Take Two Interactive (Rockstar, 2K, Private Division) canceling games, ending projects and laying off 5% of its workforce

[Flush Foot]

2 minutes ago, Icegrx said:

You’re pointing the finger at the wrong person. Point higher. 

TT CEO?

[Jaypeg]

4 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

TT CEO?

Uber entertainment CEO.
They've done this twice before

In other news, I think the game will be fine. Better than fine, in fact.
Looking at tweets, and how these things pan out - the game is being moved into a different, more experienced studio to be worked on.

Thats good.
At least the game wont die

[Great Liao]

19 minutes ago, Icegrx said:

You’re pointing the finger at the wrong person. Point higher. 

Upper management has no clue what is going on on the ground. Who's supposed to tell them? Middle management. What is Nate Simpson? Middle management 

[stephensmat]

I'm Choosing to hold onto the 'Still Hard At Work' tweet until we hear otherwise.

My thing is this: Are all the people who put their reviews through the floorboards on Steam going to update them back to the way they were if this all shakes out okay? Because right now, the Steam Store Page is a sea of Red Marks.

[MechBFP]

1 minute ago, stephensmat said:

I'm Choosing to hold onto the 'Still Hard At Work' tweet until we hear otherwise.

My thing is this: Are all the people who put their reviews through the floorboards on Steam going to update them back to the way they were if this all shakes out okay? Because right now, the Steam Store Page is a sea of Red Marks.

If you know anything about human attention span you have your answer.  

[Stewcooker]

2 hours ago, MARL_Mk1 said:

Rocketwerkz (Dean Hall's studio, creator of Icarus, Stationeers...) was one of the final bidders for KSP2. According to what he said on the Reddit's megathread, they are still developing said game (not about Kerbals obviously) (with a propietary, in-dev engine) and is asking layoffs from IG to contact him directly. There's still hope for other realistic spaceflight games to flourish for now. When asked, he said we should hear about the project in about +-1.5 years.

 

Cool I'm gonna go see about buying their games to support them.

[PDCWolf]

5 minutes ago, stephensmat said:

I'm Choosing to hold onto the 'Still Hard At Work' tweet until we hear otherwise.

My thing is this: Are all the people who put their reviews through the floorboards on Steam going to update them back to the way they were if this all shakes out okay? Because right now, the Steam Store Page is a sea of Red Marks.

Even if they somehow undo this mess, there's so many questions left that it's gonna take years to answer them all. Trust was really low and now this just sends it lower than the steam score.

Who gets the game? Who survived? Will it keep the same direction? How much of a delay is this gonna translate to? Will it go faster or slower?

Just so you know, the interest in the game absolutely can't take another delay and an even slower development cycle.

[Ryaja]

1 minute ago, PDCWolf said:

Even if they somehow undo this mess, there's so many questions left that it's gonna take years to answer them all. Trust was really low and now this just sends it lower than the steam score.

Who gets the game? Who survived? Will it keep the same direction? How much of a delay is this gonna translate to? Will it go faster or slower?

Just so you know, the interest in the game absolutely can't take another delay and an even slower development cycle.

They might transfer to an experienceed fast paced team to publish it quick and hopefully polished.

[PDCWolf]

14 minutes ago, Ryaja said:

They might transfer to an experienceed fast paced team to publish it quick and hopefully polished.

Ah yes, the one team they keep on call in case they decide to close studios and fire people to spend less. Being positive is one thing, but this might as well be satire.

[Stewcooker]

1 minute ago, PDCWolf said:

Ah yes, the one team they keep on call in case they decide to close studios and fire people to spend less. Being positive is one thing, but this might as well be satire.

It's what we've been seeing since the very first day. Senseless cheerleading. What's the saying? "Wake up and smell the coffee?" It's over, lots of use felt like this was coming, and now its here. Live with it, people.

[Cryptobux]

9 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Ah yes, the one team they keep on call in case they decide to close studios and fire people to spend less.

Emergency coding team ropes in from helicopters onto the roof, storms the workstations and gets it done. They disappear under cover of darkness and voila, project done. You'd be surprised how often that happens.

[Jaypeg]

5 minutes ago, Cryptobux said:

Emergency coding team ropes in from helicopters onto the roof, storms the workstations and gets it done. They disappear under cover of darkness and voila, project done. You'd be surprised how often that happens.

