Sega buys Amplitude (Endless Legend devs)

[Infinitron]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...on-pc-strategy-snaps-up-endless-space-creator

Sega doubles down on PC strategy, snaps up Endless Space creator
Amplitude Studios joins the roster.

Sega Europe has purchased Amplitude Studios, the developer of the Endless franchise.

Having created Endless Space and Endless Legend, the French studio is regarded as one of the leading developers in the 4X strategy genre. We're expecting the team's next game, Endless Space 2, to arrive on Steam Early Access later this year.

"Joining the SEGA family represents the culmination of five years of hard work from myself and Romain and everyone here at Amplitude Studios" said co-founder Mathieu Girard. "For the Endless series to be alongside PC franchises with such heritage as Total War and Dawn of War in the SEGA Europe stable puts our games where we feel they deserve to be."

This marks another big step into the world of strategy by Sega, which already owns both Creative Assembly and Relic Entertainment.

What a world we live in! Sega, once known for its consoles, now solidifies its position as a publisher of hardcore PC strategy games. Quite the Paradox, ey?

 

[orcinator]

RIP in piece

 

[Jigawatt]

God damn it

 

[Hobo Elf]

Sega isn't even close to being the worst company that could buy you out. They do some good and some bad but on average I trust them more than many other companies. People acting dismayed are probably using Creative Assembly as a reference point without realizing that they are just shitty fucking devs which has nothing to do with Sega. Now imagine if a company like Tencent Holdings bought them out. Then we could really declare them dead.

 

[Tacgnol]

Sega isn't even close to being the worst company that could buy you out. They do some good and some bad but on average I trust them more than many other companies. People acting dismayed are probably using Creative Assembly as a reference point without realizing that they are just shitty fucking devs which has nothing to do with Sega. Now imagine if a company like Tencent Holdings bought them out. Then we could really declare them dead.

Biggest issue with Sega and CA is the aggressive DLC policy that Sega has pushed. I imagine that they will bring this to Amplitude Studios.

 

[Martius]

So what now? They will region lock their games so dirty Europeans wont be able to buy them?

 

[Hobo Elf]

Sega isn't even close to being the worst company that could buy you out. They do some good and some bad but on average I trust them more than many other companies. People acting dismayed are probably using Creative Assembly as a reference point without realizing that they are just shitty fucking devs which has nothing to do with Sega. Now imagine if a company like Tencent Holdings bought them out. Then we could really declare them dead.

Biggest issue with Sega and CA is the aggressive DLC policy that Sega has pushed. I imagine that they will bring this to Amplitude Studios.

First of all, can you prove that CA wouldn't have gone down the jew DLC route without Sega influences? Secondly, Amplitude already has shitty DLC. Echoes of Auriga? Lost Tales? Guardians? These are all fucking awful things to nickel and dime your customers with and it was no doubt going to get worse with Endless Space 2. However now that Sega is the parent company they'll shoulder all the blame when the inevitable "more plot in your strategy game DLC" roll in.

 

[Tacgnol]

Sega isn't even close to being the worst company that could buy you out. They do some good and some bad but on average I trust them more than many other companies. People acting dismayed are probably using Creative Assembly as a reference point without realizing that they are just shitty fucking devs which has nothing to do with Sega. Now imagine if a company like Tencent Holdings bought them out. Then we could really declare them dead.

Biggest issue with Sega and CA is the aggressive DLC policy that Sega has pushed. I imagine that they will bring this to Amplitude Studios.

First of all, can you prove that CA wouldn't have gone down the jew DLC route without Sega influences? Secondly, Amplitude already has shitty DLC. Echoes of Auriga? Lost Tales? Guardians? These are all fucking awful things to nickel and dime your customers with and it was no doubt going to get worse with Endless Space 2. However now that Sega is the parent company they'll shoulder all the blame when the inevitable "more plot in your strategy game DLC" roll in.

Mostly circumstantial evidence. The biggest thing I guess would be that Relic follows a very similar DLC strategy to CA and they are both Sega companies.

Whether CA would have gone that route themselves? I'm not sure.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Sega isn't even close to being the worst company that could buy you out. They do some good and some bad but on average I trust them more than many other companies. People acting dismayed are probably using Creative Assembly as a reference point without realizing that they are just shitty fucking devs which has nothing to do with Sega. Now imagine if a company like Tencent Holdings bought them out. Then we could really declare them dead.

Biggest issue with Sega and CA is the aggressive DLC policy that Sega has pushed. I imagine that they will bring this to Amplitude Studios.

First of all, can you prove that CA wouldn't have gone down the jew DLC route without Sega influences? Secondly, Amplitude already has shitty DLC. Echoes of Auriga? Lost Tales? Guardians? These are all fucking awful things to nickel and dime your customers with and it was no doubt going to get worse with Endless Space 2. However now that Sega is the parent company they'll shoulder all the blame when the inevitable "more plot in your strategy game DLC" roll in.

