Take-Two going through layoffs, Private Division and other labels affected

[RocketRockington]

5 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

The only real insight I have on this is that Ive been involved in big complex projects involving tens of millions of dollars and some went great and some went poorly and some went medium. One lesson Ive learned is that when they go medium or poorly the people at the top who actually who made the dumb decisions never take the fall. It’s always the people who had the personal courage, fortitude, and integrity to try to solve unsolvable problems within unreasonable, unrealistic timelines, because thats what they were asked to do. Under capitalism no good deeds go unpunished. 

My experience has been the same.  If you try to correct issues early, you're a Cassandra and nay-sayer.  If you beaver away quietly working on something that is mismanaged, you suffer to either deliver undeserved rewards to your management, or get blamed for a failed delivery.  Or, you become what you hate sucking up to bad management where dung always rolls down hill so you're just not at the bottom.

[Periple]

Even worse, they might promote you and you’ll be one of the managers making bad decisions

[IronGremlin]

1 hour ago, RocketRockington said:

Typically companies do layoffs before the FY ends, not after, because they're trying to make their projections look better.   I wouldn't be surprised if there haven't been more layoffs already, but people just haven't made a post or even updated LinkedIn.

What we're seeing right now in other places in Tech is rounds of lay-offs due to pressure from investors to lay people off.

It's almost never really a business decision - but then again, neither is hiring more people, which in software / tech you ALSO do primarily to send signals to investors.

The number / quality of people you employ is in no material way connected to how much revenue you produce, and so more typical types of relationships that you'd see in more traditional firms with actual measurable output and real industry standards just aren't present to normalize this kind of thing.

That kind of game plays out pretty fast in a market where your share price isn't connected to any tangible numbers - nobody knows what the hell they are doing, they're all just chasing trends, and so quarterly moves are just as good as annual ones because everyone who you want to sling dollars your way is critically brain damaged by FOMO.

I don't know if game dev works the same way, that's not my field, but I would assume that because it's still about software at least some of that works the same way - you get laid off because Zuckerberg laid people off, and so that seems like a market "signal" that your company is going to need to follow suit.

[RocketRockington]

Game dev isn't quite that crazy.  Share prices do reflect sales and sales do reflect quality of product, to an extent.  Marketting can distort that somewhat, and of course individual projects can be cut or continued for cuckoo reasons.  I think game devs bigger dysfunctions all have to do with how hard it is to measure the product before release, and also the value contributed to the product by individuals.  Measuring after release is more straightforward.  

However, there's still a lot of dysfunction there.  People can blow a lot of smoke to get themselves promoted far beyond competency.  They can leverage smoke and mirrors to get themselves moved up dramatically for something they might not have had much to do with.  And getting a project successfully funded or through the dev process is often a process of developers and publishers selling each other on a variety of falsehoods.   

The quality of the work does matter when its a knowledgeable publisher talking to a knowledgeable developer, but thats always something put into jeopardy by the aforementioned bozos getting themselves put in charge on either side of that equation.  And taking responsibility for your mistakes - that's always a suckers game that only conscientious people engage in.

Edited March 8, 2023 by RocketRockington

[Periple]

40 minutes ago, IronGremlin said:

I don't know if game dev works the same way, that's not my field, but I would assume that because it's still about software at least some of that works the same way - you get laid off because Zuckerberg laid people off, and so that seems like a market "signal" that your company is going to need to follow suit.

There is actually something a bit different about the dynamics in the game industry:

1. The profits on a hit are HUGE. Like, ka-ching-dollar-signs-all-over-the-place huge. Like billions of dollars of revenues rolling in over a matter of DAYS huge. 
2. It's really hard to predict exactly how well a game will sell, and over what time period.
3. Game development cycles are long, and getting longer. Three years is kind of the minimum nowadays. Five is more common. Some of the biggest productions are pushing ten or more.
4. Publicly traded corporations and their investors are still way, WAY too focused on quarterly and annual results.

What this means is that if a big publicly traded corpo has a string of not even flops but just games performing a bit below expectations, they will fall short of earnings targets and the numbers they gave out as investor guidance. Investors go "boo, you're being inefficient" so, whee, layoffs. 

