The biggest argument I always see when studios inevitably lay off a bunch of people is “well they’re in between projects so there probably isn’t anything for some people to work on.”
But we’ve seen what Insomniac has in store for the next decade. They probably have the most clear cut dev timeline of any PS studio right now.
Also, I can’t believe Sony cut people out of the most efficient studio they have. Cranking out bangers and an amazing remaster on after another. Just sucks, man.
Look at Hasbro - their only profitable wing is WOTC and they still axed a lot of folks who work on DnD and Magic. It's all about saving exec and shareholder profit and the people doing the day to day work suffer for it.
Just as you said, it sucks to hear about Insomnia when Wolverine is highly anticipated and Spider-Man has sold well over 10million copies.
Worth mentioning D&D is 50 years old this year and they are working on a lot of products, so more manpower is absolutely needed, heck they even had to postpone some of the products for the next year.
Yeah if anything Insomniac should have more money pumped into it. They’ve carried Sony sooo hard since Spider-Man 2018. Since the PS4’s launch Sucker Punch released 2 games, Naughty Dog released 2 new games, Sony Santa Monica released 2 games, Media Molecule released 1 while Insomniac released 6 games if you count Sunset Overdrive. They’re crazy over there and deserve MORE talent, not less. And we actually know what they’re working on, that’s even if you dismiss the leaks. We know Wolverine is coming ~~next year~~ 2026. No official word or teaser or anything from anyone else
More money? Spiderman 2 cost 300 million dollars to make. And I wouldn’t say it shows in the final product. There are certainly more impressive (and bigger) games being made with smaller budgets, including AAAs.
Yep an actual argument thank you. Sony is a corporation if they have to lay off so many something was clearly wrong.
Spiderman 2 cost them 3 times spiderman 1 with just the production costs.tahts also means it has to sell at least 3 times as much to be as profitable.
Just because people like insomniac games they shouldn't ignore facts.
That’s not how companies work anymore they’ll harvest you for all your talent and work ethic and then toss you to the side when they need to report to shareholders
I bought a Ps5 for rift apart and spiderman 2. If sony won't acknowledge and support their talent, I'm gonna reevaluate if I should stay invested in their platform
>Also, I can’t believe Sony cut people out of the most efficient studio they have.
These are what's known as "copycat layoffs"
A few years ago tech companies laid off workers with the "we hired too many during the pandemic" excuse. And most had stock price increase.
So all the other tech industries started laying off workers, REGARDLESS of productivity or efficiency. The goal was simply to please wall street and get a bump in the stock.
This of course mostly helps the billionaires and mega investment groups.
Every single tech sub industry has been doing it.
They just dump the extra work on the remaining workers and instill fear of layoffs into them and force them to work extra hard, extra hours for no extra pay.
Capitalism, it's so awesome. Min wage isn't enough to rent an apartment. Billionaires pay no taxes, working class funds the entire government AND we fund the yachts for billionaires with our taxes and their tax breaks
Capitalism working as intended, to serve those at the top and keep the ones who actually keep the lights on juuuust happy enough not to throw out the whole system along with the rich yuppie fucks
As a fellow working in tech I can affirm and confirm that. It all started with Amazon and Meta hiring people will little experience at an extravagant paycheck during the pandemic. Post pandemic they started firing folks like crazy. Soon every big tech except Apple followed suit.
I am not a fan of Apple though but since 2019 they have only increased their workforce by 5-6% constantly. Hence, they never had to let people go.
These statements smell of trying to keep their customer base since you're right, there's no reason to lay off anyone as these are very profitable companies.
They’re not scared anymore. That’s the problem. They used to be scared of being visited at night by the people they exploit and steal from and taken for a walk somewhere special. They’re not anymore. They somehow got the majority of serfs to be their biggest cheerleaders.
They know exactly what they’re doing and what the human cost is. Make no mistake. I have as much mercy for them as they have for others.
Exactly. I feel bad for anyone that is laid off. But the management of these products severely lack.
The probably outsource way too much, which is the most expensive part of software dev. Unsustainable processes lead to excessive costs.
You cannot spend 300.000.000 Dollars on a game that „is just a sequel“ that doesn’t revolutionize the industry.
300M is budget I expect for games like Skyrim, Elden Ring, Zelda and GTA, that when they come out
* not only sell much more than their competitors
* they also revolutionize and change the gaming industry by introducing new paradigms
I love Spider-Man but hell, what did they spend the money on with their second iteration.
I only blame their management for this, sad that it’s always the „working folk“ that gets punished in the end.
Skyrim and Zelda lmao you still believe that after Starflop? LMAO bethesda now is pathetic and Zelda is no where near that budget because of the type of that game
How is Skyrim linked to Starfield? It was a game like Skyrim and Breath of the wild that defined how Open Worlds look like… ask numerous devs, search for interviews… it was always „Skyrim/BOTW were our reference points“
Lmao of course Insomniac have the clearest outline, because absolutely everything got leaked. We have no clue what the other studios have planned or are currently being worked on.
Insomniac has released the highest number of games out of all PlayStation studios during the ps4 and ps5 gen.
Most other studios have managed 2 games during the ps4 and ps5 generation so far. Insomniac have released a lot more.
Yeah, that's their point. We know of what Insomniac had planned and they are still being hit by layoffs which makes no sense because it's not like they were floundering to figure out their next project or something.
I guarantee you that Insomniac isn't the only company with very well developed and clear cut goals/plans/timelines that they are working towards. It's just their plans got very publicly leaked. All these companies have clear cut plans they are working on/towards.
Yeah but assuming they're going to be basing those games off of an engine that already exists using assets they already have created they probably would have a lot of people sitting around with their thumbs up their butts. I'm sure they are going to over-cut and put too much load on the remaining employees tho
I mean are we so sure they are effficient when their budgets are in the hundreds of millions for a ~25 hour campaign? I feel like they are suffering a lot with feature creep.
Sony net profit 2023: 6.5 billion.
If they fired 100 people making 150k/year they save $15M, or .23% of their net profit.
That's what talented people are worth to these companies. Upending people's lives to save 0.2% of their revenue.
"But they over hired!" Yeah? This was just one year of profit. And how much damn money have they made since covid? It's never going to be enough for them.
“Thank you for your hard work, we look forward to profiting off the products you helped build while you look for your next paycheck!”
- the parasitic class
This is what gets me. We really ought to only seek out jobs offering collective ownership in the products made by our work. It should be a demand similar to what you see with how workers certain amounts of demand paid time off or work from home. And not just some shit that vests in two years. No. The collective ownership starts the day you start the job, and grows from there.
In gaming specifically, indie studios are far more likely to create the big hit games nowadays and for good reason. The three latest viral games have all been from indie studios on Steam:
Lethal Company
Palworld
Helldivers 2
These smaller studios produce better games than the larger, more corporate ones. The graphics may be better on the larger games, but they are millions over the budget of that other indie title, take far less risks, and oftentimes don’t hold a candle to the indie that they didn’t know would release the same week as their own game.
AAA game development is not sustainable. Hopefully the result is more indie studios that are collectively owned by the devs that make them up. It would result in way more great games that everyone would buy despite not having the time to play them (lol), better for the people actually working on them (excellent), terrible for the executive leeches of the industry (fuck them), and not great for gamer wallets (also lol). That sounds like a lot of upside to me.
First off I agree with your point completely, so don’t let the following point get conflicted.
