Gang, I’m honestly just depressed.
Writing this article is hard. Getting up out of bed to do this is hard when the media and franchises I want to cover go through all the suffering of corporate greed. I have half a mind to quit while I’m starting and accept that the world of games I love will come to a slow and painful end that I have no way of stopping.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. why am I depressed?
2XKO, the Riot Games fighting game based on the League of Legends IP, was just hit by a wave of layoffs. The news comes just 3 weeks after the release of the game officially, stating that “overall momentum hasn’t reached the level needed to support a team of this size long term.” The team shrank approximately by half, going from 160 to a still somewhat respectable 80.
That’s not that bad. Right?
Highguard, the objective shooter I discussed last week, was just hit by a wave of layoffs. The news comes just 16 days after the release of the game officially, stating…oh who honestly cares.
Let’s cut to the chase—layoffs suck. There’s no additional statement. I don’t care if they’re “deserved” because the game failed to reach an audience—seeing your game finally release and knowing that the work you put into it could be leveraged for years to come but your desk might be cleared by the end of the week is depressing and anxiety-inducing to many developers. Some of them put years of their lives into this and won’t see any money past what they were paid for during their time—something that I suppose would make sense for a game that was released with no additional content—but these are both live service games.
I’m a bit of a small-time journalist when it comes to covering these things, but what I can say is we cannot continue to blame this on free to play models or failure to capture audiences. A lot of what this comes from—and what people aren’t discussing—is the corporate greed of knowing they can get away with reducing their workforce in order to grab a larger cut of profits. This often stifles the game’s future, but it doesn’t matter when they anticipate the ability to make the money up front. It’s also an issue of investors—I’m not the most versed in stock market issues and there’s likely others that can speak more to it, but reducing the cost of making a game by removing employees after they’ve done their work for release and making more profit looks better.
I consider what I do a sort of artform—the writing mostly but the journalism too. In that same way, I respect and consider game creation and all the parts behind it as one too. To see it squashed underneath the train of businessmen looking for money causes me to wonder what the hell we’re even doing here if the games we love made by people we respect cannot be supported due to the greed of managers or CEOs. I don’t have another takeaway other than that—the game’s industry is suffering and these layoffs are a symptom of the problem.
This article could have just been what I said at the top: I’m depressed. It’s a sad place to be in where games like these with years poured into them are sullied by layoffs and knowing the people whose work went into what we may love isn’t rewarded monetarily by our continued support. But complaining won’t solve anything, so while I wanted to write this article to make sure it was known I’ll keep it simple and avoid going overboard so that we can enjoy a focus on something more positive in the future.
Marathon is dropping soon, hopefully that’ll lift my spirits.