Mostly circumstantial evidence. The biggest thing I guess would be that Relic follows a very similar DLC strategy to CA and they are both Sega companies.

There is no circumstantial evidence in this case. Creative Assembly was acquired by sega in 2005, a time when nickel and dime DLC was not common practice the way it is today. It's 100% sure that CA would've ended up going that route regardless of Sega, simply because everyone does it now, regardless of who owns who, or doesn't. Also, Medieval 2, arguably their best game, was published under Sega's ownership. The string of crapsack DLC did not happen until pretty much all other developers and publishers adopted it, thus, we can easly infer that it has nothing to do with Sega specifically and everything with the industry itself. As I myself just gave you an example already that Amplitude themselves are not saints either since they have released bullshit DLC themselves already and they have been independent until now. So no, I don't see how Sega has any specific kind negative influence on developers. In fact they have a positive one since they let niche series' like Yakuza flourish.

 

[Infinitron]

Didn't the last DOW2 expansion already have a bunch of DLC? That was released when they were owned by THQ.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Didn't the last DOW2 expansion already have a bunch of DLC? That was released when they were owned by THQ.

Yes, but let's abandon all reason and collectively go "muh Sega boogeyman!!"

 

[Tacgnol]

Meh, it sounds like Relic and CA were on the DLC train before Sega then.

In all honesty I've never had a big issue with Sega as they bring out quite a lot of PC exclusive titles.

 

[Metro]

Good news, Endless Legend will be in a future Humble Bundle. Also, Sega has never been 'aggressive' with their DLC. Most of their games (not ones developer/published prior to them acquiring the IP) only have a few.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Dear Endless Players,

Starting today, at 9 am, Amplitude will be writing a new chapter of its history. Since the beginning and our first success with Endless Space (which became a million-seller!), the market has become increasingly crowded. Even some of the biggest publishers want to make their own 4X games, and in an intense market like this, a small studio like Amplitude can get steamrolled.

What we want to do is to focus on making games; that is why we created Amplitude. But with the pressure on sales and marketing we found that more and more time was dedicated to everything else – everything that we didn’t have the size and scale to deal with. So we decided to look for the best partner we could to protect us from these distractions so that game development did not become a chore, but remained a passion.

Therefore, we have decided to join forces with SEGA – yes, that SEGA! We want the only question that keeps us up at night to be, “How do I make better games?” Partnering with SEGA will bring us to a whole new level.

Of course you could wonder, “Why Sega?” If you were to ask just Mathieu and I, we could easily answer with the words “Creative Assembly and Relic!” because we are HUGE fans of their games. The opportunity to join them is incredible for us, a real dream come true.

But the bigger reason why we wanted to join SEGA was how they treat their internal studios. Often, studios are controlled by a central department that dictates what games they should do, and how and when. But SEGA is a company that offers its support to the creators, positioning itself as a service provider, helping studios to reach their goals with only one objective in mind: Quality!

We announced the news a few days ago to the Amplitude staff, and we were amazed to see how well they received it. You know why? Because it was SEGA, and we all have a good reason to love them.

Today we will answer all your questions on our brand new Games2Gether forums. To ask us anything, about Amplitude, our games, and our decision to join SEGA, just press "Comment this blog" below that post!

Thank you so much for all your continued support. Let’s make sure, together, that the next chapter is the best one of the book!

Spacetroll and AmpliMath

Sound like a defensive move. And while the "we just want to make games and nut business" is an understandable reason to sell your studio, many examples showed that in a big company you still have to do things you don't like (office politics) and people who sold because of this don't thrive in the new environment either.

Some more comments from them here:

https://www.games2gether.com/games2gether/blog/452-amplitude-joins-the-sega-family

 

[pippin]

Endless Sonic & Knucles featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series

 

[Jacob]

seriously? sonic?

what about something that could be actually good, like a Valkyria Chronicles 4X

 

[Jaesun]

Who?

 

[DeepOcean]

Did Endless legend sold that well to attract Sega?

 

[Icewater]

Everyone already forget the whole Sega 'Total War has too much content' thing?

 

[Hobo Elf]

Did Endless legend sold that well to attract Sega?

I think they just gobbled them up because they seemed like interesting devs. They probably see this more as an investment of an up an up coming dev team that may become bigger in the future. Flawed gameplay aside (which seems to improve with each game they make), they have pretty talented people working for them. The artists especially.

 

[vonAchdorf]

They also might want to try out the community driven development and see if it works for them.

 

[LizardWizard]

Didn't the last DOW2 expansion already have a bunch of DLC? That was released when they were owned by THQ.

Yes, but let's abandon all reason and collectively go "muh Sega boogeyman!!"

COH2's DLC is aggressively worse than even that, pay to win shit garbage. Not to mention Warhammer was Denuvo'd.

lol at white knighting SEGA of all things. If that's the hill you want to die on.