So many people framed Activision as the bad guy, when we are seeing that they actually staved off some idiotic decisions on Bungie’s part. I have a feeling that while the layoffs are awful, I look at other studios run by Sony and can’t help but wonder if the real issue was just at the local management level, and Sony’s intervention is maybe needed to save Bungie from itself.
Bungie Devs Say Atmosphere Is ‘Soul-Crushing’ Amid Layoffs, Cuts, and Fear of Total Sony Takeover
Submitted 11 months ago by Goronmon@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Comments
Shadywack@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Riccosuave@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Imagine buying your freedom from Microsoft only to get acquired by Sony a decade later. I think hindsight being 20/20 they may have just been better off continuing on with Microsoft.
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Under Phil I think they’d be allowed a level of creative freedom but I can’t blame them for wanting to leave under Mattrick; he would have kept them on the Halo hamster wheel forever.
Zoidsberg@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Instead of the Destiny hamster wheel? At least people liked Halo.
tacotroubles@lemmy.world 11 months ago
whether or not this happens I hope somebody cleans house on the suits. they seems to be trying to run the company without an ounce of self awareness that they are steering the ship onto the rocks
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 11 months ago
Unfortunately this is just the norm when a company buys another. I give props to the employees thinking it is still Bungie, but it’s not. The second that deal was finalized they became sony employees, and even if on paper they were still Bungie they were always going to become Sony employees.
But business swallows little business. And big business doesn’t care about the jobs it leaves behind, or the people. Bungie as we knew it is dead
GoodEye8@lemm.ee 11 months ago
This isn’t a case of Sony just “swallowing” a little business. As the article states Bungie board of directors is 2 people from Sony and 3 people from Bungie, which means that while Sony technically owns Bungie the Bungie leadership still makes decisions about how to run the company. Supposedly there’s an obligation on Bungie’s part to meet certain financial goals. If Bungie meets those goals Sony can’t take over the company.
The problem is that Bungie isn’t doing well financially. The Sony takeover is an outcome of Bungie not being able to stay financially independent. That means if Bungie wasn’t under Sony then under the same conditions Bungie would most likely go bankrupt instead.
Bungie as we know it being dead has nothing to do with Sony. Bungie management has essentially killed Bungie.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 11 months ago
Yes on paper that’s how it’s all laid out. However anyone who has been through a buyout knows that no parent company intends for the child company to act separately indefinitely. The shotgun clause in there saying they have to do well financially proves it to me. What company hasn’t gone through hard times before? Sony may be playing the long game but they’ll get control eventually, they always knew they would. It was inevitable that this would happen. Guarantee it was written this way probably with projections on when it would likely happen.
Which is why I say as soon as a buyout occurs the old company is gone. The cool culture you had, the lenient bosses, the small company style benefits? Gone. It may take a bit, but they’re going away. Papa business is here and he only cares about the profit margin, not the people, not even the product. They may say it’ll stay the same, but drip by drip the company will change, and a few years later you’ll realize you aren’t working for that cool smaller company anymore, you’re working for the big corpos conglomerate.