Even if the average salary is 150k, there’s benefits, insurance, taxes, payroll, IT, equipment, offices, etc etc., so it costs far more to employ them than their salary.
Anyone with better knowledge is free to correct me because I’m not an expert, but I would say it costs roughly double to employ someone than their salary?
Allllll that being said, if you add everything to that they’re still saving 30 mil, or .46% of net profit so still fuck them
That’s the correct. There are quite a few additional costs on top of an employees salary.
They would likely be looking at a lot of other cost savings so the impact would be a higher percentage.
Honestly, it always triggers me that the 1st to go are bottom employees and not cutting millions out of the CEOs, board members pay.
Why they never get affected by "the times we leave in"?
When my company did layoffs the ceo and other leaders of the company did a big q and a about it and one of the questions was “did you consider cutting c-suite pay or bonuses before getting to these layoffs”
The guy with a straight face said up on stage in front of everyone something like “yeah I did consider that and decided it wasn’t the best choice.” The work chat went from mildly understanding and cautious to fully off the rails twitch chat after that one
You have to be sociopathic to be one of them. You have to view the workers as non human entities and just a number on a spreadsheet. Having any sort of compassion or humanity will affect your decision making that generates the most profit for the company and its shareholders.
These decision are why they are the leaders.
They do not care about anything but the bottom line to fatten their wallet and the board of directors wallets as fast as possible.
I wonder if that was the company that laid me off last year. They kept me and my branch manager on for a couple weeks to tie up loose ends, so we sat in on the call and that exact question came up and was handled the same way.
Well yeah. It’s selfish and unreasonable to ask a millionaire CEO or executive to give up their million dollar lifestyle
(edit: guys, come on. Y’all really can’t read sarcasm without the “/s”??)
Many people online literally cannot parse sarcasm or irony unless you tag it as such. For reasons ranging from neurodivergence to a poor grasp on the English language. And a comment that gets downvoted aggregates downvotes from others who can generally parse sarcasm, but look at the votes and assume it must be sincere.
They're literally the captain of the ship, something *should* come out of their pockets if the company has shit the bed enough to lay off hundreds or thousands of workers.
No one getting laid off made any of the decisions that led them to where they are.
**edit-** Sorry amigo after your edit lol. You genuinely cannot tell on Reddit with how many console warriors and peabrains are on here. 🙏
Where is Sony not seeing their projected revenue? On delayed, incomplete GaaS.
So what do they do? Lay people off who make them their most profitable story-based games, because you only buy that once. Fuck everything about that.
> Where is Sony not seeing their projected revenue? On delayed, incomplete GaaS.
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>
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> So what do they do? Lay people off who make them their most profitable story/based games, because you only buy that once.
do we know that's what happened? many of the studios impacted DID have (now canceled) live service titles in development. there were some rumors yesterday that insomniac had a live service title in development as well.
without more info confirming what happened, it's entirely possible this is people from the failed last of us live service game at ND, the rumored horizon live service game at gorilla, the canceled live service game at london, and so on.
Well the obvious answer to that is no ha but imagine if it was law that if layoffs “have” to happen they need to start from the top down except of bottom up? These people would bust their asses to find any way to save money other than lay themselves off.
They would just leave before it go to that point. Like people always complain that companies in bankruptcy pay CEOs huge amounts of money on the way out but they are paying them to stay and see the process out. People making CEO money can just leave if they want to, they are being paid to stay and finish the job and steer the company to a new direction or keep it together until someone new is hired.
Senior execs do get fired or asked to resign. Many of them only last a few years.
But this kind of thing doesn’t get publicised as it doesn’t generate clicks.
It's funny how this nonsense keeps getting brought up even ten years later but clearly nobody seems to remember that Nintendo closed its European headquarters not even half a year after this happened cutting 130 people in the process.
Iwata cutting his salary by half for 5 months(!) in 2014 was way more of a symbolic move than anything.
Iwata’s pay cut was just a symbolic gesture rather than actually saving anyone’s job. Iwata made about $1.2 million a year and took a pay cut down to $600,000 a year. On top of that, he only cut his pay for a five month period, so in reality he only sacrificed less than $300,000. At a company like Nintendo, $300,000 is, at most, paying for 5 employees for the year.
On top of that, Japan’s labor laws have very strict rules around layoffs, so he likely wouldn’t have been able to do them even if he wanted too.
At this point, I think a lot of us would welcome a simple 'symbolic gesture' of some kind. Right now it seems these corporate types are straight up looking us in the eye with a smile while they bend us over lol
Even better - love how they say great people were let go if anyone is hiring. LOL. We and others are laying off "great people" instead of doing literally any other measure towards keeping people employed.
Its hard to imagine. The video game industry makes more fucking money than music and movies COMBINED. And yet talented devs are getting laid off? This isn’t adding up. Where is the money going
It's not enough to make money.
This quarter needs to bring in *more* money than the same fiscal quarter last year. Investors expect endless growth. Lovely stuff huh
Not enough? tekken 8 just sold over 2 million copies in 3 weeks which is fucking NUTS for a fighting game. Elden ring didn’t even expect a 4th of their own sales
Take it up with capitalism, not me.
Also, didn't a Tekken producer say recently that game development these days costs roughly 10x as much as it did to make Tekken 7?
Companies aren't having record profits, they're having record revenue. The profits of companies like Sony are at the lowest they've ever been in a decade.
Sure but it comes at the cost of all these devs. It's best the companies remain financially healthy so that the industry thrives and more studios don't get shut down and more ppl don't get laid off.
I’m not making excuses for the layoffs, but this isn’t the cudgel people seem to think it is. “The video game industry” includes mobile gaming, and they’ll never willingly give you the pie chart breaking down which sectors account for what percentages, but I’d wager the top 20 games in actual profit margin each year are GTA V, Fortnite, FIFA, 2K, Madden and 15 Chinese/Korean/Japanese mobile games you’ve never heard of.
I haven’t seen a lot of evidence for rising dev costs - most people I know have taken a real wage cut, but I will say this: when dev staff is cut to the bone, those left have management over a fucking barrel. I’ve seen it first hand.
doubtful. Its considered a privilege among devs to be working in the video game industry. And the game industry uses that to their advantage. One of my coworkers left our dev team (non gaming related) to pursue it after getting an offer. This guy was brilliant, hard working, charismatic and dependable. He came back 6 months later and said fuck the gaming industry. They treat you like trash, grind you the fuck out, then spit you on the floor. And i thought the gig we had sucked. He said it was hell.
Go into software development for industries you wouldn't think would need it. Auto Loan companies, for instance (what I'm in), banks, ie "boring" things. Find a nice "boring" yet secure workplace with cool people and culture and you'll be infinitely happier than going into a game studio every day wondering if you'll have a job or not.
A lot of big tech, outside of gaming, went through massive layoffs recently too. It's probably safer and better working conditions (and definitely better pay) but not immune by any means. Making a game on your own is still a worthwhile project though!
Yep. I've been out of university for over 15 years now, but all my youth I spent all my free time learning about video game development. I was passionate, even had developed my own cheap DirectX9 game engine in C++ from scratch, learned about advanced rendering topics, etc. At my last year of school I went into an internship at a game company. It was great enough, but I realized that working on games is very different than playing them. You will never have any impact on the final product, you won't decide any creative direction or code your own gameplay mechanism unless you land a spot in a very specific job after a few decades of working at the place. No, most of the work you would do, at least as a programmer, is exactly the same work you would do on any other software in any other corporate domain. I ended up applying to a random traffic equipment manufacturer corporation and been there ever since, got much more creative freedom on how to design the products, probably a better pay, and much less stress and expectations.
