Affected devs:
- Arkane Austin (closed)
- Tango Gameworks (closed)
- Alpha Dog Studios (closed)
- Roundhouse Games (absorbed into ZeniMax Online Studios)
These changes are grounded in prioritizing high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster games and beloved worlds which you have nurtured over many decades.
I agree with your statement. However, what I believe the original comment was saying is that if the developers who have lost their jobs were to get together and make a game as they describe, then they would buy it. The malice was directed at Microsoft and so on.
At least, that’s how I read it…
That (your read) is precisely how I meant it.
Which is still a complete load of demonstrable bullshit.
Getting funding for a team is increasingly difficult. Plenty of studios have talked about the horrors of 2023-2024 and how nobody wants to fund even a small team. And this would not be “take it across the finish line” but a solid 3-6 years before even a chance at a return on investment because these devs wouldn’t even have IPs or past releases to leverage.
But also? Listen to folk like Xalavier Nelson Jr who talk about this. They are fighting the good fight to push back against financiers and publishers to make games “the right way” with monetization models that are what people ask for. And they still get shit on endlessly and ignored.
In a lot of ways, it reminds me of “abandonware” back in the day. For those who are too young, for the longest time it was nigh impossible to buy a game that was even five or six years old because it would not be on store shelves. GoG (back when they were Good Old Games) was specifically designed to update and sell these games. And without invasive DRM to boot.
And suddenly all the abandonware torrent sites just started uploading gog installers. And now we almost never hear the term “abandonware” because… people were always full of shit and just wanted to make an excuse to justify their own actions.