I’ll explain this as quick as I can. Basically the bourgeoisie that own the major studios are so obsessed with profit that they make blatantly unsustainable decisions like overmonetization and shipping unfinished games every few years. Now look what’s happening, the studios have no choice but to lay off employees to recoup the costs they inflicted upon themselves and the worst affected are the fired employees naturally.
This is honestly infuriating and insulting as someone who’s been a massive video game fan since 2019 because the franchises I took a liking to (especially Halo) had countless labor and talent (stretching decades in some cases) have been completely gone to waste publishing cookie cutter generic dogshit games for the c suite’s next payday.
Indies are no better. They also suffer from the problem of shipping unfinished games but unlike their AAA counterparts, they suffer from genuine lack of time and resources to deliver games in a timely manner. So the whole “go indie” is basically lesser evil.
Come to think of it Capitalism actually enables and rewards such incompetence as long as profits are high.
As an anti-capitalist I think that’s an undue slight on capitalism. Prioritising profits doesn’t suddenly turn you into a rabid animal that would give up $5 in 5 minutes for $1 right now. What you’re ascribing blame to over layoffs is more than capitalism, it’s a particular brand of mad short-sightedness uniquely observed in US big tech & gaming sectors.
The reality is that under US employment law, there is very little risk in disposing of workforce assets just to print a lower P/E ratio for the quarter. The company can just rehire the same staff again later if they want. It’s an infinitely more solvable problem than capitalism: pass employment reforms. Studios not having a choice is utter nonsense. The choice is to stop working counter to the mutually aligned long-term interests of literally everyone - the company, its staff, its customers. But they kept choosing some other wacky shit instead.
It literally does.
No, the proposition makes no sense from a capitalist perspective. We can be united against capitalism without turning it into a caricature, that doesn’t serve to convince anyone of anything.
I know what you said is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is true that capitalists will prioritise short-term profits over long-term ones. That’s why capitalists will buy a factory, sell of its machinery, fire all the workers, demolish the building and sell the land rather than run the factory so it can continue producing.
Layoffs in the context of gaming/big tech don’t really produce profits though, they reduce expenditure such that existing profits (generated by games already shipped, for which the development cost is already summarily incurred) look more attractive to potential investors. The only participant that would truly stand to profit more from this type of action is the exec attempting to scam investors by exiting during a period of artificially inflated valuation
OK, layoffs might have been a bad example, here’s a better one. A company choosing to do 0-day DLCs, which might increase their profits in the short term, but wuld do damage to their image and game long term. Or a company choosing to include micro-payments and microtranscations in their game (Diablo 3 and 4), which in the short term looked good cause of profits, but in the long term made people less excited for the game or new installments, basically killing the game. So rather than continuing to release a good game they can sell to a lot of people, they chose to make as much money as possible on the current edition without thinking of future profits with subsequent installments of the game.
I certainly take your general point about 0day DLC’s and MTX being bad and detrimental to games as a whole. I’m not sure about D3/4 as examples of this, their monetisation is limited to paid cosmetics that aren’t even substantially better than the free ones. The launch reviews were positive, the current reviews are positive, it has maintained a player base. The main current points against it are raised by engagement farmers, to farm engagement.
That’s all beside my original point though - OP post uses the title “capitalism ruined gaming” to make a specific point about the current round of industry layoffs. But the layoffs aren’t a product of capitalism - they don’t truly serve anyone’s interest or profit motive, including the developer/publisher. It’s just weird arbitration of profits for no real reason - the inability to sit on their hands when that is the most profitable course. It’s a practice only really done in the US, resulting from that gaming is excessively profitable (i.e. risking some long-term profit isn’t of major consequence) and that a huge proportion of employment in the US is on an at-will basis (i.e. laying people off for any reason carries little if any risk). So while we should retain the goal of an ultimate dismantling of capitalism, that isn’t necessary to stop the issue OP is lamenting - just do what the rest of the capitalist world does currently and have some kind of baseline employee protections.