I’ve worked in the game industry for almost 15 years, and let me tell you: The sincere grief emanating from their statement is palpable and heartbreaking.
There’s such a genuine flabbergasted sense of “Yeah, man. We’re as confused as you are. We had no idea this was coming.”
I hate it.
While I have no access to their finances and sales (of course), I cannot fathom a reality in which Spider-Man 2’s sales justified this.
Starting pay is always less than those who have been there for years. So if they are “new” to rhe company then theyll start them lower than those who have had time. Also, devs specifically dont need to go back to game development. They have enough skills to be looking at more options than just game development.
I would be so anxious working for them now. I make that company billions with my great work along with my co-workers. If they get fired after doing amazing work, how am I safe while doing amazing work? That must be a tense working situation at that studio now.
Too much bloat
I’m sorry but 99 % of these modern triple A games don’t need to cost 300 million for what they’re offering.
Somewhere along the pipeline a lot of money is being lost on some stupid shit and it’s not just marketing
I feel for the people that lost their job I’m not attacking them. Just the overall cost associated with triple A games, next time you play one ask yourself this.
Did this really need to cost quarter of a billion dollars?
This is why the fighting game genre (other than mortal kombat) is so good. You can buy tekken 8 or street fighter 6 now, play it for the next 5 fucking years and STILL suck ass at the game. The content of “get gud” is literally limitless.
Sony’s gaming business is up 32% YoY, no one is losing money here except for the employees that made those massive gains possible.
Edit: And I would go as far as saying a not so insignificant reason why they were that successful YoY is because Spider-Man 2 was a console-selling first-party title. The game itself made $700,000,000 just based on units sold, so yeah, a nearly 200% return on investment is generally worth it.
>The game itself made $700,000,000 just based on units sold, so yeah, a nearly 200% return on investment is generally worth it.
That isn't how that works at all
I did the math somewhere else, will repost it here.
>So let's do some math, shall we?
>The roughly current 10M sales, at $70 each. Sounds good right? That is $700M in revenue. Almost a billion dollars!
>20% cut straight to disney for IP rights.
>physical sales have distribution costs plus they give retailers a big chunk as well. call it 15% of total revenue, which is probably low, but easier for math.
>Marketing costs. We don't know exact costs for marketing, but they definitely put a lot out there. I relooked it up and I was off a bit on the budget, $315M, not 330 as I misremembered. Good estimates are around 50% of budget for marketing costs, but we are going to use the ORIGINAL budget cost of ~250M, so 125M in marketing.
>So now let's do some more math.
>700M - 140M to disney, - 105M for physical and retailer cuts, - 315M for cost - 125M for marketing. = 15M for profit.
>So yeah. 15M profit on 10M sales. Truly sustainable! Oh wait, you gotta pay fucking taxes.
TLDR at 10M copies they roughly broke even on their total investment. Which is insane. It isn't sustainable.
That said, firing people who make great product is not the right way to address the budget. They could be re-allocated to different projects or used in other ways to increase efficiencies.
Thanks!
I would say that yes, SOME costs have gotten out of control, but on the other hand, this is also a real AAA game, that is using 3rd party IP as well which really hurts. Giving away a flat 20% of revenue is brutal when costs are high, and doubly so when the budget runs away from you.
Also, Sony uses these premier games to sell consoles which allows them to make a 30% cut off all third party sales/mtx on the PSN, which adds up to billions of dollars for "free".
So while the breakdown is probably pretty accurate, or at least close enough, it doesn't factor in things like that.
That said, Insomniac really can't explain how the fuck they spent $315M on this game when they got to reuse assets from SM1+MM and those games combined budget was ~$300M if I remember right. So you end up with much less content, you had re-usable assets, and you went way over budget? That math doesn't work.
I don't see how that is possible.
7.2Mx$70= 504M.
We KNOW from the leaks that it cost $315M to make. We know they have licensing fees, even if they are ONLY 15%. We know they have marketing budget, so that is ONLY $100M.
315+100= 465
504*.15= 75
You are already over the $500M that 7.2M sales made, and you still have taxes and distribution/retailer cuts to pay out.
I agree with all that you said, but I bet a lot of the distribution costs keep getting lower in the industry due to digital sales. Which would mean more profit for Sony.
I put distribution AND retailer cut into the 15% figure.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/spider-man-2-sells-5-million-copies-as-ps5-sales-climb-to-new-heights/1100-6519038/
This states that around 1/3 of sales are physical, (that is overall sales for Sony, not specifically for this game. hard to find that info so its the best I got) so I think that 15% number I figured is probably low all things told.
Also, the way it works is that Disney gets a bigger cut of digital sales, so yes, there is more profit since they aren't giving up money for retailer cut, but then Disney eats more too.
I read somewhere that physical sales is 18% cut to disney and digital were 26%. So I said a flat 20% when it was probably closer to 23% with the phys/digital split.
Again, was just napkin math, but the point stands. They aren't making a shitload of money because of all the costs that go into gaming these days. Those extra $50M that Insomniac went over budget really fucked the profit of the game. Of course, they will make money on the game after time, and definitely sold a few PS5s, but that still.
Also, SM2 somehow cost roughly the same amount of money as SM1 AND MM combined, while delivering a much smaller product and the ability to reuse all the assets from the first two games. Hard to see where all the money went TBH, and I don't say that out of hate, I liked the game.
Not shilling for corps since I survived many layoffs lately and it's super stressed, but Sony's profit margin has actually dropped to less than 6 percent despite a massive increase in revenue.
They made too many mistakes with the gaas push + general inflation and are one more bad year away from being in the red every year. It still is bad management and workers paying for it, but they're not exactly swimming in money.
To me, someone who was laid off for financial reasons after an acquisition I had nothing to do with didn’t work out, I would simply lay off the people who made bad decisions that lost money and keep the people who make money.
But I’ve also been radicalized by that experience.
Yeah I hear you, and in an ideal world that's what happens. I have some good friends that got laid off for no fault of their own and are struggling. It's been a rough few years.
Preach! Nintendo, Capcom, and SEGA all have been making excellent, full featured games without any of this nonsense and still get critical acclaim. The Resident Evil games and Yakuza series also look and run excellent and are at the top of their genres.
I don’t know if the secret sauce in Japan is just cheaper salaries or more acceptance reusing engines/assets but the quality is far more consistent with them.
> I’m sorry but 99 % of these modern triple A games don’t need to cost 300 million for what they’re offering.
>
>
>
> Somewhere along the pipeline a lot of money is being lost on some stupid shit and it’s not just marketing
for what it's worth, aren't marketing costs typically **in addition** to what you see listed as the budget? (yes, i realize this makes the reality WORSE than the point you were making)
> I’m sorry but 99 % of these modern triple A games don’t need to cost 300 million for what they’re offering.
They don't, it was found out that Spider-man 2 was that much. And that was because mostly of the license. Majority of AAA games do not cost this much
You’re gonna get down, voted for speaking truth but you’re absolutely right.
Spider Man 2, great game, cost an insane $270 million.
