuses would have been. That’s a gigantic revenue spike they were expecting to get this year and now have to push out to next year, and they may well end up paying out similar bonuses next year too.
My suspicion, from the history of Steve Papoutsis, is that Kraftom wanted to add in anti-player elements and the original founders refused. Probably micro transactions, or maybe even having a bigger multiplayer focus to make it closer to a live-service game. Some mechanism to get money from customers beyond the original purchase. I suspect crap like that will be reason enough not to buy the game when it comes out.
Boddhisatva@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Delaying a game like this relatively last-minute and giving it an extra year of development is waaaay more expensive than the bonuses would have been.
Is it still more expensive if they just shelve it and pretend to give it extra development? I haven’t seen any details on why it wasn’t ready for release or what they are changing or adding? A quarter billion dollars in savings seems like pretty good motivation for a company to park a project for 6 to 12 months.
chocrates@piefed.world 9 months ago
According to one of the articles above the publishers operating profit last year was "only" $300m so that bonus would make the shareholders mad I guess.
paultimate14@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Is it still more expensive if they just shelve it
Yes. Like, it’s not even a question it’s more expensive to delay it. First of all, they are choosing to pay for 6-12 months of extra development, which alone is probably several times more money than the bonus that they would have paid out. I don’t know what their payroll is, but we don’t need to know because math.
If the bonus was for 1/2 annual salary per person (which would be insanely high), then the cost of the bonus would be the same as 6 months of additional payroll. Meaning that with any longer delay than 6 months or smaller bonus structure than 1/2 of annual salary, it becomes more expensive to delay the game. Both of which are incredibly likely in my opinion.
And that’s just salary. It’s possible the studio was planning on laying people off after release, but more likely that they would have moved to a other project that is currently wrapping up pre-production. So this is causing a cascading effect unless they hire additional staff to catch up.
Then you have marketing costs. The rule of thumb in the industry is that half the overall budget is marketing. There are all sorts of contracts they probably had- digital stuff like banner ads on websites, on the console digital storefronts, partnerships with twitch streamers and YouTubers and review websites, physical stuff like cardboard cutouts and fliers. They may have started printing for boxes for physical releases (though I’m not sure whether this game would have had one or not). They may have started acquiring merch inventory: shirts and stickers and backpacks and flashlights and more perhaps. Some of these contracts they may be able to postpone or cancel, but they certainly aren’t getting back 100% of what they paid.
And in all of this time they aren’t getting the huge revenue spike they were expecting. The vast, vast majority of a game’s revenue comes at launch (excluding live services, which this hopefully will not have). They need to survive another year on the trickle of revenue coming in from the sales of their other games, or Krafton may need to pump more of their own money into Unknown Worlds. Or debt.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Agreed. Subnautica 1 steam revenue breakdown offers a bit of perspective on why they might want to play pretend.
“How much money did Subnautica make? We estimate that Subnautica made $274,113,745.92 in gross revenue since its release. Out of this, the developer had an estimated net revenue of $80,863,555.05. Refer to the revenue table for a full breakdown of these numbers.”
$274,113,746
GROSS REVENUEADJ. REGIONAL PRICING
$24,670,237.13DISCOUNTS
$54,822,749.18REFUNDS
$32,893,649.51STEAM CUT
$48,518,133.03VAT / SALES TAX
$32,345,422.02NET REVENUE
$80,863,555.05
Ellvix@lemmy.world 9 months ago
And they want to add micro transactions
Dioxid3@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It’s Krafton. Just look at what became of PUBG. I mean it’s an OK game and a lot of QoL came to it after all these years, but there hasn’t been any major meta shift in 5 years or so. Only recently they’ve started looking into how broken certain semiauto snipers are.
