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[Kacho]

So just normal business things. Ok then.

 

[RafterXL]

One was the fucking game director (one of the two general directors of the game), and the other is an actual level designer. We're not talking about some programming or assets creation support staff here.

No, he wasn't the game director. Jesus.

And it was 6 people total. You're getting your panties in a wad for nothing. This was a support office!

 

[Icymanipulator]

So if you have electricians and plumbers wire up and lay pipe in your house, do you continue to pay them after they are done and the house is built?

 

[BennyBlanco]

Slightly off topic do anyone believe that FTP games are the reason other games don't sell?

100%. All these games are competing for your time.

 

[Danjin44]

GAAS and live service are double edge swords.

This, almost all them are competing against Fortnite which is unwindable battle.

 

[Beechos]

I'm assuming alot of game dev work is contract work which is why this stuff always happens.

 

[AJUMP23]

Maintenance mode. So you don’t need the developers.

 

[Rockman33]

Were they fired or did they complete what they were hired to do on contract?

 

[Icymanipulator]

Were they fired or did they complete what they were hired to do on contract?

The wording being used everywhere is “laid off” which makes me think it was likely a contract that was completed

 

[Ribi]

So are any other companies regardless of nationalities.

Blaming China is a bullshit excuse.

blaming? No no, good for china. You dont need an expensive support sudio when the game is already out and you used up the ideas. Now you go full cheap china mode.

 

[Sharius]

it's probly short temp contact, knowing chinese, it's common for them to do these contacts

 

[nial]

im not defending shit. im saying that this is very common (bellular video) and Bobby's statements paint a picture where the Western industry is losing competitiveness and relevance.

but oh boy, oh boy, you got so damn triggered about it.

But, but, but... he was the director! The core team and the publisher are Chinese, and as far as we know, they could be using Western developers as a way to learn faster, improve quickly; just like Western developers use cheap labor to produce a large volume of assets


Again, at the risk of triggering you, we are dealing with a Chinese company (we don't know their idiosyncrasies). Does a "game director" hold the same weight as here?

Drop the tiring shtick and discuss more like a normal person. The entire point is that the comparison doesn't make much sense when we are talking of 1) a set of people directly employed by the publisher and 2) said people being actual developers straight up involved in the design and direction of the game, which is an inherently more integral part of a game project than cheap assets work. Were they the entire core team? No, but what about it? We are talking about a less than 10 people office here.
Yeah, we all know we are dealing with a Chinese company, it just won't change that this was practically unheard of before, under this context.
On the other hand, this seemingly being a wide organization restructuring across overseas staff definitely makes it less shitty as it's not the same perception as them specifically targeting these developers that worked on Marvel Rivals.

No, he wasn't the game director. Jesus.

And it was 6 people total. You're getting your panties in a wad for nothing. This was a support office!

He was one of the two directors.

 

[yurinka]

The director of this game is in China, with the rest of his team.

No, he wasn't the game director. Jesus.

He was one of the two directors.

Thaddeus (in US) was the only game director of Marvel Rivals. Guangguang was instead the creative director of the game. Now that they fired Thaddeus, someone will replace him as game director. Maybe Guangguang, maybe somebody else.

Game director and creative director aren't the same thing. Game director is the director of the whole project. Under him depending on the project there may be a tech director (head of coders), creative director (head of designers and writers, sometimes artists too), art director (head or artists and animators), audio director, marketing director etc.

This, almost all them are competing against Fortnite which is unwindable battle.

This is like saying all SP games are competing against GTAV and Minecraft which is an unwinnable battle. No, most of them don't compete against Fortnite, GTAV or Minecraft.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

So if you have electricians and plumbers wire up and lay pipe in your house, do you continue to pay them after they are done and the house is built?

When our company implemented a new corporate ERP system 10 years ago, I was part of the team to give usability feedback since I was a core user.

The company hired to program and implement it was humongous with so many coders. And I only knew some of the people. The ERP program had to gel with all kinds of software in different departments to.

Two years later, we launched it and the number of people working on it was a fraction of the size. A few years later it seemed like it was down to zero external contract workers where internal IT guys took over handling it. All the people I saw or spoke to before were long gone and moved on to whatever company project was next on their plate. The key client manager even left their company and works somewhere else now.