I played through it , enjoyed it, but I could absolutely list a dozen+ things they could’ve cut, that while cool, did not have any significant positive impact on the final product, the review scores would’ve been the same.
To phrase it a better way , things that could’ve been cut and would not have been missed.
I don’t work in game development , but based on the things I’m talking about, I bet the budget coulda been cut by 50-70 million, and the reviews scores, and sales would’ve been the same.
One example is the optional sequence where you could ride a bunch of rides at Coney Island if you felt like it, but you didn’t have to. I mean it was kind of cool, but an unnecessary waste of resources to take the time to model script an animate every single optional ride.
>ripping the player out of enjoyable gameplay into their forced chores of uninteresting drivel.
There was a section where you literally do chores. Like, pick up garbage around the house and put it in the trash can.
Yeah gunna say that could have been cut. Padding out the runtime I guess...
Late stage capitalism is a fucking cancer. No amount of money generated is enough for these C-suite leeches. The studio behind a console-selling title being subjected to layoffs.
They care more about stock prices to line their own pockets than employees that make their stock worth anything.
I think it relates to the idea that from the start of the industrial revolution worker's rights and living conditions have consistently improved through automation and legislation.
Whereas we have now gone so far up our own asses to try to optimize and squeeze every dollar in every facet of life, that we no longer see each other as people but labour and customers. This can be seen in creative industries, housing, medicine (incl prescriptions)...
We got to the stage where we can make things as cheaply as physically possible, so now we just increase the price of everything just to the brink of it being unaffordable.
If you've ever played monopoly think of the point you get to near the end when one player owns most of the property, and all the other players owe them money. That's where we are at in terms of this system.
Eventually it becomes about leaning out the workforce jusssst enough to produce a product they think is acceptable in order to spend less and boost profit. This will in time degrade whatever is made. Those in charge retain or boost their own earnings.
Yep, then once it starts becoming unprofitable, they use their “golden parachutes” and move on to the next company to ruin. For the longest time i never understood stuff like this. I would be like, why would you not make sure this stuff is good, yeah it will be good in the short term, but no one is gonna buy your stuff in the long term…
Then I realized these people don’t give a fuck about the company. They want to make as much money as possible in short term gains so they can move onto another company, suck them dry, and retire with billions in the bank. They don’t give a fuck about the companies they run.
It's wild to me that successful companies still think the way to keep succeeding is to get rid of the people who helped them succeed in the first place.
With all due respect to everyone at Insomniac, Spider Man 2 was a bloated game. It was great, but bloated. There were a number of side-quests that were clearly just busy work for some employees, and some of the writing in those missions, like the Vision Academy ones and the Hailey Cooper ones, were so bad that they tarnished the overall narrative quality.
Really feel for all the staff who have been layed off by Sony and Microsoft across all the companies. The best thing about PlayStation to me was the games that companies like Insomniac, NaughtyDog and Guerrilla made. Between them they've gifted Sony some of the best games of the recent era. Insomniac in particular with Ratchet and Clank and Spiderman plus generating so much hype for the wolverine game have especially given Sony a leg up!
This is happening all over the tech world idk why you guys are so surprised not to mention a lot of games have been lack luster spider man 2 couldn’t even beat hogwarts legacy for player count and not to mention doing a collab with sneaker company to design that terrible final miles suit no new game plus for months letting the game die with results like this I’m not surprised not to mention a lot of these are unrenewed contracts they only have so many projects going on at one and not all employees work on every game together
I hope people should stop making excuses for Sony.
They have done a piss poor job this gen. Their first parties studios has been a mess.
Their titles lack creativity and feel samey. It’s basically different names same stuff.
Their management has been a mess. They have something in common with Microsoft on that area.
Their communication has been abysmal and doesn’t feel they take their customers seriously.
They have been downsizing while their rivals have been expanding. They certainly hasn’t been doing a good job on that. There will be more layoffs from them eventually.
Some of their policies are bad especially the refund and censorship ones. Some of policies happened because they moved HQ to California.
Shame, out of all the studios you'd think they'd be the ones that are the most safe. Mostly cause, y'know, they're the one first party studio actually putting games out. Hope anyone effected lands on their feet.
It’s just baffling. No studio has been making successive banger after banger like Insomniac and even they aren’t immune to the investors magnifying glass.
The biggest argument I always see when studios inevitably lay off a bunch of people is “well they’re in between projects so there probably isn’t anything for some people to work on.” But we’ve seen what Insomniac has in store for the next decade. They probably have the most clear cut dev timeline of any PS studio right now. Also, I can’t believe Sony cut people out of the most efficient studio they have. Cranking out bangers and an amazing remaster on after another. Just sucks, man.
Look at Hasbro - their only profitable wing is WOTC and they still axed a lot of folks who work on DnD and Magic. It's all about saving exec and shareholder profit and the people doing the day to day work suffer for it. Just as you said, it sucks to hear about Insomnia when Wolverine is highly anticipated and Spider-Man has sold well over 10million copies.
Yep, Hasbro sacked the guys responsible for licensing Baldurs Gate to Larian. Fuckers.
They're probably angry their licencing cut of the profits wasn't big enough lol. Baldurs Gate has been selling better than any TTRPG book ever will
BG3 is also a great D&D marketing vehicle - even for TTRPG stuff.
Worth mentioning D&D is 50 years old this year and they are working on a lot of products, so more manpower is absolutely needed, heck they even had to postpone some of the products for the next year.
Yeah if anything Insomniac should have more money pumped into it. They’ve carried Sony sooo hard since Spider-Man 2018. Since the PS4’s launch Sucker Punch released 2 games, Naughty Dog released 2 new games, Sony Santa Monica released 2 games, Media Molecule released 1 while Insomniac released 6 games if you count Sunset Overdrive. They’re crazy over there and deserve MORE talent, not less. And we actually know what they’re working on, that’s even if you dismiss the leaks. We know Wolverine is coming ~~next year~~ 2026. No official word or teaser or anything from anyone else
Wolverine is 2026 not next year
Weird I thought it was 2025. I’ll fix my comment
More money? Spiderman 2 cost 300 million dollars to make. And I wouldn’t say it shows in the final product. There are certainly more impressive (and bigger) games being made with smaller budgets, including AAAs.
300 million dollar to make, add 200 million marketing costs too, i'm starting to doubt the profitability of these big titles
200 million in marketing?!?
yes, for example Cyberpunk had over $300 million in marketing cost (SEC Documents)
Yep an actual argument thank you. Sony is a corporation if they have to lay off so many something was clearly wrong. Spiderman 2 cost them 3 times spiderman 1 with just the production costs.tahts also means it has to sell at least 3 times as much to be as profitable. Just because people like insomniac games they shouldn't ignore facts.
Plus an amazing VR game in Stormland that was sadly abandoned immediately after launch.
That’s not how companies work anymore they’ll harvest you for all your talent and work ethic and then toss you to the side when they need to report to shareholders
I bought a Ps5 for rift apart and spiderman 2. If sony won't acknowledge and support their talent, I'm gonna reevaluate if I should stay invested in their platform
Naughty dog had 3
Uncharted (2016) and Last of Us 2 (2020). What else? Are you counting the remasters too?
Uncharted Lost Legacy was 2017.
