Who would have guessed that the supposed “year of acquisitions” would be followed up by the year of layoffs in the video gaming industry?
Today, Eidos Montreal has formally declared that a group of its employees has been impacted by a round of layoffs, as part of Embracer Group’s ongoing initiative to reduce expenses.
The announcement, conveyed via Twitter, states that 97 employees across various roles, including developers, administrative staff, and support services, have had their positions terminated.
Eidos specifically attributes Embracer’s restructuring efforts, coupled with the “global economic context and industry challenges,” as reasons for these layoffs.
Because all around this is one big act of incompetence, the Embracer Group seemingly went around the last few years essentially buying up as many smaller studios as they possibly could to bolster their stronghold in the video game development sector.
Eidos Montreal was acquired by Embracer alongside the rights to the Deus Ex and Tomb Raider franchises by Embracer from Square Enix who they themselves are in a deep pit of financial despair, for the meager sum of $300 million back in 2022.
The only problem is that Embracer was more than happy to blow away their capital to acquire worthless wares such as Gearbox and Eidos Montreal with barely any foresight on actual sustainability or revenue for that matter because the company as a whole were banking entirely on a massive partnership with the Savvy Games Group, backed by the Saudi Arabian government.
The deal of course fell through, which was estimated to give Embracer a large $2 billion dollars, the resulting loss of their golden goose has sent Embracer executives scrambling to “unfuck” themselves.
Which is why they are reportedly selling Gearbox Software, whom they bought for the small sum of $1.3 billion dollars and produced the immense financial success that was “New Tales From the Borderlands” which peaked at a stellar 435 concurrent players on launch as the game was subsequently memory holed and given away as a freebie in the Borderlands Pandora’s Box collection.
Their failings to secure Saudi capital is also the reasoning behind the closures of Volition, which produced the woke spectacle formally known as the Saints Row Reboot.
And most recently, Piranha Bytes is on the chopping block too, as the small studio desperately searches for a savior from the clutches of a retarded tyrant with more money than brains.
And now Eidos are suffering from Embracer’s incompetence and are being ransacked because of it.
Not that I can personally blame the Embracer Group as a whole, because if I were dumb enough to throw billions of dollars into the fireplace on the hopes of receiving fat stacks of Saudi cash only to get snubbed at the last minute due to woeful revenue figures, I’d probably blow my brains out right then and there.
Many years ago, Hiroshi Yamauchi foresaw this outcome.
Video games these days are merely tools to push progressive ideologies and agendas, they’re not about having fun but rather it’s about conveying the “right message” or simply profiteering from cancerous live service microtransactional titles.
Sony’s first-party games for instance are merely interactive movies. The Last of Us Part 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted 4, Marvel’s Spider-Man. All of these so called games feature bland and boring gameplay mechanics mixed in with constant cutscenes and “cinematic” elements, you’d be surprised to hear that these games seemingly cost around 200-300 million dollars to produce.
Producing cinematic garbage that costs upwards of $200 million dollars and relies on selling millions of copies just to break even is not a sustainable model. Continuing down this path will inevitably lead to the collapse of the industry.
Hiroshi Yamauchi was a visionary that was way ahead of his time and yet even years after his passing his words remain more credible than ever before.
“If we don’t introduce innovative ideas, games themselves will become monotonous and boring. Additionally, “grand and elaborate” types of software are complex in content, requiring time, labor, and expenses to produce. Even if billions of yen are invested and a hit game sells a million copies, it might still be at a loss. In that case, it’s not sustainable as a business. Even a “light, simple, and compact” game can be well-crafted and enjoyable.”
Games are made for propaganda purposes by progressive feminists who seemingly hate your guts, hate femininity and despise video games. Cinematic titles such as God of War are costing Sony hundreds of millions of dollars throughout their development. It takes upwards of ten million copies of such games to be sold just to break even.
You wouldn’t be surprised to understand that a lot of these games don’t actually produce a profit or break even for that matter. The Saints Row Reboot allegedly cost $100 million dollars to produce, that pile of shit quickly went to PlayStation Plus as a freebie a year following its release.
Its immense failure was enough to put Volition on the chopping block. Square Enix demolished Luminous Productions mere months after the release of Forspoken and obviously there’s countless more titles that failed beyond expectations simply because the actual revenue haul to recoup developmental costs is astronomically higher now than it ever was years ago.
Bigger budgets require bigger sales, except when the modern game is merely a carcass for ESG policies and agendas constructed by progressives and greenhorns the games themselves are poorly written shite, dead set on being as inoffensive as humanely possible on top of being a buggy and broken mess.
So it comes as no surprise that corporations such as Microsoft are trimming away at the fat upon purchasing Activision Blizzard, demolishing a supposed survival game that has been in developmental hell for over six years.
It’s no surprises that Sony did just the same with Naughty Dog, getting rid of excessive employees and canceling The Last of Us Online that has been in development for countless years, with nothing barring concept artwork to show from it.
It’s why Embracer are at their wits end desperately trying to course correct their balance sheets by terminating whole studios and selling others. Video gaming as a whole is simply on its last legs. Hiroshi Yamauchi was right all along.