4 times, I count ,this has happened in T2 history

[Ryaja]

36 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Ah yes, the one team they keep on call in case they decide to close studios and fire people to spend less. Being positive is one thing, but this might as well be satire.

It's possible, not necessarily on call but yes. The can transfer devs to other projects.

[TLTay]

Wow, still lots of coping going on. 

In the event they claim they're continuing development, it'll just be a con to keep KSP2 showing up as a future offering in quarterly earnings calls. They're pretty sparse on future big ticket games, so that would probably boost perceived value to shareholders until other options are worked out.

It makes no sense to keep funding it, same as it did when they kicked it to early access. If you actually think 50 people were working on KSP2 for the last 12+ months with that little progress, I've got some ocean front property in the Ozarks to sell you.

They were working on the other unannounced title they posted jobs for, no doubt. Both probably got the axe. They just limped KSP2 along to rake in cash and make it look good for shareholder value.

They will probably slap together what they've got under a "1.0" banner and wash their hands of it, save a dire shortage of upcoming titles... and that may be the case.

Either way, people still hopeful for a positive outcome are fooling themselves.

[Jaypeg]

45 minutes ago, TLTay said:

Wow, still lots of coping going on. 

In the event they claim they're continuing development, it'll just be a con to keep KSP2 showing up as a future offering in quarterly earnings calls. They're pretty sparse on future big ticket games, so that would probably boost perceived value to shareholders until other options are worked out.

It makes no sense to keep funding it, same as it did when they kicked it to early access. If you actually think 50 people were working on KSP2 for the last 12+ months with that little progress, I've got some ocean front property in the Ozarks to sell you.

They were working on the other unannounced title they posted jobs for, no doubt. Both probably got the axe. They just limped KSP2 along to rake in cash and make it look good for shareholder value.

They will probably slap together what they've got under a "1.0" banner and wash their hands of it, save a dire shortage of upcoming titles... and that may be the case.

Either way, people still hopeful for a positive outcome are fooling themselves.

they already said "development is still underway"
Looks like another studio changeover, folks

[Great Liao]

2 minutes ago, Jaypeg said:

they already said "development is still underway"
Looks like another studio changeover, folks

No, they said "we're working hard on KSP2."

does that sound like anything except PR-ridden corporate-speak? No mentions of even "support", which was mentioned earlier.

 

[Jaypeg]

Just now, Great Liao said:

No, they said "we're working hard on KSP2."

does that sound like anything except PR-ridden corporate-speak? No mentions of even "support", which was mentioned earlier.

 

Both can be true. There isnt enough info to know right now.

Looking at things, we'll either get a skeleton crew, a rush team, or a new studio changeover

[TLTay]

10 minutes ago, Jaypeg said:

they already said "development is still underway"
Looks like another studio changeover, folks

"Still working on it" for this particular moment may be correct. If today, someone changed a font setting somewhere, they were legally truthful. Too many trusting people here. What have they done to earn the trust you give them?

[bcink]

Quite literally too many mixed feelings to even say anything productive. I guess this is what happens when you release a pile of garbage.

[Great Liao]

2 minutes ago, TLTay said:

"Still working on it" for this particular moment may be correct. If today, someone changed a font setting somewhere, they were legally truthful. Too many trusting people here. What have they done to earn the trust you give them?

They were sold lies by Nate Simpson  so that he could keep lining his pockets. He didn't learn from Uber Entertainment, did he?

[miklkit]

Oh.  I was planning on migrating to KSP2 when it got far enough along in its development.   Guess not, now.  So anyway I'm blasting off more stuff most every day. 

[Lisias]

3 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Even if they somehow undo this mess, there's so many questions left that it's gonna take years to answer them all. Trust was really low and now this just sends it lower than the steam score.

Some of these answers already have a question... uh... questions already have an answer.

Stay tuned.

Edited May 2 by Lisias
uh... :P

[K^2]

25 minutes ago, Great Liao said:

They were sold lies by Nate Simpson  so that he could keep lining his pockets. He didn't learn from Uber Entertainment, did he?

Setting aside whatever narrative you're building, I don't know where you're getting an idea that C-levels of these megacorps are naive idiots that can be puppeteered with some smiles and sweet words. If pretending they're all stupid is an attempt to regain some feeling of control, I'd say it's a crap coping mechanism. The competence they hold might not be in industry experience, shrewd erudition, or even financial acumen at times, but it's precisely in dealing with other people effectively and for personal gain.

