https://kotaku.com/facing-financial-pressures-gog-quietly-lays-off-at-lea-1832879826
we live in aBottom profit marginsocietyquarterly profit margin
Its disenginious to talk about the Activision Blizzard layoff without also adding they didnt meet their yearly projection and their stock price, like all video game produces and developers have taken a major loss. Except for Epic and after Apex, EA has recovered a bit. So even though Activision did in a way make a good deal of money, they lost money overall. There is also the fact tht Activision just lost Destiny. Blizzard just shut down its HOTS pro league. Its major franchises have been doing worse year to year. It doesnt have anything new lined up in the next few years.
It had record sales, but it also lost more value in stock price. Revnue while important isnt the only thing that matters. Their lack of new games, the lagging proformance of their current franchises also matter.
Not to mention they just happened to have 15 mil lying around to donate to their latest executive.
Why does it matter that it was in shares? I know stock options are a bit more complicated than a bag of cash with a giant $$$ on it, but it's not free for the company. They're still transferring all that value to him. Maybe he's *worth* a $15 million bonus during layoffs, but that's a different argument.
And welcoming businesses like Amazon into your marketplace does have effects other than pure tax revenue. Think Wal-Mart ruining local businesses. In that cost-benefit analysis, the tax incentive Amazon expected is a perfectly relevant point.
Yeah but profit expectations have been driven through the roof because of MTX. Literally billions of dollars a year, and valuation shooting up to the stars in just a few years because of it. It's an unsustainable level of growth, and the games have gotten quicker and shallower to try and keep up with that perceived demand. And so players look at what's being offered and decide they don't want it. So these MTX vehicles undersell then under-deliver because no one is playing it and pumping their dollars in to MTX.
It had to come crashing down, and as usual, it's the workers who can't unionize who pay the ultimate price. Meanwhile executives get 8 figure hiring bonuses and stock options even when they're underperforming on the system they built.
Shit is broke.
https://kotaku.com/facing-financial-pressures-gog-quietly-lays-off-at-lea-1832879826
I'm pretty sure, its more simple then this. gog is popular, so when they let go poeple its sad. Activision is hated, so whatever they do is bad. Like Steam. Steam hasnt really gotten worse. Its just gotten less popular. So now its fine, to call out steam and Valve for its shit.But what determines popularity, if not their decisions?
Well, everyone is hating on the Epic Store apparently mainly because they're competition for the stores they like. That reeks more of the type of tribalism that defines these sorts of commercial "rivalries" than it does for any specific decision or difference that the stores are doing.
Epic is giving away a ton of free games and they're dropping the cut the store takes, which developers are obviously going to be happy with. Which would almost certainly be seen as positive things if they were announced by stores people already had a connection with. Steam gets bashed for being greedy and evil because they take a too-high cut. Now, a rival store does the exact opposite, and people are online calling them greedy and evil for doing that.
My comp used to have just one storefront. It was called my bookshelf full of CDs.
Furthermore that drop in cut, customers will never see that, only the developers.
I never really got the whole "running in the background" thing, do you just run all the launchers at start-up and leave them running? Why, just fire them up when you want to play a specific game and shut it off when you're done.
Also some of the hate Epic gets is a bit deserved imo. They kinda poached certain titles (the whole Metro mess) thus forcing people to use an inferior platform (and right now it is vastly inferior to all the others, despite any issues they might have). Imo, the correct approach would've been to entice folks with a better deal or some perks, you build customer goodwill with carrots, not sticks.
You turn on your computer; The internet is broken-- A --FUCKING -GAIN . You go downstairs, reboot the modem, wait for signal to be restored.Hmm... I feel there might be a simple solution here.
[...]
What!? Start in OFFLINE mode? BUT I DETECT INTERNET! HERESY!"
Suppose the following:
You have shit-unstable internet because you live in the USA. (I would normally say BFE here, but let's face it, the ISP bullshit in the USA is endemic everywhere, especially in dense urban settings. See also, how shit bad comcast cable is in a place like san Francisco.) Because of this, your modem/router loses the channel and drops off until you physically reboot it. (because the channel is grossly oversubscribed, and people hog the thing during the day, making you drop off)
In addition to the above, you also dont like having services running that you dont need running, because doing so increases the power consumption of the system at nominal "idle", and you aren't made of freaking money. To add to that, you use several different store fronts, and *ALL* of them want to run at the same damn time, because none of them want to compromise on their vision of being your ONE AND ONLY online game community platform, and they dont want to work together *AT ALL*, so you disable the "start at startup" bullshit, and only start one when you want to play a game from one.
