Video Game Industry Deathwatch thread

[deuxhero]

With more and more major studios contracting or closing, games with large marketing campaigns just completely bombing with sub 10K sales, and even suits publicly stating sales are stagnant at best despite massively higher costs than they used to be, I figure we should have a dedicated thread to chronicle all the stuff about the industry dying. I'm sure the second video game collapse has already started. Post all the layoffs, closures, sales bombing etc. news you see.

Netflix's attempt to make AAA game fails. Studio dead with no releases.
https://archive.ph/tGp8v

Netflix has shut down its triple-A ‘Team Blue’ studio
The studio had the Overwatch executive producer and a God of War art director among its ranks [...]
Netflix had spent the past couple of years acquiring a number of veteran developers to join the studio, which was said to be working on an original, mutliplatform triple-A game.
The studio launched in October 2022, with Netflix putting former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny in charge.

 

[JC'sBarber]

This industry has had gangrene for many, many years now. It's time to amputate.

 

[taxalot]

There could be no more new games released for the rest of your life, and you'd still have enough stuff to play for the rest of your life.

 

[Ol' Willy]

 

[d1r]

This industry has had gangrene for many, many years now. It's time to amputate.

The state of the industry currently is especially dire, because not only are 99% of the studios incapable of producing actually good games anymore, but studios are also raping old games by DEI'fying everything with remakes now. This is the absolute worst time in video game history.

 

[Falksi]

I've literally just spent all evening enjoying playing through Darius 2, Darius Twin, and Darius Force and...after a brief attempt at playing the dire FF7 Remake and GTA5 yesterday...it's really reminded me how losing 90% of modern games would make 0 difference to enjoying my life.

Let's see it burn.

 

[JC'sBarber]

This industry has had gangrene for many, many years now. It's time to amputate.

The state of the industry currently is especially dire, because not only are 99% of the studios incapable of producing actually good games anymore, but studios are also raping old games by DEI'fying everything with remakes now. This is the absolute worst time in video game history.

There is no long-term plan within the industry. It's just "keep riding the remake gravy train and hope it never stops". Hope the nostalgia bucks of aging millennials and older zoomers continue to buy into memberberries forever. But eventually, those bucks will run out, and there is nothing else the industry can do but go bankrupt. And why shouldn't it?, there are thousands of quality video games to play. Who even needs new ones at this point?. I personally would settle for native ports of older games to PC, like the stellar OpenGOAL fan project for the Jak games.

It's almost the same with cinema, why bother with the 50th clone of Die Hard on Netflix, when you can just watch Die Hard?. Why watch Amazon's Lord of the Rings abortion, when you can watch the actual Lord of the Rings?.

 

[Necrensha]

Prince of Persia the Lost Crown's team was quietly disbanded due to lack of sales.
No, I do not have a link.

 

[KafkaBot]

This industry has had gangrene for many, many years now. It's time to amputate.

The state of the industry currently is especially dire, because not only are 99% of the studios incapable of producing actually good games anymore, but studios are also raping old games by DEI'fying everything with remakes now. This is the absolute worst time in video game history.

High-budget gaming, maybe, but there are still lots of wonderful titles being released.

If nothing else, it feels like mainstream, AAA gaming has been experiencing a reckoning for a while - the titles they make are becoming more bloated and expensive to put out, but audiences aren't showing up - largely because said bloat has made companies too risk-averse and caused their wares to become too homogenized and uninteresting. Meanwhile, the uncritical consumer that'd still buy those titles has no time for them, because they spend all their gaming time on 1-2 live service titles.

It's similar to what's happening with movies, with the main difference being that they don't have a film equivalent of Fortnite and are much more impacted by post-pandemic changes of habit (people have become addicted to streaming and are no longer showing up to theaters, even when they're interested in seeing a flick).

It is telling that many of the genuinely interesting big-budget titles these days are just remakes whose main draw comes almost entirely from the fact that they allow you to replay the originals without having to resort to emulation - and, if you are computer-savvy and not the type who places graphics above all, playing the original games is almost always a better use of your time. The only original AND ambitious big-budget titles that I can think of are Baldur's Gate 3 and Alan Wake 2, and both still have massive problems.

 

[d1r]

This industry has had gangrene for many, many years now. It's time to amputate.

The state of the industry currently is especially dire, because not only are 99% of the studios incapable of producing actually good games anymore, but studios are also raping old games by DEI'fying everything with remakes now. This is the absolute worst time in video game history.

High-budget gaming, maybe, but there are still lots of wonderful titles being released.

Dunno man, I feel like that most of current indie games have reached a point where everything feels the same as well, and nothing is standing out anymore. Those titles usually do one or two things right, but definitely lack in most other aspects. You just don't get the full package anymore like we used to get back in the old days (even when created by smaller dev studios). And it certainly does not help that the Steam store is getting bombarded with low-quality shit every fucking minute.

 

[Fargus]

I love how you linked that Pompi's pseudo vr game

 

[KafkaBot]

Dunno man, I feel like that most of current indie games have reached a point where everything feels the same as well, and nothing is standing out anymore. Those titles usually do one or two things right, but definitely lack in most other aspects. You just don't get the full package anymore like we used to get back in the old days (even when created by smaller dev studios). And it certainly does not help that the Steam store is getting bombarded with low-quality shit every fucking minute.