Overgeneralizing usually isn't a great idea, so there are exceptions of all kinds, but as you're looking at larger and larger corporations, being a psychopath becomes a more significant boon to the corporate leadership. Consequently, a lot of the C levels in these companies are. So you're looking at people who often lack empathy, have strange quirks, and may act with unearned arrogance, projecting, whether they believe it themselves or not, that they're great at everything, when in reality they're really just good at building alliances and climbing ladders. But they are good at that. You don't survive at that level otherwise, sometimes literally. You can't run a simple con on people like that. They've run these cons themselves to get where they are.

If you really believe that you're seeing someone run a con on a corporation, and you can understand the way it works, the corp isn't being played. They're part of the show. And the "obvious con artist," is probably the intended fall guy. For the PR fallout, primarily.

 

All that said, I very much doubt that it applies to the current situation. I don't know Nate personally, but I've worked with enough directors whom he very much reminds me of. They're genuine in wanting to build that game. Sometimes, the ambition is greater than the resources, available, and you can give up or you can bet on the resources becoming available if you make your enthusiasm infectious enough. And a lot of great games happened this way. Also, a lot of great flops.

None of it precludes such directors from lacking skill to pull off the success even if the resources materialize, so I don't know which one is the case here. Whether the Intercept got everything they needed, but fell behind on the schedule anyways due to inability to staff and manage the teams properly, or if they weren't given adequate resources to hire the people they needed for the scope of the project. Worst part, we might not learn which one it is for a very long time. But in either case, the upper management at T2 and PD would have been very much aware of the situation. If they chose to bet on KSP2 despite the team's inability to execute on it (in either of these two scenarios) it's because T2 knew they can still sell the hype. And they did. There is absolutely no reason to think that T2 has been misled by Intercept leadership. 

[Lisias]

28 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Setting aside whatever narrative you're building, I don't know where you're getting an idea that C-levels of these megacorps are naive idiots that can be puppeteered with some smiles and sweet words. If pretending they're all stupid is an attempt to regain some feeling of control, I'd say it's a crap coping mechanism. The competence they hold might not be in industry experience, shrewd erudition, or even financial acumen at times, but it's precisely in dealing with other people effectively and for personal gain.

Or he was being lied to, or he is part of the lie. O don't know what would be worst.

In a way or another, a coup d'etat was ongoing for about 2 years already. One of the questions still on the open is if the insurgents were only waiting for the fall down, or if they helped on it.

But something apparently is clear: some clauses on some contracts were broken. If the aggrieved party is going to take some action, it's uncertain at this point.

[NH4Cl Enthusiast]

14 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Overgeneralizing usually isn't a great idea, so there are exceptions of all kinds, but as you're looking at larger and larger corporations, being a psychopath becomes a more significant boon to the corporate leadership. Consequently, a lot of the C levels in these companies are.

Going from "overgeneralizing usually isn't a great idea" to generalizing into a narrative where most C levels are actual psychopaths in the span of two sentences is a pretty wild take that could benefit from a pinch of introspection. Some definitely are, as are some of the janitors, programmers, doctors, homeless people and truck drivers but your narrative is just spun out of thin air. 

Most of them are fairly normal people who are just good at their jobs and their job is to make money and not cater to the feelings of gaming communities. As a rule they want their products to look good, be profitable long term and be as low maintenance as possible. You said it yourself - they're not idiots. They will retain competent studios if possible because it will make money in the long term and cost reductions will be targeted at projects where they don't see long term viability or the short term costs are too high to justify the risk. 

There's nothing psychopatic going on here. IG was clearly a mismanaged mess, underperforming, below average and a financial liability. It sucks for the devs like Blackrack who are clearly very good, but them losing their jobs is ultimately due to IG's inability to create a decent product, not due to some evil corporation's greedy supervillain bosses.  

If anything the amount of leeway IG has gotten over the years would speak more towards the fact that whoever at T2 was in charge of their account was dedicated to making the game happen. There's just only so much good money they can throw after bad money and as you said they were not fooled by Nate's promises and saw how bad the launch was and how little they've managed to accomplish since. There's no way this project was ever going to work and if it was my money, I would not be throwing another 10 million into development costs for the next two years to get sub-par implementations of colonies and resources while failing to fix critical issues, only to be in the exact same situation as we're now.