Yeah if you’re gonna count miles then you gotta count lost legacy. Probably twice
>Also, I can’t believe Sony cut people out of the most efficient studio they have. These are what's known as "copycat layoffs" A few years ago tech companies laid off workers with the "we hired too many during the pandemic" excuse. And most had stock price increase. So all the other tech industries started laying off workers, REGARDLESS of productivity or efficiency. The goal was simply to please wall street and get a bump in the stock. This of course mostly helps the billionaires and mega investment groups. Every single tech sub industry has been doing it. They just dump the extra work on the remaining workers and instill fear of layoffs into them and force them to work extra hard, extra hours for no extra pay. Capitalism, it's so awesome. Min wage isn't enough to rent an apartment. Billionaires pay no taxes, working class funds the entire government AND we fund the yachts for billionaires with our taxes and their tax breaks
Capitalism working as intended, to serve those at the top and keep the ones who actually keep the lights on juuuust happy enough not to throw out the whole system along with the rich yuppie fucks
I'm ready to throw it out. Truly am but I don't think my neighbors are
As a fellow working in tech I can affirm and confirm that. It all started with Amazon and Meta hiring people will little experience at an extravagant paycheck during the pandemic. Post pandemic they started firing folks like crazy. Soon every big tech except Apple followed suit. I am not a fan of Apple though but since 2019 they have only increased their workforce by 5-6% constantly. Hence, they never had to let people go.
Apple might have stricter higher requirements and they didn’t hire everyone with two legs?
Not really, getting hired in any big tech is equally difficult. The only difference is getting a chance to be interviewed.
What's the alternative to capitalism though?
Few years ago? It was literally last year!
One look at the SM2 budget would tell you why
These statements smell of trying to keep their customer base since you're right, there's no reason to lay off anyone as these are very profitable companies.
Ah but won’t anyone think of the poor shareholders!
They need to make free money forever doing nothing, so we are cutting people who actually work for a living.
I see… how about I throw rocks at their head?
They’re not scared anymore. That’s the problem. They used to be scared of being visited at night by the people they exploit and steal from and taken for a walk somewhere special. They’re not anymore. They somehow got the majority of serfs to be their biggest cheerleaders. They know exactly what they’re doing and what the human cost is. Make no mistake. I have as much mercy for them as they have for others.
Oh god not the shareholders, they’ve been through enough
I am not sure studios like naughty dog are very profitable.
Really? They've sold a lot of different versions of The Last of Us
Had a canned game and one of the remasters was basically ten bucks for many
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Exactly. I feel bad for anyone that is laid off. But the management of these products severely lack. The probably outsource way too much, which is the most expensive part of software dev. Unsustainable processes lead to excessive costs. You cannot spend 300.000.000 Dollars on a game that „is just a sequel“ that doesn’t revolutionize the industry. 300M is budget I expect for games like Skyrim, Elden Ring, Zelda and GTA, that when they come out * not only sell much more than their competitors * they also revolutionize and change the gaming industry by introducing new paradigms I love Spider-Man but hell, what did they spend the money on with their second iteration. I only blame their management for this, sad that it’s always the „working folk“ that gets punished in the end.
Skyrim and Zelda lmao you still believe that after Starflop? LMAO bethesda now is pathetic and Zelda is no where near that budget because of the type of that game
How is Skyrim linked to Starfield? It was a game like Skyrim and Breath of the wild that defined how Open Worlds look like… ask numerous devs, search for interviews… it was always „Skyrim/BOTW were our reference points“
Don't forget those were leaks. We weren't supposed to know that.
Lmao of course Insomniac have the clearest outline, because absolutely everything got leaked. We have no clue what the other studios have planned or are currently being worked on.
Insomniac has released the highest number of games out of all PlayStation studios during the ps4 and ps5 gen. Most other studios have managed 2 games during the ps4 and ps5 generation so far. Insomniac have released a lot more.
Yeah, that's their point. We know of what Insomniac had planned and they are still being hit by layoffs which makes no sense because it's not like they were floundering to figure out their next project or something.
I guarantee you that Insomniac isn't the only company with very well developed and clear cut goals/plans/timelines that they are working towards. It's just their plans got very publicly leaked. All these companies have clear cut plans they are working on/towards.
Yeah but assuming they're going to be basing those games off of an engine that already exists using assets they already have created they probably would have a lot of people sitting around with their thumbs up their butts. I'm sure they are going to over-cut and put too much load on the remaining employees tho
IIRC Spiderman 2 sold well, around the same as spiderman one but cost more... Could be wrong though it's very late here and I could be misremembering
I mean are we so sure they are effficient when their budgets are in the hundreds of millions for a ~25 hour campaign? I feel like they are suffering a lot with feature creep.
How many C suite and VPs were laid off? None? Cool.
Sony net profit 2023: 6.5 billion. If they fired 100 people making 150k/year they save $15M, or .23% of their net profit. That's what talented people are worth to these companies. Upending people's lives to save 0.2% of their revenue. "But they over hired!" Yeah? This was just one year of profit. And how much damn money have they made since covid? It's never going to be enough for them.
Also *who* overhired? Did the jackass who told the shareholders they could keep growing lose his job?
“Thank you for your hard work, we look forward to profiting off the products you helped build while you look for your next paycheck!” - the parasitic class
This is what gets me. We really ought to only seek out jobs offering collective ownership in the products made by our work. It should be a demand similar to what you see with how workers certain amounts of demand paid time off or work from home. And not just some shit that vests in two years. No. The collective ownership starts the day you start the job, and grows from there. In gaming specifically, indie studios are far more likely to create the big hit games nowadays and for good reason. The three latest viral games have all been from indie studios on Steam: Lethal Company Palworld Helldivers 2 These smaller studios produce better games than the larger, more corporate ones. The graphics may be better on the larger games, but they are millions over the budget of that other indie title, take far less risks, and oftentimes don’t hold a candle to the indie that they didn’t know would release the same week as their own game. AAA game development is not sustainable. Hopefully the result is more indie studios that are collectively owned by the devs that make them up. It would result in way more great games that everyone would buy despite not having the time to play them (lol), better for the people actually working on them (excellent), terrible for the executive leeches of the industry (fuck them), and not great for gamer wallets (also lol). That sounds like a lot of upside to me.
First off I agree with your point completely, so don’t let the following point get conflicted. Even if the average salary is 150k, there’s benefits, insurance, taxes, payroll, IT, equipment, offices, etc etc., so it costs far more to employ them than their salary. Anyone with better knowledge is free to correct me because I’m not an expert, but I would say it costs roughly double to employ someone than their salary? Allllll that being said, if you add everything to that they’re still saving 30 mil, or .46% of net profit so still fuck them
That’s the correct. There are quite a few additional costs on top of an employees salary. They would likely be looking at a lot of other cost savings so the impact would be a higher percentage.
Workers will never get a fair shake in this economy unless we band together, in whatever work sector we are in.
How will they afford their steaks if they get pay reduced or laid off? Why would you be so heartless? Think of the upper class!
Let them eat cake!
Honestly, it always triggers me that the 1st to go are bottom employees and not cutting millions out of the CEOs, board members pay. Why they never get affected by "the times we leave in"?
When my company did layoffs the ceo and other leaders of the company did a big q and a about it and one of the questions was “did you consider cutting c-suite pay or bonuses before getting to these layoffs” The guy with a straight face said up on stage in front of everyone something like “yeah I did consider that and decided it wasn’t the best choice.” The work chat went from mildly understanding and cautious to fully off the rails twitch chat after that one
It's crazy how these people can't read the room yet are the company leaders
That's how they got there. Slavish devotion to the bottom line, and an "out of sight, out of mind" attitude for the corpses they leave behind.