Instead you are drowned in lootboxes and emotes
Zorque@lemmy.world 9 months ago
But they said they wouldn’t!
flandish@lemmy.world 9 months ago
i never bought 1. But also the story behind 2 feels like ksp2.
duchess@feddit.org 9 months ago
Subnautica was lightning in a bottle.
etchinghillside@reddthat.com 9 months ago
Im gonna need a fact check on that bonus number.
atticus88th@lemmy.world 9 months ago
This fact check provided by EA Games.
sirico@feddit.uk 9 months ago
Yes you are going to need to, but as you asked so presumptively I have a couple of links from pretty good journalistic sources.
sorter_plainview@lemmy.today 9 months ago
I wonder how much of this is true. Statement from the publisher
On Thursday, Krafton issued another statement addressed to “our 12 million fellow Subnauts.” The company said 90% of the $250 million payout was allocated to Unknown Worlds’ three senior leaders. Krafton accused the executives of abandoning their responsibilities in order to work on other projects, including a film, leading to delays for the game.
etchinghillside@reddthat.com 9 months ago
Apologies - that was not a dig at the validity of the information provided.
That’s a very high number - so I had to either be misunderstanding the number or underestimating the number of employees the bonus was going to.
paultimate14@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The $250 million bonus was due to kick in if Unknown Worlds hit certain revenue targets by the end of 2025
The whole key to this is how the bonus is structured, and that is unknown still. They very well may have just been something like “10% of net profit, capped at $250 million”.
If the whole cost of the game was JUST $250 million, that would put it in the [top-15](The $250 million bonus was due to kick in if Unknown Worlds hit certain revenue targets by the end of 2025) most expensive games we have official numbers for. This doesn’t pass the smell test.
FanBlade@lemmynsfw.com 9 months ago
I mean, you made the claim presumptively, seems reasonable to think it would be on you to provide a source.
ipitco@lemmybefree.net 9 months ago
You said it was a fact when it’s just a suspicion
BakedCatboy@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
Archive link for the Bloomberg article in case the gift link stops working archive.is/2mltm
TabbsTheBat@pawb.social 9 months ago
It’s a canon event for any game company that achieves moderate success
burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
It would make sense for it to be canon in the subnautica universe. I think they were pretty much the epitome of authors with an anvil with the references to economics and governing.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I think Croteam has been able to have moderate success over the years, but being based in Eastern Europe might make them insulated from issues. Devolver only recently bought them, but they seem to be one of the few good publishers. I at least didn’t see their name on the Video Games Europe member list that’s opposed to SKGs.
shialac@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Rip ZA/UM
kautau@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It’s a canon event for any
gamecompany thatachieves moderate successgets acquired by investorsTabbsTheBat@pawb.social 9 months ago
True :3
I just said game to stay on topic tbh
pennomi@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Except ConcernedApe, apparently.
RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Or the Terraria team.
pory@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Didn’t sell out to a company or publisher with shareholder profit motives. Truly independent (not “indie” as slang for low budget) development teams don’t follow this pattern unless they sell their IP and studio outright.
TabbsTheBat@pawb.social 9 months ago
Individual devs seem to generally manage better I think :3. It’s once the companies expand is that stuff starts going awry
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
Kerbal Space Program 2 still hurts me.
nuko147@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Although Kerbal space program 2 had major issues from the dev team, only for the publisher to pull the plug because of how bad the progress was, and leave the game in permanent early access.
swordgeek@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Oooh, there’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.
$250M PLUS legal costs PLUS $250M in punitive fees. That should hurt them a bit.
MJKee9@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You can’t typically get punitive damages for contract disputes. Also, there is a very real possibility that the contract hasn’t been breached by the new owners’ actions. It sounds like they used their superior bargaining power to put a lot of questionable yet enforceable provisions in the contract.
swordgeek@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Punitive damages can be awarded for bad-faith bargaining, which definitely seems to be the case here.
It’s a stretch perhaps, but that’s what I think would be reasonable.
thann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
Ive heard of it once where the defendant litterally wrote a book on how to use overseas buisness to pull off scams like the one he was being accused of