Problem with game making is it seems so transient where if the company doesn't have another project lined up to keep people busy (concurrent projects they can shift people around), it's a business model that has roller coaster rides in hiring and firing people.

 

[Danjin44]

This is like saying all SP games are competing against GTAV and Minecraft which is an unwinnable battle.

For most part SP games don’t need to compete much, they are not “forever” games trying keep players attention as long as they can.

Majority of SP games have end point.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Drop the tiring shtick and discuss more like a normal person

. The entire point is that the comparison doesn't make much sense when we are talking of 1) a set of people directly employed by the publisher and 2) said people being actual developers straight up involved in the design and direction of the game, which is an inherently more integral part of a game project than cheap assets work.

Were they the entire core team? No, but what about it? We are talking about a less than 10 people office here

Yeah, we all know we are dealing with a Chinese company, it just won't change that this was practically unheard of before, under this context.

What is the context? That a Chinese publisher and developer contracted a small group of Western devs (whom you think had significant input in the game design) and then fired them?

That escenario is exactly the same as the bellular video but applied the other way around.

instead of hiring "cheap assets work" you hire expertise or know-how

On the other hand, this seemingly being a wide organization restructuring across overseas staff definitely makes it less shitty as it's not the same perception as them specifically targeting these developers that worked on Marvel Rivals.

you are losing the forest for the trees:

this is the story :

and I would guess by western they mean from united states:

why? because

The Western industry is losing competitiveness and relevance

This is the takeaway, the insight.

relevant:

 

[Nickolaidas]

Looks like we're going back to the late 80s / early 90s where the majority of kickass IPs were coming from Asia, and the West's accomplishments were more or less licensed games from movies and comic books.

You reap what you saw, America. But hey, at least you got to 'own the chudz'. So, good work - if you're a retard.

Tip: The next time your customer base tells you that what you are doing sucks, FUCKING LISTEN TO THEM.

 

[yurinka]

This is the takeaway, the insight.

relevant:

Great video. But no, western games aren't losing competitiveness or relevance. Most top performing games outside China continue being western, and most of the things mentioned in the video aren't new:

Canada has great taxes (or to be specific, had) for game companies since a long time ago, Ubisoft went there to create their Montreal and Toronto studios a long time ago because of that reason.

EU has been making top games since forever. The main Western EU countries always has been cheaper than California. And South or Eastern EU + (non-Japan) Asia always has been cheaper than UK/FR/Germany/Nordic countries.

For this reason, since a couple generations ago the lead dev team of most AAA games normally only is around 10% of the people who works in a game, and outside executives/publishing/marketing/PR/etc the rest are from support teams mostly located in Eastern Europe and (non-Japan) Asia.

Regarding working conditions or weekly hours, there isn't a big difference: historically everywhere people made big ass crunches, but around the world this is scaling back (other than in some studios, mostly Chinese).

I'd say there's also two important factors that nobody mentioned:

• Top executives that do mostly nothing and have obscene salaries. They are present at most top western publishers and studios, and not in most eastern EU and Asia studios/companies.
• A ton of money spent on expensive and unneeded company benefits in the top publishers. Other than the vegan meal mentioned by Kotick, I remember than in previous the studio I did work at the start as an indie team we had a humble cofee machine. When I left 11 years later left, being acquired twice and being now in a top AAA publisher, we had two luxury coffe machines, like a dozen types of milk (including vegan equivalents of soy and so on), tons of free fruits and bakery. Plus a restarurant ticket card with I don't remember if it was $200 or $300 per month for food or after hour drinks in any place of the city. Plus paid gym, kindergarden, language courses, technical courses, private health insurance and whatever else, plus tickets for any industry conferences. Plus group activities from time to time like going to the cinema, film festivals, theme park, cooking lessons, wine tastes, airsoft and way more. I mean, people already has a good salary, the companies could just skip all these benefits and like hire 50% more staff for the same amount of money. But due to our success and other studios, tons of top publishers came to our city and now all big companies here offer all this, so I assume they feel forced to offer it too. People in local AA / small / indie companies, or in cheaper regions like eastern EU or Asia don't have all these costs from benefits.

 

[Blank Space Invader]

Trump: bans tiktok

China: Here's Marvel Rivals!