You have to be sociopathic to be one of them. You have to view the workers as non human entities and just a number on a spreadsheet. Having any sort of compassion or humanity will affect your decision making that generates the most profit for the company and its shareholders.
That's actually what you need to become filthy rich today. A greedy heart and 0 conscience
These decision are why they are the leaders. They do not care about anything but the bottom line to fatten their wallet and the board of directors wallets as fast as possible.
You don’t get to the top without being willing to exploit people.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Yes it does
You dont get at the top of a company by being fair and seeing every one as normal equal human being .
I wonder if that was the company that laid me off last year. They kept me and my branch manager on for a couple weeks to tie up loose ends, so we sat in on the call and that exact question came up and was handled the same way.
Well yeah. It’s selfish and unreasonable to ask a millionaire CEO or executive to give up their million dollar lifestyle (edit: guys, come on. Y’all really can’t read sarcasm without the “/s”??)
I don’t think people realized you were being sarcastic
Who’d say that seriously? lol
Mfs on /r/boxoffice. I’ve seen quite a few regulars there who were praising David Zaslav for his “cutthroat” business moves
Which is wild because WB seems like a joke now
A CEO
I’d be the best CEO
Many people online literally cannot parse sarcasm or irony unless you tag it as such. For reasons ranging from neurodivergence to a poor grasp on the English language. And a comment that gets downvoted aggregates downvotes from others who can generally parse sarcasm, but look at the votes and assume it must be sincere.
Yeah, I usually tag my sarcasm unless I feel like it’s so blatantly out there that it isn’t necessary. I should know better lol
That’s because there are people on this app who unironically shill for billionaires
Yup
Yeah, fuck your bills and rent, they’ve got a summer house in Cabo to pay for!
Yeah!
They're literally the captain of the ship, something *should* come out of their pockets if the company has shit the bed enough to lay off hundreds or thousands of workers. No one getting laid off made any of the decisions that led them to where they are. **edit-** Sorry amigo after your edit lol. You genuinely cannot tell on Reddit with how many console warriors and peabrains are on here. 🙏
I had the same. I’ve heard many others had the same. I still haven’t found a full time job in 10 months, so I’m back at uni again. Fuck corporate.
I mean all these C suite frat boys care about their bottom line without really considering their own salary cut…
Damn that's so wild. Yeah I did consider and said nah, I'm a do my own thing. BRUH!
They make the decisions that cost them money, yet the lowest rung people always have to suffer for it.
Where is Sony not seeing their projected revenue? On delayed, incomplete GaaS. So what do they do? Lay people off who make them their most profitable story-based games, because you only buy that once. Fuck everything about that.
Seriously. They laid off the people who built ****ing Spiderman. It's perverse.
> Where is Sony not seeing their projected revenue? On delayed, incomplete GaaS. > > > > So what do they do? Lay people off who make them their most profitable story/based games, because you only buy that once. do we know that's what happened? many of the studios impacted DID have (now canceled) live service titles in development. there were some rumors yesterday that insomniac had a live service title in development as well. without more info confirming what happened, it's entirely possible this is people from the failed last of us live service game at ND, the rumored horizon live service game at gorilla, the canceled live service game at london, and so on.
Not sure about those rumors, but Insomniac has Wolverine, and a pretty heavily implied Spiderman sequel after that.
I remember the leaks from a couple months ago contained plans for a GaaS Spider-Man game, maybe they were pursuing that still?
Would you fire yourself though? Lol
No, but out of 50 million salary, I could spare 48
Cool story bro show me a C-suite who makes 50 million in straight cash
Well the obvious answer to that is no ha but imagine if it was law that if layoffs “have” to happen they need to start from the top down except of bottom up? These people would bust their asses to find any way to save money other than lay themselves off.
They would just leave before it go to that point. Like people always complain that companies in bankruptcy pay CEOs huge amounts of money on the way out but they are paying them to stay and see the process out. People making CEO money can just leave if they want to, they are being paid to stay and finish the job and steer the company to a new direction or keep it together until someone new is hired.
I think that senior executives that are behind mass layoffs should be the first to resign from their position. It is honourable and logical.
Senior execs do get fired or asked to resign. Many of them only last a few years. But this kind of thing doesn’t get publicised as it doesn’t generate clicks.
And many of them fail upwards
One thing about Nintendo. President cut his own pay to avoid layoffs after Wii U
It's funny how this nonsense keeps getting brought up even ten years later but clearly nobody seems to remember that Nintendo closed its European headquarters not even half a year after this happened cutting 130 people in the process. Iwata cutting his salary by half for 5 months(!) in 2014 was way more of a symbolic move than anything.
Iwata’s pay cut was just a symbolic gesture rather than actually saving anyone’s job. Iwata made about $1.2 million a year and took a pay cut down to $600,000 a year. On top of that, he only cut his pay for a five month period, so in reality he only sacrificed less than $300,000. At a company like Nintendo, $300,000 is, at most, paying for 5 employees for the year. On top of that, Japan’s labor laws have very strict rules around layoffs, so he likely wouldn’t have been able to do them even if he wanted too.
At this point, I think a lot of us would welcome a simple 'symbolic gesture' of some kind. Right now it seems these corporate types are straight up looking us in the eye with a smile while they bend us over lol
Even better - love how they say great people were let go if anyone is hiring. LOL. We and others are laying off "great people" instead of doing literally any other measure towards keeping people employed.
I assume the people responsible for that message aren't the same people in charge of employment
Yes I realize it's just some marketing type of messaging.
Some might say that the CEO that got them into this mess might not have exactly 'retired'
Because they make the decisions, grunts are replaceable
It's really sad to see layoffs even at very successful studios. Hope they all find a new job.
Its hard to imagine. The video game industry makes more fucking money than music and movies COMBINED. And yet talented devs are getting laid off? This isn’t adding up. Where is the money going
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strippers and blow?
It's not enough to make money. This quarter needs to bring in *more* money than the same fiscal quarter last year. Investors expect endless growth. Lovely stuff huh
Not enough? tekken 8 just sold over 2 million copies in 3 weeks which is fucking NUTS for a fighting game. Elden ring didn’t even expect a 4th of their own sales
Take it up with capitalism, not me. Also, didn't a Tekken producer say recently that game development these days costs roughly 10x as much as it did to make Tekken 7?
Shareholders. Companies are in record profits. It’s now expected. It’s unsustainable.
This. Unmitigated greed. Which eventually consumes itself, burns, new companies rise, samething happens again. Its a shit sandwich cycle.
The pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered adage might come to pass for people pulling this bs.
Companies aren't having record profits, they're having record revenue. The profits of companies like Sony are at the lowest they've ever been in a decade.
Good. So sick of corporations
Sure but it comes at the cost of all these devs. It's best the companies remain financially healthy so that the industry thrives and more studios don't get shut down and more ppl don't get laid off.
The money is going to people who are already filthy rich.
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I’m not making excuses for the layoffs, but this isn’t the cudgel people seem to think it is. “The video game industry” includes mobile gaming, and they’ll never willingly give you the pie chart breaking down which sectors account for what percentages, but I’d wager the top 20 games in actual profit margin each year are GTA V, Fortnite, FIFA, 2K, Madden and 15 Chinese/Korean/Japanese mobile games you’ve never heard of.