It takes you awhile to come back to a title that is hosted by a different store, because you have to lose interest in the one you are currently enamored with.
And now---
We come to the situation I opened with above--- You are bitchy, angry, and in dire need of de-stressing. You *JUST* want to blow some shit up.
You turn on your computer; The internet is broken-- A --FUCKING -GAIN . You go downstairs, reboot the modem, wait for signal to be restored. you go back upstairs. You are now even more angry than before.
You start steam. It's been awhile since you played a steam game; Say you have been clobbering starcraft II again for a nostalgia kick, but now you want some FPS action. You've spent the past week or so using the blizzard launcher, and kept steam off.
"OH! We updated our client *AGAIN* for no fucking reason! You cant play your FPS title without online verification, because you could be a FILTHY PIRATE--- And we cant let you do that on an OUTDATED CLIENT now CAN WE!? OH NO NO NO!! 200mb download or no games for you! What!? Start in OFFLINE mode? BUT I DETECT INTERNET! HERESY!"
Your eye twitches a little as you notice the boring steam update window progress...
(https://i.imgur.com/PBqK3pL.png)
Again, you have shit internet, and or-- the steam back-end is being raped by something or maybe you pissed of jesus-- who knows. But that 200mb download takes AGES... Then it finally installs. You decide that you need to get a sandwich or something while you wait.
Finally it finishes, and you start your game... NOPE! GAME UPDATE! You can't play an outdated patch-level! YOU HEATHEN, HOW COULD YOU!? 500mb to 1gb download! GO SUCK IT.
enraged, you throw the keyboard angry german kid style, and just turn on your xbox.
"A CONSOLE UPDATE IS AVAILABLE! Do you want to install it now?"
FUCK NO.
You pop in a game disc.
"A title update is available! Do you want to update now!?"
NO. JUST NO. NO UPDATES. SHOOTY.. **NAAOOW**
Game starts.
Finally, you shoot some things. You do this for awhile, until you once again remember why you prefer PC games, and that is that you get to use mods and have more freedom; you come back to your PC, and notice it has *FINALLY* updated its shit. Steam pops up its "news" page which is really just a bunch of adverts. You close it.
You look at the clock. you realize you really dont have any more time to play tonight because you have to work with shit people being shitty AGAIN early tomorrow.
You curse the always online world for its dickery one more time, and swear fatwa against whoever it was who decided this was a perfectly good idea for everything game related, then go to bed.
as the customer who's time is being wasted, YES, I AM. Regardless of any actual reality, my perception of it is what drives MY behavior, and as a seller, seeking to obtain my tiny slice of time, you need to recognize and appreciate that.
When you fail to, and somebody else does, you lose that small drop of market. That happens enough times, you go out of business.
But let me spell it out for you simply:
I start out wanting to play X, but when I start it, I am greeted with yet another update. Due to issues beyond my control (because the US just fucking LOVES local franchise monopolies on ISP in regions, meaning you have MAYBE a single other choice in one, and so cannot vote with your wallet on the matter), you have shit internet, and this will take FIVE FUCKING HOURS to complete, because instead of using a modular data format, your company decided that a monolithic data blob was the way to go. Bully for fucking you.
Guess what, instead of wating 5 hours to play, out of their limited time they have available before they have to sleep, they are gonna watch a movie instead.
OH-- there went your attention slice. POOF.
as the customer who's time is being wasted, YES, I AM. Regardless of any actual reality, my perception of it is what drives MY behavior, and as a seller, seeking to obtain my tiny slice of time, you need to recognize and appreciate that.
When you fail to, and somebody else does, you lose that small drop of market. That happens enough times, you go out of business.
But let me spell it out for you simply:
I start out wanting to play X, but when I start it, I am greeted with yet another update. Due to issues beyond my control (because the US just fucking LOVES local franchise monopolies on ISP in regions, meaning you have MAYBE a single other choice in one, and so cannot vote with your wallet on the matter), you have shit internet, and this will take FIVE FUCKING HOURS to complete, because instead of using a modular data format, your company decided that a monolithic data blob was the way to go. Bully for fucking you.
Guess what, instead of wating 5 hours to play, out of their limited time they have available before they have to sleep, they are gonna watch a movie instead.
OH-- there went your attention slice. POOF.
What are you even talking about? Just use offline mode and you dont get updates or have to deal with any sort of internet-related bullshit. Unless your complaint is that steam is shit because you can't play multiplayer games without those games being updated?
(Also if you dont want to go offline and notice you have a game which frequently has large updates but you dont often play, you can tell that game to only update when you tell it to )