Conversely, another year they have one or even better two hits, which make their bottom line blow WAY past targets. Investors go "boo, you need to invest more in growth." So yay, a hiring spree. Worse, the year with two hits sets the investor expectations for the next year, and when next year only has zero or one hits, the expectations aren't met, so "boo, inefficiencies" again, and layoffs.

So it's not about what Zuck did (or what your peers in the industry did). It's about the search for predictable revenues in an inherently volatile field, and the chase for a baseline that continuously shifts because of the inherently volatile nature of hits and flops.

In a sane world, of course, a publisher with lackluster results would address this by MAKING BETTER GAMES, but ... see point 3 above. It takes too long. Invest in making better games today, you'll see the results at the very earliest in 2026, most likely around 2028 or 2030, and that's way beyond the investor time horizon.

[KerikBalm]

Cost-cutting measures?

Not a good sign. The early access release shows us that there is a lot of work still to be done.

It also is consistent with an idea that the game was released now due to a desire/need for revenue/a cash infusion.

Otherwise why release early access in this state. We (the fanbase) waited 3 years, we can wait longer. Apparently the publisher can't, that's the concerning part

[RocketRockington]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

It also is consistent with an idea that the game was released now due to a desire/need for revenue/a cash infusion.

Otherwise why release early access in this state. We (the fanbase) waited 3 years, we can wait longer. Apparently the publisher can't, that's the concerning part

It's not because they need the cash now - sure, they ideally want the cash immediately, but there's a difference between 'want' and 'need'.  Even the business types at a place like T2 can understand that a game needs to cook for a certain period of time before they can recoup.

The problem is that is likely that KSP2 was cooking much longer than expected. Note: This thread is not about the why or whether it's justified.  Its just clear that from T2's expectations, the game should have released long ago, no game announces a ship in 2020 because they thought "Oh, our business partners expected us to release in 2023, but jokes on them, we'll announce SUPER EARLY for no reason".

The problem is that the business side can't tell if the game is making legitimate progress or if money is being wasted endlessly by the creative types.  This is due to many things, not all of them the fault of the business-side people.

Yes, business people aren't always gamers - and if they are gamers, they aren't necessarily fans of a specific genre.  Thus, it's typically up to some mediation between the developers/creatives and the business end - typically in the form of an executive producer.  In KSP's case this is Michael Cook and/or Grant Gertz.  These people are supposed to be telling the business people about the honest progress of their project, and sorting out budgets etc.  And in turn, because those producers may be experienced with game development, but aren't developers themselves, they rely on the reporting from the developers themselves.  This reporting can come in the form of meetings, various 'stage gates' like a green light demo, documentation, videos, gameplay show and tells, etc.

With a good developer, a lot of this song and dance to keep the publisher on-side is kind of a waste of time that gets you the development dollars, because it's often an effort to surface how well your game is doing.  

However, with a not-so-good developer, this song and dance can become a goal in and of itself - faked demos, faked screenshots, builds that look good in a video but are held together with duct tape.  This gets doubly bad when marketting gets involved because this material gets encouraged and then sucked up as promotional material for the game.

And a bad publisher can also be responsible here - they can over-encourage useless reporting, delaying the team and wasting their time, or forcing the team to focus on unnecessary early 'polish' vs foundational work.

It also gets bad because the mediary, the producer, has some mixed incentives.  Even if telling the business guys 'we should cut this project' is the best move, that producer may have been working with the developer for years.  Their work is now tied up with that developers work.  And you can't prove a negative, so if that producer says 'we need to cut bait' they have 0 to show for their time, just like the developer, even if it was the right move.  So they also can help sell the lie a bit.

This is DOUBLY true if its an internal team - the 'external' publisher now also has a stake in the studio/team, and is even less objective about progress.

So eventually the business people say 'ok what the heck' they look at a game that's massively overdue, that had promises made and promises broken - and even if the trajectory 'seems' good now, it could be more song and dance.   And a 'hard' date can sometimes break loose a project that was stalled, or spinning due to changing features & scope.  Sometimes.

My guess is this is the scenario we're looking at with KSP2.  It blew through too many deadlines, the business people said 'you have to ship now, no more extensions'.  And my read is that Star Theory and then Intercept are pretty adept at the song and dance marketting, and - proof in the pudding - not so adept at development.

