I wish more people had this sense of perspective. But it’s the internet, so there are no limits to how outraged people will get about the smallest things. Plus there’s the added bonus that the audience and internet commenters in general are frequently boys and young men, who already have trouble moderating their thoughts and actions.
Well it’s not just that but that engaging with people opens a door to harassment. Like, people are mad about Asus bricking their motherboards but they’ll spend less time online about that than they will attacking a dev that engages with them. Or you buy a low end vacuum from a low end store and it brakes the first day. Crap! Then you throw it out an move on in life.
I see this in certain progressive websites where they tell their readers “look we had to cut back 5%” but do this in a 30 page point by point with spreadsheets and graphs and full transparency - and then they receive hundreds of 30 page responses demanding more transparency and how dare they and actually now that we think about it maybe you’re worse than Hitler! (/MrBurns) and your whole website needs to burn. And all that comes from engaging with them, not the reverse. The more you talk, the more the public will feel permitted to hang you with your own words.
The best thing to do is if you f’d up just say “Sorry we hear you and are working to make corrections.” and then just deliver those corrections. Engaging today is a fool’s errand.
But developers, indie developers especially, need players to be emotionally invested in the games, they need the players to trust the next game they make will be good. No one is going to pay 30 bucks for a kickstarter project that may or may not even be completed in three years if they go by “whatever, it’s just a videogame”.
Isn’t this what Daedalic did?
Is it true that customers can universally get refunds for broken games?
Steam has this soft 2 hour limit, but I have seen many anecdotes of refunds being granted for playtimes longer than that (in Australia they have to if the game is broken in some objective way). Epic offers refunds. Does playstation and xbox offer unconditional refunds? Does someone buying a physical copy of Gollum (if such a thing exists) have access to a refund?
I personally think Aaron’s point is splitting hairs. “Yes customers should do X, Y, Z, but the length of the apology is too long.” His real grievance is against crazy depressed people on twitter and elsewhere who have randomly chosen videogames as the one thing in their life to dump all of their insecurity and rage on, not companies.
(btw as an Australian I will kindly collect your thankyous for electing a government that created laws that forced Steam into offering refunds back in 2014, which they decided to sortof extend to everyone in the world in 2015 with the two hour limit.)
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/31/firaxis-layoffs
The cuts were due to a “sharpening of focus, enhancements of efficiencies, and an alignment of our talent against our highest priorities," a rep for Firaxis publisher 2K Games told Axios.
“The studio remains focused on developing critically acclaimed video games,” they also said.
The cool thing for the C-Suite is they no longer even have to delegate someone to write these.
Here’s the two first paragraph from ChatGPT with the instruction “write a layoff announcement for Firaxis”:
We hope this message finds you well. Today, we write to you with a heavy heart to share some difficult news. As you know, Firaxis has always strived to create exceptional gaming experiences and push the boundaries of innovation in the industry. However, due to unforeseen circumstances and evolving market dynamics, we find ourselves facing significant challenges that demand immediate action.
After careful consideration and thorough evaluation of our operations, we have made the tough decision to implement a workforce restructuring plan. This plan unfortunately entails a reduction in our overall workforce, affecting a number of talented and dedicated individuals, including some of our own colleagues.
I mean, “sharpening of focus, enhancements of efficiencies, and an alignment of our talent against our highest priorities” is straight out of a template anyhow, so, yeah. “Honey, I lost my job. I wasn’t aligned against our highest priorities, and I didn’t enhance their efficiency enough!”
It’s interesting when an e-sports group is more activist on labor issues than mainstream labor unions. Which I think is a plus for the LCSAPA. Now, if we could only get the AFL-CIO, et al, resuscitated.
https://twitter.com/covingtown/status/1663998815458951168
Careful with not making jokes about millionaires, or may lose your job at Blizzard!
I have come to the conclusion that most corporate bigwigs have tiny penises, and feel they have to compensate accordingly.
Looks like Embracer is next in line to “trim the fat” from its structure & kick people to the curb after buying up a gazillion games studios and notably the rights to the Lord of the Rings recently…
They must have dozens of redundant PR/marketing/community management departments with how many companies they acquired. I suspect that unexpected loss of that 2 billion deal sped up the decision to get leaner.
Embracer, after that 2 billion dollar setback, now going into an employee reducing phase.
Indeed.
It just sounds like they were just buying everything they could. Now they’re in the, “oh, we have to actually do something with the IP we bought” phase.
It actually sounds like were trying to sell some IP if you read between the lines. And when that failed, they’re in production mode now.
Ah yes, staff reduction will certainly make up for that 2 billion dollar loss.
It’s working so well for Elon.
It’s a funny quote, but maybe putting studios like Volition on a LOTR game might actually lead to a great result. I’m nervous for Volition, I hope they don’t get shutdown.
They didn’t lose $2 billion. They failed to close a deal that would have resulted in somebody paying them $2 billion over 6 years in exchange for something (presumably “your games on our platform”). That’s a pretty big distinction.