Gamers:

 

[Ridicululzz]

This is what the CM had to say about it in the official discord.



I bolded official since this could just be damage control, but who knows lol

 

[yurinka]

Looks like we're going back to the late 80s / early 90s where the majority of kickass IPs were coming from Asia, and the West's accomplishments were more or less licensed games from movies and comic books.

You reap what you saw, America. But hey, at least you got to 'own the chudz'. So, good work - if you're a retard.

No, they don't. If you go to the Steam, PSN, Xbox, eShop (excluding Nintendo games), App Store, Google Play rankings most of the games are western.

Tip: The next time your customer base tells you that what you are doing sucks, FUCKING LISTEN TO THEM.

They do listen, but also have tons market data and in-game metrics and statistics that tells them what works and what doesn't.

And surprise, surprise, players have a ton of different opinions, conflicting with each other. Not everybody agrees with you and your personal tastes and opinions.

So they go with what is in line with their business, what the majority of their target users (who depending on the project may not include you, or people with your tastes).

 

[StreetsofBeige]

• A ton of money spent on expensive and unneeded company benefits in the top publishers. Other than the vegan meal mentioned by Kotick, I remember than in previous the studio I did work at the start as an indie team we had a humble cofee machine. When I left 11 years later left, being acquired twice and being now in a top AAA publisher, we had two luxury coffe machines, like a dozen types of milk (including vegan equivalents of soy and so on), tons of free fruits and bakery. Plus a restarurant ticket card with I don't remember if it was $200 or $300 per month for food or after hour drinks in any place of the city. Plus paid gym, kindergarden, language courses, technical courses, private health insurance and whatever else, plus tickets for any industry conferences. Plus group activities from time to time like going to the cinema, film festivals, theme park, cooking lessons, wine tastes, airsoft and way more. I mean, people already has a good salary, the companies could just skip all these benefits and like hire 50% more staff for the same amount of money. But due to our success and other studios, tons of top publishers came to our city and now all big companies here offer all this, so I assume they feel forced to offer it too. People in local AA / small / indie companies, or in cheaper regions like eastern EU or Asia don't have all these costs from benefits.

Thats a modern tech industry thing. And likely skewed to gaming, internet companies, and companies like that. At least that's what it seems like from what you see on the net.

Who knows when all that stuff started happening, but I dont get a sense even IBM would do stuff like this for workers when they were the big cheese in computing. But perhaps it was the dot com bubble where every tech company with a stash of cash needed to attract people with giant perks and it's lasted till now.

I dont think there is one other industry that does this kind of pay and perks like a tech company. I dont think even the most successful New York law firm or ultra billions pharma company oozing profits does stuff like this.

But tech companies always seem to have big money from partnerships, raising money or IPO'ing funds into corporate coffers. Most seem to have zero business sense and treat the company and money like it's a giant frat party. Great for workers and companies who can last. Not great for stability.

Unless it's something related to actual pay, bonuses or medical benefits, I find it hard to believe most people even care for all that side stuff. A lot of the benefit points you wrote most people I work with would cringe at that. People just want to get paid and go home. But who knows. I dont work in tech. Maybe techie people all love hanging out with each other doing free cooking classes and theme parks together as a group.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Great video. But no, western games aren't losing competitiveness or relevance. Most top performing games outside China continue being western, and most of the things mentioned in the video aren't new:

Canada has great taxes (or to be specific, had) for game companies since a long time ago, Ubisoft went there to create their Montreal and Toronto studios a long time ago because of that reason.

EU has been making top games since forever. The main Western EU countries always has been cheaper than California. And South or Eastern EU + (non-Japan) Asia always has been cheaper than UK/FR/Germany/Nordic countries.

For this reason, since a couple generations ago the lead dev team of most AAA games normally only is around 10% of the people who works in a game, and outside executives/publishing/marketing/PR/etc the rest are from support teams mostly located in Eastern Europe and (non-Japan) Asia.

Regarding working conditions or weekly hours, there isn't a big difference: historically everywhere people made big ass crunches, but around the world this is scaling back (other than in some studios, mostly Chinese).