And KSP2 did something even stranger, for a game being built in a traditional developer/publisher arrangement - announce multiple failed deadlines.  (not counting indie games/kickstarters/etc, those often have weirder stuff happen)

Projects RARELY announce a public release date and then blow through them, delaying by not just months but years, over and over.  Fans often know a project is taking too long because they find out something is in progress and then wait for a public announce, but that's not what KSP2 did.  Internal dates get blown through all the time of course, that's different.   And the star theory debacle is an ok excuse for it happening once - but that happening several times points to some serious issues with project management or project-to-publisher liaisons.  Someone was telling someone either pack of falsehoods or had wildly optimistic projections.

Edited March 8, 2023 by RocketRockington

[Vl3d]

What the ...

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

The only real insight I have on this is that Ive been involved in big complex projects involving tens of millions of dollars and some went great and some went poorly and some went medium. One lesson Ive learned is that when they go medium or poorly the people at the top who actually who made the dumb decisions never take the fall. It’s always the people who had the personal courage, fortitude, and integrity to try to solve unsolvable problems within unreasonable, unrealistic timelines, because thats what they were asked to do. Under capitalism no good deeds go unpunished. 

 

3 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

My experience has been the same.  If you try to correct issues early, you're a Cassandra and nay-sayer.  If you beaver away quietly working on something that is mismanaged, you suffer to either deliver undeserved rewards to your management, or get blamed for a failed delivery.  Or, you become what you hate sucking up to bad management where dung always rolls down hill so you're just not at the bottom.

I don't agree at all. A lot of big companies have very good process and work efficiently. I think you are generalizing based on your personal experience.

[MarcAbaddon]

There are people who are quite adept at navigating office politics while contributing less. But it's not an universal thing, and it is hard to know what's the case here.

But either way it's probably not a good sign: either he was doing a good job, which means it sucks he is no longer there or he didn't do that great a job, which means the underlying tech is probably in bad shape. 

[TheArturro]

37 minutes ago, MarcAbaddon said:

There are people who are quite adept at navigating office politics while contributing less. But it's not an universal thing, and it is hard to know what's the case here.

But either way it's probably not a good sign: either he was doing a good job, which means it sucks he is no longer there or he didn't do that great a job, which means the underlying tech is probably in bad shape. 

Or he was a great employee and has done what was expected of him, so money can now go to other areas of development. Or his work was suboptimal and now will be corrected by someone else.

I have no idea about the actual situation at IG and PD, but just wanted to provide a positive take on it, for contrast.

[Moons]

8 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

What more do you want? They're working on the game, he said they're working on the game. He said the project isn't going to be abandoned and the full game will be delivered.

What point is there in giving out information if the person asking for it doesn't accept it?...

I want information that actually makes me feel secure about a purchase for 50 USD. I know what he said but i also found it weird how he said it which is why i pointed at the things i wanted  more clarity about. If there are layoffs coming and the general reviews are negative its not very reassuring when someone writes "continuing as planned and we will continue to provide updates about the game throughout the coming weeks and months" - at least to me when the game is probably far away from a release within the next year. But yes maybe im reading to much into it - who knows.

 

Also messages as "KSP2's development is continuing as planned " isnt very reassuring to me when the next news i read is that the Technical Director leaves because of cut costs. The person that "Lead the engineering team that built Kerbal Space Program 2".

If t his wasnt EA i would have way less questions but EA means that consumers suddenly take a business risk at almost full AAA price - people should have questions. I do realize that he probably doesnt know everything and cant say everything still - when the purchase of a product actually inclucudes a lot of risk since its not a pre-order its obvious that i want more clear answers - but thats probably not his job - but maybe he can talk internally and maybe they can make some official statements to reassure their customers and potential customers. This would be different if it wasnt an EA release.

 

13 hours ago, Nerdy_Mike said:

In light of recent news, we at Intercept Games want to assure the community that KSP2's development is continuing as planned and we will continue to provide updates about the game throughout the coming weeks and months. Our first patch is scheduled to be released shortly and we will have more information on that in the coming days. 

[Vl3d]

Let's just thank him for his work and hope for the best. Thank you, Paul!

Have a listen to this KSP2 related podcast be participated in. He's a very well spoken engineer.

http://forum.purdueseds.space/pspodcast/episode2/

[Moons]

I would really like to know how important that DEV was since looking at his job description and at what people write here it sounds like this was a big decision that could actually harm the game a lot. They already arent that fast and have already delayed and now they get rid of the guy that "Lead the engineering team that built Kerbal Space Program 2" their Tech Director weeks after EA release? This obviously isnt a good sign since changing the lead will normally always slow down development and depending on how much he was involved in the actual technical development this sounds really bad.

