• Ech@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    I feel for these studios getting treated like crap. With these shutdowns from corps like MS and Embracer, I can only hope that indie devs learn the hard lessons taught here that conglomerates can never be trusted to operate in the interest of their subsidiaries. All buyouts are to these corps is the addition of “assets” to their spreadsheet, to be ditched the moment it’s more convenient than keeping them around.

    • MentalEdge
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      2 months ago

      Embracer at least had the excuse of fucking up their capital and shitting the bed in terms of having money on hand.

      They were forced to shutter and sell things because they legitimately couldn’t fund their operation.

      It was still their fault, because they stupidly bought up developers thinking big investor money was coming, which then just didn’t.

      Microsoft has no such excuse. MS leadership has been asked multiple times why they did it, and they literally haven’t said a single fucking word that makes sense.

      • magic_smoke@links.hackliberty.org
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        2 months ago

        I’ve heard its because of the games anti-corporate message.

        But even as someone who blames their boomer-ass wintel admin coworkers for allowing AD to EEE its way into enterprise IT, I have a hard time buying that. That game was making too much money for that.

        • MentalEdge
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          2 months ago

          That makes no sense.

          Vandeley wasn’t always evil. Roxanne, Peppermint, Macaron, Korsica, all wanted the company to do good, and for a long while it did.

          Vandeley only became “evil” because Kale mind-controlled Roxanne and made himself CEO.

          I don’t know how that’s anti-corporate. A big part of the plot is that Vandeley grew so successful because it was a genuinely good company doing good things in the world, loved by all, before it became a dystopian world-conquering device at the hands of a villain.

      • P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 months ago

        Microsoft has no such excuse. MS leadership has been asked multiple times why they did it, and they literally haven’t said a single fucking word that makes sense.

        I feel like you’re defending the wrong thing here. Wondering why MS shudder the studio is like asking a snake why it attacks its prey. It’s a fucking snake. That’s what it does. That’s always what it does.

        Embracer screwed up and let itself be absorbed into the Microsoft empire. They have their IP. They care about nothing else.

        • MentalEdge
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          2 months ago

          is like asking a snake why it attacks its prey. It’s a fucking snake. That’s what it does.

          No it isn’t. Microsoft makes money. Asking why they shuttered a successful studio is like asking the snake why the fuck it bit off the end of its own tail, and what the hell it thinks it’s doing.

          If they were shutting Tango down after they forced them to make a live-service clusterfuck that flopped badly, then you might have a point. But this is like if EA would have shut down Dice right after they made BF2, instead of funding BF3.

          Embracer screwed up and let itself be absorbed into the Microsoft empire. They have their IP. They care about nothing else.

          I feel like you’re mixing up some companies, these sentences make no sense in the context of Embracer. Are you talking about Bethesda?

          • P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 months ago

            I feel like you’re mixing up some companies, these sentences make no sense in the context of Embracer. Are you talking about Bethesda?

            No. Microsoft.

            • MentalEdge
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              2 months ago

              That makes even less sense. What do you mean by this sentence?

              Embracer screwed up and let itself be absorbed into the Microsoft empire.

              Embracer is still around, they didn’t sell anything to MS. They shut down a bunch of studios to stay solvent, and sold others, but MS didn’t buy any.