Apparition Posted July 1, 2021 Share Posted July 1, 2021 Yesterday, it was announced that Cryptic Studios' newest online game Magic: Legends will shutter on October 31st, 2021. The game has only been in open beta for three months. Today, it was announced that there has been massive layoffs at Cryptic Studios with pretty much everyone that worked on Magic: Legends terminated. Quote “Cryptic Studios has decided to cancel Magic Legends for poor financial performance, which sadly means I am without a job,” tweeted Aaron Walz, who’d been a Senior Sound Designer at Cryptic working on the title. “They laid off 44 employees this morning. Please forward any sound designer opportunities. […] I enjoyed making the sound for this game and am very sad. […] The rest of the audio dept is safe because they don’t work on Magic. I was in charge of Magic and on that team, so sadly, my position was eliminated. […] I do have to say, Cryptic handled it very professionally and caringly – as much as possible, anyway. Our CEO was extremely emotional and choked up.” Here's hoping that everyone laid off from Cryptic Studios this week land on their feet quickly. 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WanderingAries Posted July 1, 2021 Share Posted July 1, 2021 I guess the studio didn't have any other projects going on to redirect the resources huh? OG Server: Pinnacle <||> Current Primary Server: Torchbearer || Also found on the others if desired Installing CoX: Windows || MacOS || MacOS for M1 <||> Migrating Data from an Older Installation Clubs: Mid's Hero Designer || PC Builders || HC Wiki || Jerk Hackers Old Forums <||> Titan Network <||> Heroica! (by @Shenanigunner) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyksie Posted July 2, 2021 Share Posted July 2, 2021 I played the "Beta" of Magic Legends, and it was terrible. I'm putting "Beta" in "quotes" because it was basically "Here it is, there's bugs but start giving us money anyway". Crummy graphics, poorly optimized, and the gameplay managed to be too simple and too complex at the same time, a goal many bad games strive for but few achieve. It's really sad how far down the toilet Cryptic has slid in the past 20 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darmian Posted July 2, 2021 Share Posted July 2, 2021 22 minutes ago, Kyksie said: I played the "Beta" of Magic Legends, and it was terrible. I'm putting "Beta" in "quotes" because it was basically "Here it is, there's bugs but start giving us money anyway". Crummy graphics, poorly optimized, and the gameplay managed to be too simple and too complex at the same time, a goal many bad games strive for but few achieve. It's really sad how far down the toilet Cryptic has slid in the past 20 years. Like many a thing, the impetus that made it great, those initial people and their goals/abilities/dedication - whatever anyone may think of them - that did not carry forward it seems. AE SFMA Arcs: The Meteors (Arc id 42079) | Dark Deeds in Galaxy City: Part One. (Arc id 26756) X | Dark Deeds in Galaxy City: Part Two. (Arc id 26952) | Dark Deeds in Galaxy City: Part Three. (Arc id 27233) Darker Deeds: Part One (Arc id 28374) | Darker Deeds: Part Two. (Arc id 28536) | Darker Deeds: Part Three. (Arc id 29252) | Darkest Before Dawn: Part One (Arc id 29891) | Darkest Before Dawn: Part Two (Arc id 30210) | Darkest Before Dawn: Part Three (Arc id 30560) | Bridge of Forever ( Arc id 36642) | The Cassini Division (Arc id 37104) X | The House of Gaunt Saints (Arc id 37489) X | The Spark of the Blind (Arc id 40403) | Damnatio Memoriae (Arc id 41140) X | The Eve of War (Arc id 41583) X | Spirals: Part One. (Arc id 55109) | Spirals: Part Two. (Arc id 55358) | Spirals: Part Three. (Arc id 57197) I Sing of Arms and the Man (Arc id 42617) | Three Sisters (Arc id 43013) (Pre War Praetorian Loyalist. Pre War Praetorian Resistance. Pre ITF Cimerora. Post ITF Cimerora. X = Dev Choice/Hall of Fame ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraspingVileTerror Posted July 2, 2021 Share Posted July 2, 2021 A studio name is often just that: A name. The people and talent who make up a studio change over time. At most you'll see a director or producer or team lead carrying the torch, but that's no guarantee that the actual chemistry which made up the winning team for past titles will be present during any other. And in this case, by the sounds of it, the team in question was operating on this specific project, and not any of the other titles currently in production at Cryptic. Not sure whose bright idea it was to start charging for micro-transactions while still officially declaring it a "Beta." If you're collecting money for an active product, it's Release, frankly. No matter how unpolished or unfinished it is from the intended end state. But like just about every project I've been involved in, you can't blame the people who inevitably get fired. They're not the ones who have the power or authority to make the decisions which lead to their mass layoffs, after all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darmian Posted July 2, 2021 Share Posted July 2, 2021 49 minutes ago, GraspingVileTerror said: But like just about every project I've been involved in, you can't blame the people who inevitably get fired. They're not the ones who have the power or authority to make the decisions which lead to their mass layoffs, after all. If I had a penny for every time this happened, well my donations once a month to HC would be a LOT bigger. 