> sell the company to playstation
> stop updating or supporting your most successful game
> ???
> layoff your developers
> profit?
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These days the equivalent of E3 is just a series of announcements about which studios are being completely closed down.
“I know you all were waiting for the closure of Psychotic Monkey studios, as soon as their new Blub Flobber title releases. Have I got a surprise for you. We have now finished a contract with our outsourcing company, that allows us to finish the game with them, and fire the whole studio right now. Security is shackling them right out, no severance. That’s right - you can log into Robin Hood and post high value expectations off our mass layoffs - Today!”
More like
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sell company to Sony for hugely inflated price promising to be the linchpin of their live service strategy
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have one game that does okay, another game that everybody hates
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leadership bleeds money through a fire hose
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everyone is surprised when this doesn’t work
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You don’t understand what the sale to Sony was actually for. Sony bought Bungie for billions of dollars. A large chunk of that money went straight into the pockets of the board of directors and shareholders, not the people making the games.
What’s there not to understand?
Also, Sony has been chasing the live service market for years, with failure after failure. They’re also known for shutting down studios when they believe the financial risk outweighs the potential return.
So I honestly don’t know what you’re expecting here.
And, for me, it’s just a game. My investment in Destiny largely ended with the conclusion of the Light and Darkness Saga.
Bungie died in 2010 with the launch of the last good Halo game. They haven’t been as good since. Their leadership have all been crooks and profit seekers. They deserve to die along with most AAA studios that have been corrupted by MBAs and shareholders.
When did Reach stop being hated?
There are haters for every Halo game aside from the original. What matters is the player counts and halo reach had plenty of players for a long time and still does on the MCC edition.
Also the fans became much more lenient when halo 4 and 5 came out and made reach look amazing by comparison.
I’ve only played the original trilogy, but I always hear people give Reach high praise, no?
Reach had armor abilities and loadouts, which people hated. I thought it was a good spin on the multiplayer. Though at the time people were weary of the series continuing in that direction as opposed to being a one-off idea specific to Reach.
The single-player campaign is absolute cinema. It ends in a very Rogue One -> A New Hope sort of way.
Now, sure, but it was hated by a huge portion of the Halo community. Its player count was a gigantic flop compared to Halo 3.
When was Reach hated?
When it came out and had armour abilities and weapon bloom.
And the choice to do some kind of rendition of the book, but in a semicanon way kinda. Not to mention the overly busy art style, a campaign that seemed to kind of echo ODST’s framework.
I grew up on Halo 1-ODST, and I remember Reach was a hit with the little brothers after my friends and I had moved on, and it seemed very fitting.
When it came out, it basically killed the pro scene and forced MLG to pivot to LoL which took over it’s audience.
No one liked the abilities.
So it only affected the pro league, and not the other 99% of the online playerbase?
Poor MLG. I bet they were in tears over it. As someone who played professional Halo 3, I genuinely didn’t like the armour abilities in Reach but I certainly didn’t hate it (I was also aged out of pro play by then). But Reach was genuinely fun and the vast majority of fans loved it.
If the hardcore fans aren’t going to watch then it’s going to leech into them not playing and others following suit.
“Leadership has failed, so of course the workers will now suffer.”
Let me get this right, people are extra salty because how destiny was treated and sunsetted, so everyone hates marathon after they changed it and lost trust in company? Asking for a friend
Yes. There is a raging shitstorm of smooth brains on X going absolutely nuts over it.
Unfortunate that the union fought for them to the bitter end.
I want unions back and I’m a software engineer. Looking more and more like a depression hitting soon.
My wife is a nurse at a hospital that is currently in the middle of a union push. It’s crazy how much effort they are putting in to try and get the vote to fail. Spending money on fliers and suddenly having money to buy the staff lunch all the time. She was told " if we unionize it will be harder for management to help you !" Meanwhile every time she asks management for anything “I’m busy”.
Unions are awesome.
I’m working in the IT department of a heavily unionised non-IT company. The contracts the union negotiates with that company (and others in the same sector) apply to all employees in those companies, including those who aren’t themselves union members.
I gotta say, pay might be better elsewhere, but I don’t have to fight for a yearly salary increase. I also don’t worry about being sick. I don’t worry about performance, because they’re not allowed to monitor it. I don’t worry about getting everything done in time either. If I’m overworked, I tell my boss and he has to see about reducing my load. Sure, might just be a good boss, but I’m pretty sure it’s also a workplace culture resulting from knowing we can’t be fired without good reason, and poor performance isn’t one (and might also land you in trouble for monitoring performance).