I'd say there's also two important factors that nobody mentioned:

• Top executives that do mostly nothing and have obscene salaries. They are present at most top western publishers and studios, and not in most eastern EU and Asia studios/companies.
• A ton of money spent on expensive and unneeded company benefits in the top publishers. Other than the vegan meal mentioned by Kotick, I remember than in previous the studio I did work at the start as an indie team we had a humble cofee machine. When I left 11 years later left, being acquired twice and being now in a top AAA publisher, we had two luxury coffe machines, like a dozen types of milk (including vegan equivalents of soy and so on), tons of free fruits and bakery. Plus a restarurant ticket card with I don't remember if it was $200 or $300 per month for food or after hour drinks in any place of the city. Plus paid gym, kindergarden, language courses, technical courses, private health insurance and whatever else, plus tickets for any industry conferences. Plus group activities from time to time like going to the cinema, film festivals, theme park, cooking lessons, wine tastes, airsoft and way more. I mean, people already has a good salary, the companies could just skip all these benefits and like hire 50% more staff for the same amount of money. But due to our success and other studios, tons of top publishers came to our city and now all big companies here offer all this, so I assume they feel forced to offer it too.

I think you are stating some of the biggest issues in western development (executives and the mature state of the industry), which is why I think it is one of the reasons for the unionization push as well.

but i would say that competitiveness
it's also tied to mass appeal and public interest/PR.

A lot of people pointed out that the GOTY contenders of last year were dominated by Eastern games.

in the last few years the meme of Korean/China/Japan saving gaming has become a thing too






Intergalactic, a game from one of the most renowned devs in the industry just got rejected by the market


In contrast to another Chinese game, Intergalactic (while technically top-notch), it just looks mundane and boring

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

 

[yurinka]

Unless it's something related to actual pay, bonuses or medical benefits, I find it hard to believe most people even care for all that side stuff. A lot of the benefit points you wrote most people I work with would cringe at that. People just want to get paid and go home. But who knows. I dont work in tech. Maybe techie people all love hanging out with each other doing free cooking classes and theme parks together as a group.

Regarding many of these benefits, I think it's because in gaming the average age of the workers is younger than in other industries, with most people under 40 or even 30 and without kids. And maybe due to the gaming nature, I think many of us are a bit like older kids.

But yes, many find these activities cringe and skip them. Other ones instead spend more of their time at work, or at home researching and learning. So do most of their social life with coworkers.

In our case, in Spain we have a pretty social lifestyle that I think may make people to be more open to these activities. At that age (mostly from around 20 to under 30-35), we spend a lot of time outside having afterworks beers in bars or pubs with coworkers or friends (who sometimes work in other gaming companies), or go out together with them or friends to have lunch in a bar or restaurant. We also often go with some friends of the studio or other companies to industry events (mostly conferences/talks). And Friday afternoon/night, many people also goes for extra drinks, dinner and ends in a pub/club. Sometimes with friends, sometimes with coworkers, sometimes with a mixture of both. Then in the weekend we relax at home but we often also go out with family or friends to visit some cool place or other people, to eat somewhere or enjoy some kind of outdoors activity (we normally have good weather most of the year).

As people gets older, stays more at home when not working.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Regarding many of these benefits, I think it's because in gaming the average age of the workers is younger than in other industries, with most people under 40 or even 30 and without kids. And maybe due to the gaming nature, I think many of us are a bit like older kids.

But yes, many find these activities cringe and skip them. Other ones instead spend more of their time at work, or at home researching and learning. So do most of their social life with coworkers.

In our case, in Spain we have a pretty social lifestyle that I think may make people to be more open to these activities. At that age (mostly from around 20 to under 30-35), we spend a lot of time outside having afterworks beers in bars or pubs with coworkers or friends (who sometimes work in other gaming companies), or go out together with them or friends to have lunch in a bar or restaurant. We also often go with some friends of the studio or other companies to industry events (mostly conferences/talks). And Friday afternoon/night, many people also goes for extra drinks, dinner and ends in a pub/club. Sometimes with friends, sometimes with coworkers, sometimes with a mixture of both. Then in the weekend we relax at home but we often also go out with family or friends to visit some cool place or other people, to eat somewhere or enjoy some kind of outdoors activity (we normally have good weather most of the year).

As people gets older, stays more at home when not working.

Fair enough.

As for company activities, all I know is every place I’ve worked at whose done scavenger hunts - everyone hates them!

Worst team building event ever!