Honestely the last thing this game needs at this point is cut costs - they need to deliver as fast as possible to compensate for the bad launch and the high EA price.

Im becoming more and more concerend since i was always wondering why they would even release the game right now knowing its state and at that price ... (if funding wasnt an issue a delay of the EA release or a way cheaper EA release would have been the obvious choice) - i dont think that they gained anything by releasing the game in this state in EA.

Edited March 8, 2023 by Moons

[Periple]

Or he decided take one for the team so somebody else wouldn't get laid off, trusting the team to keep on truckin' and that he'll find another gig soon enough!

[Periple]

34 minutes ago, Moons said:

I want information that actually makes me feel secure about a purchase for 50 USD.

Moons, please, don't participate in the EA. There is nothing they can say, no guarantee that they can give, that would make you secure about it – and they shouldn't. All they can do is make plans and roadmaps and try their best to hold to them. There's always a possibility that they'll be late, or fail, or T2 will pull the plug on the entire Private Division, or any number of other things that can go wrong. If you're not comfortable taking that risk, then please wait until the game is released!

[The Aziz]

Good gods, it's just a game.

Not a single company in the world is going to reveal their internal dealings, workforce shifting, employee list, long term evolution plans. The NDAs don't cover just the game, but everything else. I know because I signed one and I was working as freaking van driver.

[Moons]

9 minutes ago, Periple said:

Moons, please, don't participate in the EA. There is nothing they can say, no guarantee that they can give, that would make you secure about it – and they shouldn't. All they can do is make plans and roadmaps and try their best to hold to them. There's always a possibility that they'll be late, or fail, or T2 will pull the plug on the entire Private Division, or any number of other things that can go wrong. If you're not comfortable taking that risk, then please wait until the game is released!

They should since the recent news actually are a huge problem for EA sales.

Also they could - "Funding of KSP2 is secured for the next 2 years and EA sales have no effect on the future of the funding of this game" and/or "no further layoffs are planned in the KSP2 team to ensure constant and fast development of the game" etc. or "we decided to adjust the price to 30 USD to reflect the state of the game sold at the moment" or "we decided to change from EA to a pre-order" etc.

 

 

I have lots of EA games - and i have no problems with supporting any of them - i even supported Kickstarter games. But in this case the price/product ratio simply isnt good. And i am concerend about the games future if it continues like this because i am a fan of the game and was looking forward to KSP2 for a long time - i also seriously want to play it ...

People may not believe that but i seriously would be extremely dissapointed when this game would be canceled or flopped hard - since i enjoy this niche and there isnt much besides KSP to fill it so this game has to become a success - but i cant see that success right now without a lot of changes.

 

4 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Good gods, it's just a game.

Not a single company in the world is going to reveal their internal dealings, workforce shifting, employee list, long term evolution plans. The NDAs don't cover just the game, but everything else. I know because I signed one and I was working as freaking van driver.

Normally yes - but if you sell as EA and pretty much let consumers carry a lot of your business risk its different. EA to me is more like an investment in a game (my profit is a great game and my risk is never getting a full game) than a simple purchase.

Edited March 8, 2023 by Moons

[RocketRockington]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

I don't agree at all. A lot of big companies have very good process and work efficiently. I think you are generalizing based on your personal experience.

I was talking about the times when you work for bad management - that there's generally no recourse to solving the issue.

[Periple]

2 minutes ago, Moons said:

Also they could - "Funding of KSP2 is secured for the next 2 years and EA sales have no effect on the future of the funding of this game" and/or "no further layoffs are planned in the KSP2 team to ensure constant and fast development of the game" etc. or "we decided to adjust the price to 30 USD to reflect the state of the game sold at the moment" or "we decided to change from EA to a pre-order" etc.

Moons, there is no conceivable situation in which all of those things will be true. Budgets are done one FY at a time, so there's no way funding is "secured" beyond that. There is no way that EA sales won't have any effect on the funding. While it's possible that no further layoffs are planned, that means diddly-squat because that plan can change next Wednesday. And there isn't a snowball's chance in Hell that they'll change the EA to a prepurchase in the way you would want.