Many of my coworkers have been there for 20+ years, through ups and downs and management changes and structural changes and all. It’s a good, reliable employer, and a solid union helps keep it that way.
Union benefits shouldn’t be given to non-members.
Idk, isn’t arranging different employment contracts for members and non-members kinda difficult? You’d have to set up a new contract when someone joins or leaves the union.
To be clear, the overarching part the union is responsible for is a framework agreement defining paygrades, holidays and such for all the employees in the sector.
I fudged and conflated the workers’ council with the union, because ultimately, they have similar objectives in protecting workers and my point was to emphasise that good worker representation makes for a stable and pleasant enough working environment.
Let non-members represent themselves during contract negotiations, or be represented by the union if they are a member. The problem with non-members getting the same benefits as members is that there’s no motivation to be a member in the first place, which means the union has less funds and less negotiating power.
I mean, there’s no real individual contract negotiation. The conditions are standardised by the framework agreement. They use a standard format where they note what pay class you’re paid by according to that agreement and that’s that.
I understand the desire and reasoning to separate into “deserves the benefits of our negotiaton” and “doesn’t support us, doesn’t get anything”. For my employer, the potential advantage of individual contracts doesn’t seem to offset the added effort, so they just throw the rest in with the majority.
As for negotiating power, last time they announced a one-day warning strike after a round of negotiations failed, our CEO was quick to pay out a lump sum to everyone and assure us that they’re committed to finding a fair solution and all. Allegedly, he wasn’t actually opposed to the union’s proposition, but as I said, it’s sector-wide so other employers have to agree as well and apparently didn’t. Still, that even the threat produced a reaction (and there was no full strike after it either) indicates that the union has plenty of power.
I think many of us are aware that, member or not, we wouldn’t have these benefits if we didn’t have the union and just sign up on principle. Most of the sector is blue-collar, and I assume that a majority of them are indeed members.
They should make good single player and smaller-scope games again. Their massive-budget, live-service games have proven unsustainable.
Halo was so broadly appealing in part because it was single player, co-op, and competitive. I wouldn’t want them to just stick to single player.
Seriously, dude above you forgot the series that made Bungie a name almost every gamer is aware of in the same way we’ve pretty much all heard of, say, id or Bethesda. Halo was in no way “smaller scope” or focused only on singleplayer (at least, it definitely wasn’t after CE), Halo was the reason most people bought an Xbox. People who were camping outside fucking GameStop for the launch of (insert favorite Halo here) will remember this well.
Halo was for sure smaller scope. The amount of work that went into it was less than what went into Destiny. The size of the thing they produced was smaller than Destiny.
Smaller than Destiny? Are you forgetting how little content Destiny 1 actually had? It was a complete shit show on release. Halo CE was way bigger in scope and size.
The scope of a game project is not measured in how many hours it takes the player to finish.
Who said it was?
Halo was the reason most people bought an Xbox
Nicknamed it “The Halo Playing Machine”, because I dropped $300 on the box my senior year of high school and that was the only game I owned for two full years.
They’ve been in the middle of remastering Halo because it’s the best thing the company ever produced and still sells copies.
I wouldn’t want them to stick to single player. But I also don’t think the company that made the original game really exists anymore. The Leads and Senior Devs have all either cashed out or gone elsewhere. What we have left is a collection of IP managed by an increasingly detached set of business sociopaths.
You’re onto something huge here. This is why I have little hope for most long-loved franchises (Elder Scrolls, Halo, Fallout, Tony Hawk games, Call of Duty, etc). Like any other collaborative artistic endeavor, it’s a product of the people at that time. The name applied to the group doesn’t fully encapsulate it.
The same Todd Howard who is credited as doing “additional design” on Daggerfall is the same Todd Howard who came up with the idea of releasing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary, TES 5 (FiVE): Ultra Titanium Edition: The Skyrimmening.
So many of these games were born from the pool of creative synergy that could never exist again. Pertinent:
This is what I’m in the market for. Not from them anymore, but generally, in any case.
Everyone should. The live service gold rush is a game with few winners and many losers.
Bungie has now been both.
Probably should have made a real Marathon game instead of that extraction shooter skinwalker that is only getting sub 15k players on all platforms (Steam is where the most NeuMarathon players are, not PlayStation), huh?
I still don’t understand the hate for this game, also when it’s clear it’s from people who have not played it. It’s fine if you don’t like that style of game, but it is excellent if you do.
The hater narrative is so weird. It’s okay to not like something and move on, it’s weird to flaunt it around and dance when any semblance of failure arises.