 

[yurinka]

Fair enough.

As for company activities, all I know is every place I’ve worked at whose done scavenger hunts - everyone hates them!

Worst team building event ever!

Scavenger hunt? What is this?

In our case we went a few times to do airsoft, which is having a very large area of a mountain, where there are two teams with military camoflauge costumes and paint and realistic replicas of different military guns, sniper rifles, grenades etc., but they shoot unharmful little plastic balls.

There are basically three 'game modes': one is to assault a base, one team attacks and the other one defends. In the other one each team has a base and both teams defend their own base while attacking the other one. And then there's the battle royale, without teams or bases.

It is surprising how well camouflage works. I remember that a guy walked in front of me like 1-2 meters away and didn't see me while I was in between bushes but very visible.

And well, just to be clear: in most case most of these company team-building activities are optional. They announce new ones from time to time and you opt-in if you are interested on them. Other ones are on-demand 'clubs' (this is how they call them at Ubisoft) that a group of workers asks for and the companies pays it. As an example, there were like half a dozen guys who in the Friday afternoon, after work instead of going out to have some beers in the bar/pub they played poker in the office. The company paid them a set of cards a chips plus weekly whiskey. Or there was a soccer 'club': they played in a league every couple of weeks against teams of tech companies, there was also a team of local policemen or another of local firefighters. The company payed them the fee of the league (to rent the football field) and not sure if the team shirts/costume.

 

[deriks]

Honestly what a shit industry. I guess everyone’s Dad who ever called them a retard and told them to get a real job for wanting to work in the videogame industry was right all along.

Only way it seems worth it to me is to dump all your energy into a passion project in your spare time while you have a regular day job. It’s a roll of the dice whether you even get noticed but the payoff is huge for guys like Balatro guy, Manor Lords guy, Undertale guy, Stardew Valley guy, etc.

It's not "the industry", but heads that are bullshit

Konami saw that could win easy money with pachinko instead of videogames. A wrong choice? No. Bad taste on everyone's mouth thou, and still today they're paying the price

Capcom got into locked content in the disc, but not much later redeemed itself with hit after hit, and still is doing great

Nintendo... Pff. You can argue about administration, but their games are always the best of the best

Chances are that with this Marvel game was just like someone here said, that the game is doing fine already, so cuts are being made to do mostly maintenance, and more resources to the next thing, because that's how China works

 

[RafterXL]

He was one of the two directors.

Thaddeus (in US) was the only game director of Marvel Rivals. Guangguang was instead the creative director of the game. Now that they fired Thaddeus, someone will replace him as game director. Maybe Guangguang, maybe somebody else.

Game director and creative director aren't the same thing. Game director is the director of the whole project. Under him depending on the project there may be a tech director (head of coders), creative director (head of designers and writers, sometimes artists too), art director (head or artists and animators), audio director, marketing director etc.


This is like saying all SP games are competing against GTAV and Minecraft which is an unwinnable battle. No, most of them don't compete against Fortnite, GTAV or Minecraft.

You guys are ridiculous. The company has already made a statement saying that he wasn't a director on this game. Straight from the horses mouth.

Thaddeus was NEVER the director of this game. And if either of you bothered to do any research past the clickbait Tweet that started this entire mess, you'd know that. Literally a single Tweet got every "journalist" to post the wrong information, and you are still parroting it like it's true.

Thaddeus was the director of a support studio, not Marvel Rivals. No one is replacing him because he doesn't need replacing.

 

[SpokkX]

so will they not update the game anymore or are there other devs still working on it?

 

[Ridicululzz]

So it was only 6 people as well? These headlines made it sound like it was 50+ or something

 

[Herbspiceguy]

so will they not update the game anymore or are there other devs still working on it?

It's one of the most successful GaaS launches in recent history and nearly 3 months later it's CCU is still holding up. They keep pooping out new characters (Ben Grimm and Human Torch teaser just got released with 2.2 mln views in 18 hours, and there's a huge roster of upcoming datamined characters), skins and maps. There is zero reason to reduce development at this point.

 

[RafterXL]

so will they not update the game anymore or are there other devs still working on it?

Bro, you literally just asked is McDonalds is still making hamburgers because your local fry cook got fired.