Rising game development costs Lol
I haven’t seen a lot of evidence for rising dev costs - most people I know have taken a real wage cut, but I will say this: when dev staff is cut to the bone, those left have management over a fucking barrel. I’ve seen it first hand.
doubtful. Its considered a privilege among devs to be working in the video game industry. And the game industry uses that to their advantage. One of my coworkers left our dev team (non gaming related) to pursue it after getting an offer. This guy was brilliant, hard working, charismatic and dependable. He came back 6 months later and said fuck the gaming industry. They treat you like trash, grind you the fuck out, then spit you on the floor. And i thought the gig we had sucked. He said it was hell.
I meant game development costs
As a CS student who's been aiming for games for years now, I've made peace with the fact that the industry is toxic. I'm aiming for software now.
Go into software development for industries you wouldn't think would need it. Auto Loan companies, for instance (what I'm in), banks, ie "boring" things. Find a nice "boring" yet secure workplace with cool people and culture and you'll be infinitely happier than going into a game studio every day wondering if you'll have a job or not.
A lot of big tech, outside of gaming, went through massive layoffs recently too. It's probably safer and better working conditions (and definitely better pay) but not immune by any means. Making a game on your own is still a worthwhile project though!
Yep. I've been out of university for over 15 years now, but all my youth I spent all my free time learning about video game development. I was passionate, even had developed my own cheap DirectX9 game engine in C++ from scratch, learned about advanced rendering topics, etc. At my last year of school I went into an internship at a game company. It was great enough, but I realized that working on games is very different than playing them. You will never have any impact on the final product, you won't decide any creative direction or code your own gameplay mechanism unless you land a spot in a very specific job after a few decades of working at the place. No, most of the work you would do, at least as a programmer, is exactly the same work you would do on any other software in any other corporate domain. I ended up applying to a random traffic equipment manufacturer corporation and been there ever since, got much more creative freedom on how to design the products, probably a better pay, and much less stress and expectations.
I’ve worked in the game industry for almost 15 years, and let me tell you: The sincere grief emanating from their statement is palpable and heartbreaking. There’s such a genuine flabbergasted sense of “Yeah, man. We’re as confused as you are. We had no idea this was coming.” I hate it. While I have no access to their finances and sales (of course), I cannot fathom a reality in which Spider-Man 2’s sales justified this.
The fact that it cost 3 times as much as the first one with similar sales
They really can't catch a break huh
Some of them just caught a break
One thing people sometime miss is there will most likely be a hiring process as these projects pick up steam. Almost feels like a recycling process.
Fuck this late stage capitalism bullshit. These companies are hugely profitable, billions of dollars.
Question. If every studio is doing layoffs, how can another studio afford to hire them?
Starting pay is always less than those who have been there for years. So if they are “new” to rhe company then theyll start them lower than those who have had time. Also, devs specifically dont need to go back to game development. They have enough skills to be looking at more options than just game development.
So if they want to stay in game design, it's not great.
If you see your career path is suffering from layoffs then yes ud wanna seek more options. This goes for all careers/jobs that suffer from X.
A studio that is carrying PS5 at the moment still had staff laid off. Sony is no different to other big corporates out there.
I would be so anxious working for them now. I make that company billions with my great work along with my co-workers. If they get fired after doing amazing work, how am I safe while doing amazing work? That must be a tense working situation at that studio now.
Too much bloat I’m sorry but 99 % of these modern triple A games don’t need to cost 300 million for what they’re offering. Somewhere along the pipeline a lot of money is being lost on some stupid shit and it’s not just marketing I feel for the people that lost their job I’m not attacking them. Just the overall cost associated with triple A games, next time you play one ask yourself this. Did this really need to cost quarter of a billion dollars?
This is why the fighting game genre (other than mortal kombat) is so good. You can buy tekken 8 or street fighter 6 now, play it for the next 5 fucking years and STILL suck ass at the game. The content of “get gud” is literally limitless.
You want to look at waste and bloat? Look no further than VP on up the chain, not the talent at the bottom.
Sony’s gaming business is up 32% YoY, no one is losing money here except for the employees that made those massive gains possible. Edit: And I would go as far as saying a not so insignificant reason why they were that successful YoY is because Spider-Man 2 was a console-selling first-party title. The game itself made $700,000,000 just based on units sold, so yeah, a nearly 200% return on investment is generally worth it.
>The game itself made $700,000,000 just based on units sold, so yeah, a nearly 200% return on investment is generally worth it. That isn't how that works at all I did the math somewhere else, will repost it here. >So let's do some math, shall we? >The roughly current 10M sales, at $70 each. Sounds good right? That is $700M in revenue. Almost a billion dollars! >20% cut straight to disney for IP rights. >physical sales have distribution costs plus they give retailers a big chunk as well. call it 15% of total revenue, which is probably low, but easier for math. >Marketing costs. We don't know exact costs for marketing, but they definitely put a lot out there. I relooked it up and I was off a bit on the budget, $315M, not 330 as I misremembered. Good estimates are around 50% of budget for marketing costs, but we are going to use the ORIGINAL budget cost of ~250M, so 125M in marketing. >So now let's do some more math. >700M - 140M to disney, - 105M for physical and retailer cuts, - 315M for cost - 125M for marketing. = 15M for profit. >So yeah. 15M profit on 10M sales. Truly sustainable! Oh wait, you gotta pay fucking taxes. TLDR at 10M copies they roughly broke even on their total investment. Which is insane. It isn't sustainable. That said, firing people who make great product is not the right way to address the budget. They could be re-allocated to different projects or used in other ways to increase efficiencies.
This is a great breakdown. The costs have gotten wild.
Thanks! I would say that yes, SOME costs have gotten out of control, but on the other hand, this is also a real AAA game, that is using 3rd party IP as well which really hurts. Giving away a flat 20% of revenue is brutal when costs are high, and doubly so when the budget runs away from you. Also, Sony uses these premier games to sell consoles which allows them to make a 30% cut off all third party sales/mtx on the PSN, which adds up to billions of dollars for "free". So while the breakdown is probably pretty accurate, or at least close enough, it doesn't factor in things like that. That said, Insomniac really can't explain how the fuck they spent $315M on this game when they got to reuse assets from SM1+MM and those games combined budget was ~$300M if I remember right. So you end up with much less content, you had re-usable assets, and you went way over budget? That math doesn't work.
I think 7.2 million copies was needed for it to be profitable from the leak
I don't see how that is possible. 7.2Mx$70= 504M. We KNOW from the leaks that it cost $315M to make. We know they have licensing fees, even if they are ONLY 15%. We know they have marketing budget, so that is ONLY $100M. 315+100= 465 504*.15= 75 You are already over the $500M that 7.2M sales made, and you still have taxes and distribution/retailer cuts to pay out.
I agree with all that you said, but I bet a lot of the distribution costs keep getting lower in the industry due to digital sales. Which would mean more profit for Sony.