As a fan of the original Marathon I’m not mad, just disappointed. It’s like if Halo was redone as a survival/base builder.
insert metal gear survive here
“Do you guys not have phones?”
I assume anyone who was involved in the original Marathon trilogy moved on from Bungie a long long time ago. Hopefully many of them are enjoying a happy retirement.
Jason Jones probably the only person that worked on original Marathon that is still connected to the company.
that is still connected to the company
This was reported yesterday??? That’s just hilariously sad.
lol like I’m ever gonna retire.
And if I do I sure as hell will still be playing vidya
I really like the art style, but thats the only thing I like about it.
Genre is what I call “Scum Sponge.” I am thankful it exists because it means I get way less of the toxic players in the other genre games I play. I have tried playing multiple Extraction Shooters, and none of them were fun. I like Tactical Shooters, and even hard ones like Ready or Not, but Extraction Shooters are not fun.
it’s clear it’s from people who have not played it.
I played The Cycle Frontier (shut down lol), Dark & Darker, Tarkov, Lost Light, Hunt Showdown, Arc Raiders, and yes, even NeuMarathon. But I guess it’s clear I haven’t played it, right?
I am a fan of Marathon. Real Marathon, not the current skinwalker. NeuMarathon and Marathon are very different games. I mean, I haven’t seen if they even added any of the series’ alien enemies yet. I didn’t see any Pfhor, not even S’pht Compilers except in one trailer one time.
But nah, I’m just a hater. You right.
Okay I’m not sure how long you gave it, but it’s okay to not like something and also to not have to dunk on any semblance of a failure narrative.
I personally don’t enjoy extraction shooters in general, Marathon bucks the trend however, it’s clean, tight, engaging and I want to jump in even if I have a tough run. As someone who disengages with most games of this type (roguelikes in general I don’t vibe with), new Marathon has something special. It’s Bungie at its classic best.
The game does have a S’pht Compiler as a final boss in the final level, I’m not sure I’ll ever see it because it’s so difficult to achieve but that’s okay, I’ve enjoyed plenty of games that I won’t ever see the top tier content (WoW as a prime example).
They absolutely milked the living shit out of the Destiny franchise until it died unceremoniously. They also funneled that pile of cash into exotic cars and Marathon.
The part that blows my mind is how there are Destiny 2 fans out there that want Sony to greenlight Destiny 3 and let Bungie make it. They expect Sony to give $500M to this group of devs and leadership that managed to kill the franchise through repeated mismanagement and under delivery over the years? Destiny 2 fans want more of the most aggressive FOMO driven anti-consumer microtransactions to nickle and dime them for another decade? Seriously?
Probably the best thing that can happen for Destiny is for Sony to give Destiny IP over to another studio like Insomniac, Guerrilla, Sucker Punch, or Santa Monica. Perhaps they can make a better non-live service Destiny game.
Sorry, Santa Monica is locked into God of War like it’s a 30 year mortgage.
Yeah true. That’s a shame because Destiny game made by Santa Monica Studio could be pretty good. They have some top talents over there.
Santa Monica barely make games, more just semi interactive cutscenes at this point. Why you would want them to make a first person shooter I can’t figure out.
Imagine pouring all your effort into a company for years only to be fired because management mismanaged everything…
interestingly it’s NEVER those who made the bad decisions who get replaced or made redundant.
They get replaced all the time, that’s why golden parachutes exist.
I’m sure the executives will be getting hefty bonuses and pay raises as thanks for their services to the company.
Bungie is a shit company and has been for years. I have zero sympathy after what they’ve done to both their staff and their customers.
Hell, they were a mess during the original Halo days. It’s a miracle they made such successful games. They basically rebuilt 2 from scratch after it’s announcement trailer. It’s been mismanagement misstep after misstep.
Same with Destiny 1, it was an absolute mess and half the game was thrown away.
They ruined Destiny 2 with monetization so not stir fried it’s going this way.
I love stir fry though!! Why did it have to be this way?!
*Bunjee
*burger
Buon giorno
Gore llamie!
🤌
*Bingo
*Bungo
*Budgie
Good riddance, they could have done something great with Destiny but they choose greed instead.
You know the people being laid off are not the ones making those kinds of decisions, right?
Some people have no idea how shit works. It’s quite sad
I am so happy their online multiplayer cash grabs are failing. Bungie died with Halo after the release of Reach. Best they can offer me now is have a third party remake the Marathon trilogy. I won’t ever touch their new online slop