What do you mean? Layoffs are the quickest way to have a larger bottom line, because they reduce labour costs in the immediate term. It is very easy to then hire more people again once the quarterly or year-end review is over. It’s all about pleasing the shareholders and making yourself look like a good executive.
Precisely.
First you say it’s not capitalism’s fault but then you suggest that capitalism should be reigned in a bit as a solution.
The attempt at mitigating the appearance of investor risk in the company via reducing spend is neutralised by the resulting compromise to their production, at best leaving the company as attractive as it already was. More likely they will lose some resources along the way due to loss of trust, the best hires being picked up elsewhere in the meantime, etc.
If execs game the system to receive a bigger bonus by tricking investors into thinking company finances are better than they are, this doesn’t serve the company. Its base intent is to reward the exec for adding value to the company, which in this case is imaginary, or a result of defrauding investors. The exec in this scenario is more anarchist, working to extract excess profit from their employer, than a capitalist.
That we live under capitalism was not secured by capital owners short-sightedly arbitrating their capital in ways that aren’t really profitable.
I think if we put it to the American people, as capitalists they would be happy to create laws against this kind of blatant worker exploitation, because that’s what is best for business. I certainly don’t mean it as a solution to anything other than OP’s issues that caused the post. But it would solve that, and is something we can achieve today to improve the lives of workers, so yeah we should try it.
EA laid off 670 employees just recently, yet shareholders have reached a profit of $1.5 billion It is clear that with this strategy, combining with the fact that corporations are switching to contract work (lower wages, no benefits), shows that they care about profit rather than delivering a decent enough game.
Layoffs are a consequence of capitalism, not the root cause. Think about it. If you can make more profit by hiring contractors instead of employees, you might as well. You can make a higher profit, even if the product is half-baked and unfinished. And if you’re kind, you can send a skeleton crew to clean up the mess by updating the game to a working state and eventually they will move onto something else. There’s been a recent trend of unfinished, half-baked products coming to market, such as Battlefield 2042, Halo Infinite, etc.
The employment in this case is replacing full-time employees (usually with a wealth of knowledge especially in regards to game engines, art, etc.) with contract workers. It is more profitable in this regard. Employment reforms won’t fix this. The fundamental issue is the game being released is gaining profit at a rate where the game itself is virtually unprofitable. Cosmetics, Gameplay Advantages, Microtransactions, all of these contribute to the profit of the game in some way. Hence why employees are redundant, and thus they are laid off, or filed for redundancy.
The long-term interest of corporations is to gain as much profit as it can before the company sinks to the ground. The shareholders are problem. Capitalism is the problem. Do not blame the layoffs. Layoffs are a consequence of capitalism, it forces workers to become the reserve army of labour. Please, I recommend you read Marxist theory before claiming that capitalism isn’t the problem. With everything that exists in our society, Capitalism is always the problem.
I don’t believe this. Gaming is one of the biggest and most profitable industries in the world, and MTX aren’t principally responsible for that.
The developer that participates in cyclical layoffs (read: the average publicly traded one based in the US) is more of a failed capitalist. That they profit from the failure doesn’t change that it fundamentally is one. Franchises have been worth billions each since Guitar Hero, ruining them to reduce short-term company expenditure is shooting yourself in the foot. Outside the US (but still under capitalism), it doesn’t really happen.
If this is an effect of capitalism, it is only insofar as US capitalists have the leeway to fuck around and find out, because what they find is still profitable (largely due to complacency of gamers). But that leeway is a product of regulatory failure. It’s ridiculous for workers to be thrown aside to boost profits when this purpose isn’t actually achieved.
It is, but the profit doesn’t come from sales, but rather recurring systems as a result of battle-passes or one-time purchases for microtransactions. I said virtually unprofitable because a lot of multiplayer games are now free-to-play, take any game, Call of Duty, Halo, etc. Most likely there is a free-to-play game available in the multiplayer sector. With that multiplayer sector, they are now gaining revenue not from sales (as it is impossible), but rather from recurring payments or microtransactions. Therefore most of the revenue that comes from games today is not from sales of a particular commodity (Note that when you purchase a game digitally, you do not own the game, you own the lease for a (supposed) indefinite amount of time, therefore it cannot be considered a ‘sale’ since you do not own your game), but rather the payment of certain cosmetics or a battlepass which is only available within that specific game. You do not own the cosmetic, you just own the lease to it.