Oh, I'm in full agreement that there's metric tons of bullshit being released, making it harder to find the gems hiding among them. That doesn't mean they aren't there, though. Lest we forget, this is currently being developed:



Both of these came out last year:





And plenty of good or great indie games have been released since the start of the 2020s - Void Stranger, Neon White, Paradise Killer, Colony Ship (I know some dislike this one, but you can't deny it at least tried), Between Horizons, Northern Journey, Islands of the Caliph, Dreams in the Witch House, Chants of Senaar, Knights of the Chalice 2, Ctrl Alt Ego... and these are just the ones off the top of my head. Sure enough, the general state of the industry is still sad, but there are many great titles coming out. You just need to put in more work to find them.

 

[NecroLord]

There could be no more new games released for the rest of your life, and you'd still have enough stuff to play for the rest of your life.

Indeed.
I am still discovering more and more old games that I haven't played yet and realize more and more that my interest in modern video games diminishes bit by bit as time passes.

 

[Naraya]

games have reached a point where everything feels the same

This times 1000.

 

[KeAShizuku]

Its the triple A industry that's dying. As others here I've been enjoying some indie games lately (Omori, Signalis) as well as weebshit (Lost Judgment, Trails in the sky).

 

[rumSaint]

Greed. Everyone wants piece of cake, but only games made with good ideas, care and passion are actually successful. Of course there are some weird cases like Amongus which gained traction, but viral marketing sometimes makes wonders.

Lots of games repeat same formula and players are getting tired. How many times you can play open world/rpg/crafting/action game. Oh look another BR. Another slop.

There are lots of passion projects and good games. From time to time even AAA shits out something good. Even if the whole industry collapses there are sooo many games. Crash can be good opportunity.

 

[Iucounu]

Maybe game development as a career choice needs to become less popular. If/when that happens maybe Universities will close down their Game Development courses, and future self-taught game developers will no longer be politically indoctrinated as part of their training. Since I doubt female wokeists are willing or able to learn game development at home by themselves, they'll gradually disappear from the industry.

 

[Inec0rn]

I'm thinking AI bolsters Indy dev teams ability to push out more quality games, big publishers hopefully fail into bankruptcy but maybe able to sustain themselves selling CoD, WoW, Fortnite forever. Either way, I'm not bothered if I never play a MS/EA/Beth/Ubi/Acti/Square game again. At this stage I only pay attention if it's a Valve release (most recent one was shit), and Capcom sometimes pump out something I enjoy.

Curiously the big pub's aren't even bothering to acquire smaller hit franchises and milk them dry like they used to. I think the risk/reward in making a Dead Space, Mass Effect or other SP game is just not worth it at all in comparison to a moderately successful live service game.

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

Prince of Persia the Lost Crown's team was quietly disbanded due to lack of sales.
No, I do not have a link.

However, I do.

 

[deuxhero]

https://archive.ph/wip/fPG7o
Bungie is folding its staff into PlayStation, laying off at least 17% of its employees in the proccess.

• Spend billions on has been company to enhance your live service games knowledge
• Blow up your live service games
• Shut down the company you just spent millions (edit:checked price) 3.6 billion on
• ???
• Profit

 

[Fargus]

Just goin to quote this from another thread

Known as Team Blue, the studio had such talent as Halo's Joseph Staten, Overwatch's Chacko Sonny, and Sony Santa Monica's Rafael Grassetti.

[Emphasis added]

Though it was seemingly just ramping up with more games, Netflix has supposedly closed its Southern California studio. This video game development studio had several high profile developers in its halls that were working on a large, multi-device original IP.

On October 21, 2024, Stephen Totilo of Game File reported that Netflix has shut down one of its AAA video game studios. Known as Team Blue, this studio was purportedly working on a multi-platform, big-budget original IP for the streaming company.

Netflix had recently expanded the studio with Joseph Staten, a former Bungie employee who was the director of cinematics at the company and responsible for the original Halo trilogy. Totilo’s reporting also makes note that Netflix brought on Chacko Sonny, who left Activision Blizzard toward the end of 2021.

It’s certainly surprising to see Netflix dial back so much on its video game front. The company had only recently announced a Squid Game multiplayer title that is scheduled to launch alongside season two of the show. There have also been several well-received titles added to the subscription service, including the likes of Grant Theft Auto.

Where this leaves Joseph Staten, Chacko Sonny, Rafael Grassetti and the rest of the talent developers at Team Blue remains to be seen. To that end, it’s also not clear whether Netflix has canceled the game that Staten and the team was working on or if it will continue to be developed by another studio. Keep your eyes trained on our Netflix Games page for more information.

 

[deuxhero]

Literally in first post

 

[Fargus]

Literally in first post

My bad, i can't really pay attention to everything 100% of the time

Consider it an expansion to your post.

 

[Baron Dupek]

There could be no more new games released for the rest of your life, and you'd still have enough stuff to play for the rest of your life.

unless you're stuck on consoles - even if you have zero preferences the number of games i
and in case of older consoles (that won't last forever) getting more games might be proven difficult with the prices of retro sticker.

 

[911 Jumper]

NCSoft suffers layoffs and cancels projects, including ultra-realistic thriller Project M

NCSoft has announced a reorganisation of its projects and staff, resulting in layoffs and the end of several games - including the promising and ultra-realistic-looking thriller Project M.

Earlier this week, the Korean developer and publisher announced the shift to focusing on four "wholly-owned" subsidiaries. Three of these will act as independent game studios, known as Studios X, Y, and Z. These will be "established to enhance global competitiveness", with a focus on Throne and Liberty, LLL and Tactan.

The fourth subsidiary, known as NC AI, will set its focus on "AI technology development and business expansion", it added.

Source: Eurogamer