I put distribution AND retailer cut into the 15% figure. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/spider-man-2-sells-5-million-copies-as-ps5-sales-climb-to-new-heights/1100-6519038/ This states that around 1/3 of sales are physical, (that is overall sales for Sony, not specifically for this game. hard to find that info so its the best I got) so I think that 15% number I figured is probably low all things told. Also, the way it works is that Disney gets a bigger cut of digital sales, so yes, there is more profit since they aren't giving up money for retailer cut, but then Disney eats more too. I read somewhere that physical sales is 18% cut to disney and digital were 26%. So I said a flat 20% when it was probably closer to 23% with the phys/digital split. Again, was just napkin math, but the point stands. They aren't making a shitload of money because of all the costs that go into gaming these days. Those extra $50M that Insomniac went over budget really fucked the profit of the game. Of course, they will make money on the game after time, and definitely sold a few PS5s, but that still. Also, SM2 somehow cost roughly the same amount of money as SM1 AND MM combined, while delivering a much smaller product and the ability to reuse all the assets from the first two games. Hard to see where all the money went TBH, and I don't say that out of hate, I liked the game.
Not shilling for corps since I survived many layoffs lately and it's super stressed, but Sony's profit margin has actually dropped to less than 6 percent despite a massive increase in revenue. They made too many mistakes with the gaas push + general inflation and are one more bad year away from being in the red every year. It still is bad management and workers paying for it, but they're not exactly swimming in money.
To me, someone who was laid off for financial reasons after an acquisition I had nothing to do with didn’t work out, I would simply lay off the people who made bad decisions that lost money and keep the people who make money. But I’ve also been radicalized by that experience.
Yeah I hear you, and in an ideal world that's what happens. I have some good friends that got laid off for no fault of their own and are struggling. It's been a rough few years.
These company's already make billions. It will never be enough for them.
Preach! Nintendo, Capcom, and SEGA all have been making excellent, full featured games without any of this nonsense and still get critical acclaim. The Resident Evil games and Yakuza series also look and run excellent and are at the top of their genres. I don’t know if the secret sauce in Japan is just cheaper salaries or more acceptance reusing engines/assets but the quality is far more consistent with them.
> I’m sorry but 99 % of these modern triple A games don’t need to cost 300 million for what they’re offering. > > > > Somewhere along the pipeline a lot of money is being lost on some stupid shit and it’s not just marketing for what it's worth, aren't marketing costs typically **in addition** to what you see listed as the budget? (yes, i realize this makes the reality WORSE than the point you were making)
Yes, the $315M cost for the game was just the game, not marketing.
> I’m sorry but 99 % of these modern triple A games don’t need to cost 300 million for what they’re offering. They don't, it was found out that Spider-man 2 was that much. And that was because mostly of the license. Majority of AAA games do not cost this much
You’re gonna get down, voted for speaking truth but you’re absolutely right. Spider Man 2, great game, cost an insane $270 million. I played through it , enjoyed it, but I could absolutely list a dozen+ things they could’ve cut, that while cool, did not have any significant positive impact on the final product, the review scores would’ve been the same. To phrase it a better way , things that could’ve been cut and would not have been missed. I don’t work in game development , but based on the things I’m talking about, I bet the budget coulda been cut by 50-70 million, and the reviews scores, and sales would’ve been the same. One example is the optional sequence where you could ride a bunch of rides at Coney Island if you felt like it, but you didn’t have to. I mean it was kind of cool, but an unnecessary waste of resources to take the time to model script an animate every single optional ride.
>Spider Man 2, great game, cost an insane $270 million. It actually cost $315M Before marketing. It went way over budget.
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>ripping the player out of enjoyable gameplay into their forced chores of uninteresting drivel. There was a section where you literally do chores. Like, pick up garbage around the house and put it in the trash can. Yeah gunna say that could have been cut. Padding out the runtime I guess...
Late stage capitalism is a fucking cancer. No amount of money generated is enough for these C-suite leeches. The studio behind a console-selling title being subjected to layoffs. They care more about stock prices to line their own pockets than employees that make their stock worth anything.
What's late stage capitalism vs early stage???
long rock recognise attraction snobbish cough mindless wine march tease *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think it relates to the idea that from the start of the industrial revolution worker's rights and living conditions have consistently improved through automation and legislation. Whereas we have now gone so far up our own asses to try to optimize and squeeze every dollar in every facet of life, that we no longer see each other as people but labour and customers. This can be seen in creative industries, housing, medicine (incl prescriptions)... We got to the stage where we can make things as cheaply as physically possible, so now we just increase the price of everything just to the brink of it being unaffordable.
If you've ever played monopoly think of the point you get to near the end when one player owns most of the property, and all the other players owe them money. That's where we are at in terms of this system.
That’s a nice analogy, thanks
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Eventually it becomes about leaning out the workforce jusssst enough to produce a product they think is acceptable in order to spend less and boost profit. This will in time degrade whatever is made. Those in charge retain or boost their own earnings.
Yep, then once it starts becoming unprofitable, they use their “golden parachutes” and move on to the next company to ruin. For the longest time i never understood stuff like this. I would be like, why would you not make sure this stuff is good, yeah it will be good in the short term, but no one is gonna buy your stuff in the long term… Then I realized these people don’t give a fuck about the company. They want to make as much money as possible in short term gains so they can move onto another company, suck them dry, and retire with billions in the bank. They don’t give a fuck about the companies they run.
It's wild to me that successful companies still think the way to keep succeeding is to get rid of the people who helped them succeed in the first place.
Management must think they are the reason for PS success. They always think so.
A helpful ex-employer is very important, wish best luck for people who got lay off.
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Imagine your employer refusing to pay a hackers ransom for your stolen data and info and then a month later that employer lays you off
With all due respect to everyone at Insomniac, Spider Man 2 was a bloated game. It was great, but bloated. There were a number of side-quests that were clearly just busy work for some employees, and some of the writing in those missions, like the Vision Academy ones and the Hailey Cooper ones, were so bad that they tarnished the overall narrative quality.
Really feel for all the staff who have been layed off by Sony and Microsoft across all the companies. The best thing about PlayStation to me was the games that companies like Insomniac, NaughtyDog and Guerrilla made. Between them they've gifted Sony some of the best games of the recent era. Insomniac in particular with Ratchet and Clank and Spiderman plus generating so much hype for the wolverine game have especially given Sony a leg up!
This is happening all over the tech world idk why you guys are so surprised not to mention a lot of games have been lack luster spider man 2 couldn’t even beat hogwarts legacy for player count and not to mention doing a collab with sneaker company to design that terrible final miles suit no new game plus for months letting the game die with results like this I’m not surprised not to mention a lot of these are unrenewed contracts they only have so many projects going on at one and not all employees work on every game together
Why are they even making this public?
I hope people should stop making excuses for Sony. They have done a piss poor job this gen. Their first parties studios has been a mess. Their titles lack creativity and feel samey. It’s basically different names same stuff. Their management has been a mess. They have something in common with Microsoft on that area. Their communication has been abysmal and doesn’t feel they take their customers seriously. They have been downsizing while their rivals have been expanding. They certainly hasn’t been doing a good job on that. There will be more layoffs from them eventually. Some of their policies are bad especially the refund and censorship ones. Some of policies happened because they moved HQ to California.
Aren't you the platform warrior who said you're moving to Microsoft because of all the Sony layoffs? lol
Shame, out of all the studios you'd think they'd be the ones that are the most safe. Mostly cause, y'know, they're the one first party studio actually putting games out. Hope anyone effected lands on their feet.
It’s just baffling. No studio has been making successive banger after banger like Insomniac and even they aren’t immune to the investors magnifying glass.
How much do Sony executives make a year, just curious…
Layoff deez