When you shift your focus from ‘owning’ a game (as it is a lie for PC gamers, for console gamers, it makes a bit more sense), it is clear that revenue now is generated not from a game sale.
The corporations that run most of the game market (Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, Valve, etc.) are not headed by one person. They are held by shareholders, i.e. capitalists, not a single capitalist. Shareholders do not care about the quality of a game, rather how much revenue it generates. If it does not generate more profit than the last game, then there will be consequences despite the game being profitable (from sales or otherwise).
Guitar Hero is a dead franchise, for the most part. A lot of franchises are dead. Why is that? They’re not profitable enough to keep themselves running. No one aside from Guitar Hero fans wants to play Guitar Hero. Any franchise you can think of, Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, Battlefield, these are being milked, because it is a safe bet. Even a singleplayer experience like Assassin’s Creed has microtransactions. And their game instead of centering around a fun experience, it is centered around wasting your time as much as possible or force yourself to do side quests so that you can get the level you want. Not only that, most of the Assassin’s Creed games require a third party DRM tool, and tampering with your game may result in your account being suspended, or your game gone all together. This is the turn-around we see for games. Games are not calculated per sale, as it is useless (or often a minority in the game’s revenue all together) but rather how much money it can accumulate based on microtransactions, battle-passes, etc.
This is liberal speak. I’m astonished that you can say this and not see that capitalism is to blame. Every capitalist is concerned with one thing, profit. I already said what I said earlier, that being that capitalists care about how much revenue it generates. It is not based on regulatory matters, rather how much capitalists have control over how people play games and consume their product. Saying that is an effect of regulation and not capitalism is advocating the same as social-democracy, removing the “bad” aspects of capitalism whilst still keep capitalism in place.
I provided two links which shown the exact opposite. Please, do some research.
I’m not seeking to make any point about MTX or game ownership. I’m seeking to respond to OP’s central point about current layoffs as an example of capitalism ruining games. MTX is far from the majority of revenue, though. People don’t even play the games they buy, let alone buy MTX at an average rate which exceeds the license cost.
I’m assigning some blame to capitalism in my sentence, the one you quoted. I’m saying the regulatory failure is the mechanism by which the crux of the issue, the option to lay off without cause, is enabled. The specific failure I mean is the failure to require employers to have a good reason to end the work contracts they offer. It is fair to lay someone off for a good reason. It is fair to make their position redundant under macroeconomic circumstances like described in the Business article, if the employees are paid out. These statements are true under many kinds of organisation of government. But similarly under any organisation, including a capitalist one, it is not fair to broadly lay people off without cause where the positions are not redundant; rather the associated payroll expense is temporarily inconvenient, or not preferable to the similarly temporary and unrealised shareholder profits. In the case of a capitalist organisation, it’s because it’s not good for sustainable ongoing business, due to the compromise on future production. These are austerity measures enacted without conditions of austerity. The measures themselves will induce austerity in those businesses. That is antithetical to capitalism. And it is something that can be legislated against today for the protection of the employees against becoming collateral damage, without having to compel the people into revolutionary action. It is the position already held by the majority currently. It is already the status quo in the capitalist world outside America. Or is your position that only America is truly capitalist?
What I’m advocating for is direct action, over using shaky reasoning to try to compel revolutionary action. Because if your own goals are achievable within the framework of capitalism, why would the average person revolt? That’s what I’m telling you is the case. Indeed it isn’t only achievable, it is achieved. I am anti capitalist because my goals are not achievable in a capitalist framework. If directing my actions most productively within the framework in which I exist makes me a liberal, tell me your plan for direct action on this issue and I’ll be happy to consider it on its merits.