 

[Radical_3d]

 

[elegantgamer]

Truly. I don't know why anyone would want a job as a game developer anymore. It's so volatile.

you're best just working on your own game honestly.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Scavenger hunt? What is this?

In our case we went a few times to do airsoft, which is having a very large area of a mountain, where there are two teams with military camoflauge costumes and paint and realistic replicas of different military guns, sniper rifles, grenades etc., but they shoot unharmful little plastic balls.

There are basically three 'game modes': one is to assault a base, one team attacks and the other one defends. In the other one each team has a base and both teams defend their own base while attacking the other one. And then there's the battle royale, without teams or bases.

It is surprising how well camouflage works. I remember that a guy walked in front of me like 1-2 meters away and didn't see me while I was in between bushes but very visible.

And well, just to be clear: in most case most of these company team-building activities are optional. They announce new ones from time to time and you opt-in if you are interested on them. Other ones are on-demand 'clubs' (this is how they call them at Ubisoft) that a group of workers asks for and the companies pays it. As an example, there were like half a dozen guys who in the Friday afternoon, after work instead of going out to have some beers in the bar/pub they played poker in the office. The company paid them a set of cards a chips plus weekly whiskey. Or there was a soccer 'club': they played in a league every couple of weeks against teams of tech companies, there was also a team of local policemen or another of local firefighters. The company payed them the fee of the league (to rent the football field) and not sure if the team shirts/costume.

Scavenger hunts go like this.

The company does an offsite lunch. And then after lunch, you’re randomly put into teams of 6-7 people and given a list of stuff to find around the city. It’ll be walking distance radius from the restaurant. You walk around using clues on a sheet of paper or app and try to find a product or statue in a park. And to prove you did it, you bring back the item or prove you saw the statue by answering questions about it (what year was the statue made? And you write down the answer looking at the plaque). Everyone is asked to come back to the meeting hub an hour later.

Some teams hate it so much they don’t even do it and just find another pub down the street to chill out for an hour.

 

[Bruno_Arrais85]

People "offended" by this are not even playing the game to begin with.

 

[Icymanipulator]

so will they not update the game anymore or are there other devs still working on it?

You sweet summer child…

 

[MonkD]

When our company implemented a new corporate ERP system 10 years ago, I was part of the team to give usability feedback since I was a core user.

The company hired to program and implement it was humongous with so many coders. And I only knew some of the people. The ERP program had to gel with all kinds of software in different departments to.

Two years later, we launched it and the number of people working on it was a fraction of the size. A few years later it seemed like it was down to zero external contract workers where internal IT guys took over handling it. All the people I saw or spoke to before were long gone and moved on to whatever company project was next on their plate. The key client manager even left their company and works somewhere else now.

Problem with game making is it seems so transient where if the company doesn't have another project lined up to keep people busy (concurrent projects they can shift people around), it's a business model that has roller coaster rides in hiring and firing people.

Insane thing is people would've known what the situation was if they bothered to read the linked in post that was in the original tweet. These "journalists" are basically just reposting garbage that get enough trafic. Embarassing.

 

[yurinka]

Scavenger hunts go like this.

The company does an offsite lunch. And then after lunch, you’re randomly put into teams of 6-7 people and given a list of stuff to find around the city. It’ll be walking distance radius from the restaurant. You walk around using clues on a sheet of paper or app and try to find a product or statue in a park. And to prove you did it, you bring back the item or prove you saw the statue by answering questions about it (what year was the statue made? And you write down the answer looking at the plaque). Everyone is asked to come back to the meeting hub an hour later.

Some teams hate it so much they don’t even do it and just find another pub down the street to chill out for an hour.

Uh, in Spain we call this a gymkana/gymkhana/jincana, which basically it's the same but adding more things other than find stuff with clues in that list. But we normally consider it as something for kids, I never heard about this being used as a company team building activity.

 

[Lambogenie]

Overblown and without details, with shit youtuber commentators covering (nay, reading the article verbatim and adding 1 line of their own...)

Normal business practice. You downsize after launch and keep the essential.

You also have all the geo economical political stuff happening. Why pay insanely overpriced US workers when China, India etc will do it significantly cheaper.

With the surge of success from China since Genshin, they are going to dominate the next few years (should be said those workers will probably suffer worse over working hours).

Honestly, I would seriously consider moving industries if it were me.