Just wait for 1.0, man (or until it's on discount, if the $60-$100 price is above your range). You'll save yourself a lot of anxiety and have more productive things to do with your time than gripe about it here!

[Moons]

9 minutes ago, Periple said:

Moons, there is no conceivable situation in which all of those things will be true. Budgets are done one FY at a time, so there's no way funding is "secured" beyond that. There is no way that EA sales won't have any effect on the funding. While it's possible that no further layoffs are planned, that means diddly-squat because that plan can change next Wednesday. And there isn't a snowball's chance in Hell that they'll change the EA to a prepurchase in the way you would want.

Just wait for 1.0, man (or until it's on discount, if the $60-$100 price is above your range). You'll save yourself a lot of anxiety and have more productive things to do with your time than gripe about it here!

Its not "agove my range" its just not a price im willing to pay for a game - except if a game would have an exceptional ammount of content and quality. Also you dont seem ot get my main issue - its not the price its the game actually flopping. And i wont buy it later on at a discount since if they do it like this the game will probably flop anyways and never get the modding/community KSP1 has which is what makes KSP the game it is to me. Im not going to buy crumbs afterwards. I could even play the game right now with my hardware but i wont and i simply hope they will realize sooner than later that they cant continue like this if they want the game to be a success.

Edited March 8, 2023 by Moons

[Periple]

Just now, Moons said:

Its not "agove my range" its just not a price im willing to pay for a game

"Price I'm not willing to pay" is by definition "above my range." I mean, I could afford to buy a Porsche, but I'm not willing to pay that kind of money for a car, which means a Porsche is above my range.

As to the game flopping, it's WAY to early to declare that – and as a wise man said, "don't worry: worrying is like paying interest on a loan you might not even have to take."

[The Aziz]

Or perhaps, it wasn't dictated by team's success or failures, but purely a financial decision. Paul himself said he wasn't cheap. So it was one him or few others or someone more critical to future development. We don't know and won't know because it's a detail that no company will share.

[Moons]

4 minutes ago, Periple said:

"Price I'm not willing to pay" is by definition "above my range." I mean, I could afford to buy a Porsche, but I'm not willing to pay that kind of money for a car, which means a Porsche is above my range.

As to the game flopping, it's WAY to early to declare that – and as a wise man said, "don't worry: worrying is like paying interest on a loan you might not even have to take."

I know that its too early to say that - i just wanted to say that in my opinion if things continue like this i doubt that it will be a success.

Also i wouldnt worry if it wasnt a niche game i enjoyed a lot. Lets be realistic - without KSP - is there even a remotely similar game for that niche?

Also those quotes - its always easier said than done - and thats probably also the reason why 80% of all Kerbal creations fail

Edited March 8, 2023 by Moons

[DarkNounours]

1 hour ago, Moons said:

I want information that actually makes me feel secure about a purchase for 50 USD. I know what he said but i also found it weird how he said it which is why i pointed at the things i wanted  more clarity about. If there are layoffs coming and the general reviews are negative its not very reassuring when someone writes "continuing as planned and we will continue to provide updates about the game throughout the coming weeks and months" - at least to me when the game is probably far away from a release within the next year. But yes maybe im reading to much into it - who knows.

Hi Moon. We are consumers, not shareholders. They do not have to report to us about anything.
Yes, we are many to wonder about the future of the game, we are many that have been disappointed with what has been released so far. I cannot even run the game on my rig it's behaving like an Animated Gif Space Program! But the thing is: this is an EA. You are not buying the game, your are buying a promise of what the game could be one day. This is what I did and to me it is a way to say "I want to believe, take my 50 bucks and please do your best no matter the difficulties you will encounter". You have to accept the risk that the game will never been finished.

If you are not confortable with this, I can only suggest you to wait for v1.0 and buy the game when it's finally released.
 

Edited March 8, 2023 by DarkNounours

[The Aziz]

26 minutes ago, Moons said:

EA to me is more like an investment in a game (my profit is a great game and my risk is never getting a full game) than a simple purchase.

For me any game purchase is an investment. But I like to think of it as investment in my time. If I clocked in at least the same amount of hours as the price I paid [in local currency, so multiply the $ value by 4 or so], that was a great investment. There are few exceptions of course like story driven titles that are short but are valuable in other ways, but you get the idea.