1 AE SFMA Arcs: The Meteors (Arc id 42079) | Dark Deeds in Galaxy City: Part One. (Arc id 26756) X | Dark Deeds in Galaxy City: Part Two. (Arc id 26952) | Dark Deeds in Galaxy City: Part Three. (Arc id 27233) Darker Deeds: Part One (Arc id 28374) | Darker Deeds: Part Two. (Arc id 28536) | Darker Deeds: Part Three. (Arc id 29252) | Darkest Before Dawn: Part One (Arc id 29891) | Darkest Before Dawn: Part Two (Arc id 30210) | Darkest Before Dawn: Part Three (Arc id 30560) | Bridge of Forever ( Arc id 36642) | The Cassini Division (Arc id 37104) X | The House of Gaunt Saints (Arc id 37489) X | The Spark of the Blind (Arc id 40403) | Damnatio Memoriae (Arc id 41140) X | The Eve of War (Arc id 41583) X | Spirals: Part One. (Arc id 55109) | Spirals: Part Two. (Arc id 55358) | Spirals: Part Three. (Arc id 57197) I Sing of Arms and the Man (Arc id 42617) | Three Sisters (Arc id 43013) (Pre War Praetorian Loyalist. Pre War Praetorian Resistance. Pre ITF Cimerora. Post ITF Cimerora. X = Dev Choice/Hall of Fame ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperPlyx Posted July 11, 2021 Share Posted July 11, 2021 -"cancel Magic Legends for poor financial performance" -"game has only been in open beta for three months" -"charging for micro-transactions while still officially declaring it a "Beta." What the hell..... 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apparition Posted July 11, 2021 Author Share Posted July 11, 2021 1 hour ago, SuperPlyx said: -"cancel Magic Legends for poor financial performance" -"game has only been in open beta for three months" -"charging for micro-transactions while still officially declaring it a "Beta." What the hell..... Welcome to gaming since around 2015. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyksie Posted July 12, 2021 Share Posted July 12, 2021 When you promise no wipes and start taking people's money, that's a launch. You can call it an "open beta" or a "late beta" or a "foonting turlingdrome", it's still a launch. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wjrasmussen Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 On 7/2/2021 at 4:18 AM, GraspingVileTerror said: A studio name is often just that: A name. The people and talent who make up a studio change over time. At most you'll see a director or producer or team lead carrying the torch, but that's no guarantee that the actual chemistry which made up the winning team for past titles will be present during any other. And in this case, by the sounds of it, the team in question was operating on this specific project, and not any of the other titles currently in production at Cryptic. Not sure whose bright idea it was to start charging for micro-transactions while still officially declaring it a "Beta." If you're collecting money for an active product, it's Release, frankly. No matter how unpolished or unfinished it is from the intended end state. But like just about every project I've been involved in, you can't blame the people who inevitably get fired. They're not the ones who have the power or authority to make the decisions which lead to their mass layoffs, after all. I am still offended at charging for alpha/beta. Oh well. 1 I went to Ouroboros all i got was this lousy secret! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ForeverLaxx Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 7 hours ago, wjrasmussen said: I am still offended at charging for alpha/beta. Oh well. This seems to be what every game company wants to do now, particularly in the Indie sector. Charge people a fee for "early access" to their game with lots of promise, but not a lot of polish, get people through the door with that promise, then disappear into the sunset with the cash. Why continue to develop a game after you already made bank on just the bare bones alpha? It really makes trying to get into newer releases all the more difficult, and with budgets for games getting way out of control in the AAA sector (and their tendency to shoehorn in-game monetization for further milking), I don't have high hopes for the future of the industry as a whole. Pretty soon, everything is going to be a mobile gacha experience based out of China and I'm not looking forward to it. exChampion and exInfinity player (Champion primarily). Current resident of the Everlasting shard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moka Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 City of Heroes was honestly a lucky shot from Cryptic. I hear Star Trek Online is good but Star Trek's never been my thing. Champions did a lot right but even more wrong, and Neverwinter Online was a major disappointment for how hyped up it was. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheOtherTed Posted August 29, 2021 Share Posted August 29, 2021 I enjoyed my time in Star Trek Online. The main problem I had with it is that it wasn't Star Trek - or, rather, it didn't feel like it. Destroying entire fleets and trouncing multiple ground squads in every mission kinda fell short of the whole "explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations" thing. Granted, that's hard (if not impossible) to do in a multiplayer game, but I found myself seriously questioning how the "bad guys" were assembling so many ships so quickly, recruiting people so rapidly, yet utterly failing at winning through sheer numbers. In fact, I ended up exclusively doing PVP on the Klingon side just to keep the cognitive dissonance at bay. I will say, that was the most PVP fun I've had in any game - until Cryptic decided to massively "streamline" the skill trees and pretty much kill ground combat. I quit after that, but I still poke my head in once every couple of years. PVP (and my interest in it) is pretty much dead now, though, or it was last time I sniffed around it. However, props to whoever wrote the Klingon side PVE missions. That made up for much of not-so-benign neglect us Klingons put up with the first couple of years. Got some good mileage out of Champions Online - but I had to turn the music off to play it. NWO was like they took the CO style music and made it visible. Couldn't spend more than 20 minutes in that game. Oh, well. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dona Eis Requiem Posted August 30, 2021 Share Posted August 30, 2021 On 8/28/2021 at 10:50 AM, Moka said: City of Heroes was honestly a lucky shot from Cryptic. I hear Star Trek Online is good but Star Trek's never been my thing. Champions did a lot right but even more wrong, and Neverwinter Online was a major disappointment for how hyped up it was. Honestly, Neverwinter was the only MMO I could find any enjoyment in for a short while after CoH went *poof*. That died off rather quickly though as it soon became impossible to progress at a decent pace if you weren't a P2W whale. Call me old-fashioned, I suppose. I miss the days of having my game in-hand and only paying for expansions or subs where regular content was the reward for my money. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeregrineFalcon Posted August 30, 2021 Share Posted August 30, 2021 19 hours ago, TheOtherTed said: However, props to whoever wrote the Klingon side PVE missions. That made up for much of not-so-benign neglect us Klingons put up with the first couple of years. Fun fact. Matt Miller, aka Positron, wrote the Klingon story missions that launched with Legacy of Romulus. They finally hired him back in order to write the Klingon story missions after spending years lying to us on the forums telling us that they were working on Klingon content when they weren't. 1 2 "It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire posts, the posts become warning points. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion." Being constantly offended doesn't mean you're right, it means you're too narcissistic to tolerate opinions different than your own. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moka Posted August 30, 2021 Share Posted August 30, 2021 Funny Matt Miller did that when he said he hated redside. (Unless I misread him in the AMA) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraspingVileTerror Posted August 30, 2021 Share Posted August 30, 2021 I think Miller had stated that he had wrote off Redside, since he recognized that it was in a perpetual downward spiral from the get-go. So, less that he hated Redside, and more that he had given up on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El D Posted August 30, 2021 Share Posted August 30, 2021 (edited) Yeah, what @GraspingVileTerror said. Redside never got the numbers to make it worth much dev time back in the day. It's always had just a fraction of the players Blueside did - even now on Homecoming it's still like that. Probably part of the reason why the Live devs focused on cross-side stuff (RWZ, Dark Aatoria, Incarnate trials) for the longest time. It was easier to build one big thing everyone could do rather then invest time in side-specific content hardly anyone would play more than once (if they even ran it the first time). Kind of makes me wonder if we might have eventually gotten a Redside revamp had the game stayed live long enough, and sad as it is this thread makes me glad it would have been Paragon Studios doing it rather than Cryptic. x.x Edited August 30, 2021 by El D Global is @El D, Everlasting Player, Recovering Altaholic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheOtherTed Posted August 30, 2021 Share Posted August 30, 2021 2 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said: Matt Miller, aka Positron, wrote the Klingon story missions that launched with Legacy of Romulus. I learned something today. Thank you. I also learned today that you don't clean affinity columns with high concentration sodium hydroxide, but that's beside the point. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeregrineFalcon Posted August 30, 2021 Share Posted August 30, 2021 2 hours ago, Moka said: Funny Matt Miller did that when he said he hated redside. (Unless I misread him in the AMA) Paragon Studios had recently folded and Matt was looking for a job. I suspect that fact trumped all other considerations for him. That being said, he did excellent work on the KDF story line. In my opinion it's the best story in the game, thanks to Positron. "It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire posts, the posts become warning points. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion." Being constantly offended doesn't mean you're right, it means you're too narcissistic to tolerate opinions different than your own. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Cat Posted August 31, 2021 Share Posted August 31, 2021 On 8/28/2021 at 7:07 AM, ForeverLaxx said: This seems to be what every game company wants to do now, particularly in the Indie sector. Charge people a fee for "early access" to their game with lots of promise, but not a lot of polish, get people through the door with that promise, then disappear into the sunset with the cash. Why continue to develop a game after you already made bank on just the bare bones alpha? It really makes trying to get into newer releases all the more difficult, and with budgets for games getting way out of control in the AAA sector (and their tendency to shoehorn in-game monetization for further milking), I don't have high hopes for the future of the industry as a whole. Pretty soon, everything is going to be a mobile gacha experience based out of China and I'm not looking forward to it. I've perhaps had some nonstandard experience with this. The Forest and Valheim I got on early access and both were extremely good even then. Diablo 3 and Farcry 2 I got full price as complete games and both sucked out of the box (D3 eventually got pretty good after many updates, but the writing and hammy dialogue still sucked). I guess you never really know until you play the game if you'd like it or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UltraAlt Posted August 31, 2021 Share Posted August 31, 2021 On 7/2/2021 at 7:18 AM, GraspingVileTerror said: A studio name is often just that: A name. The people and talent who make up a studio change over time On 7/2/2021 at 7:18 AM, GraspingVileTerror said: Not sure whose bright idea it was to start charging for micro-transactions while still officially declaring it a "Beta." The Financial people behind the gaming companies or whoever is paying the gaming company to create content. To me, Kickstarter is the the same thing. You aren't investing in the profits of the product, you are giving the company money to invest for their future profits. But this isn't limited to online activities. The electric company that I get my electrical power from keeps sending me information on how to pay extra to have them provide me with green energy. Yes. Sounds great for the environment; I'm +1 on that. However, they are upgrading their equipment and building green energy facilities, so I'm already getting green energy from them from the standard rate. So my thing is, even if the extra money that I'm giving them is going to build green energy facilities and Earth will be profiting, they will be profiting off of my "donation" to building new green power plants. Buying stock would be achieving the same goal to provide capital but at the end of the day, their profits will mean profits for you as well. Just saying. I know that in the end that any support of a game is simply giving profits to those on the other side, but it seem to be that Kickstarters and paid betas are giving money to people to try to get their companies off the ground. If they fail, you just lost out all you put into it. Those that failed walk away with whatever profits they made to fail to produce a finished product or sustainable money-making venture. If someone posts a reply quoting me and I don't reply, they may be on ignore. (It seems I'm involved with so much at this point that I may not be able to easily retrieve access to all the notifications) Some players know that I have them on ignore and are likely to make posts knowing that is the case. But the fact that I have them on ignore won't stop some of them from bullying and harassing people, because some of them love to do it. There is a group that have banded together to target forum posters they don't like. They think that this behavior is acceptable. Ignore (in the forums) and /ignore (in-game) are tools to improve your gaming experience. Don't feel bad about using them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greycat Posted September 2, 2021 Share Posted September 2, 2021 On 7/2/2021 at 6:18 AM, GraspingVileTerror said: A studio name is often just that: A name. See: Atari Then: Game developer, console maker, leader in industry Now: Name attached to overpriced (even if I like the case) Linux console and emulator, pusher of failing cryptocurrency. Primarily on Everlasting. Squid afficionado. Former creator of Copypastas. General smartalec. I tried to combine Circle and DE, but all I got were garden variety evil mages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThaOGDreamWeaver Posted September 29, 2021 Share Posted September 29, 2021 On 7/11/2021 at 3:46 PM, SuperPlyx said: -"cancel Magic Legends for poor financial performance" -"game has only been in open beta for three months" -"charging for micro-transactions while still officially declaring it a "Beta." What the hell..... Ah, the "EA model". 1 WAKE UP YA MISCREANTS AND... HEY, GET YOUR OWN DAMN SIGNATURE. Look out for me being generally cool, stylish and funny (delete as applicable) on Excelsior. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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