EoL MultiVersus and more: WB shutters 3 studios

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

David Zaslav strikes again...

 

Monolith (makers of one of my all-time favourites, No-One Lives Forever, as well as many other decent titles like F.E.A.R.), PlayerFirst (the fun if flawed MultiVersus) and WB San Diego will all be shuttered, with any live servers getting rapidly sunsetted. The upcoming Wonder Woman game, which has been in dev for 3+ years, is getting Batgirl'd as a tax loss.

 

WB will concentrate on core franchises - the Mortal Kombat, LOTR and H***y P****r titles (despite MK1 and the HP sportsball game being responsible for a lot of the underperformance, along with Kill The Justice League.)

 

Honestly think WB wouldn't know what to do with a creative team if they bit them on the backside.

[PeregrineFalcon]

To be fair to Zaslav, Monolith, Player First Games, and WB Games all lost money in recent years. Hogwarts Legacy is the only good game they've put out in years.  It turns out that making crap games and then insulting the customers on social media for not buying said games, isn't a great business model. And they're even in denial about it: "In a statement to Bloomberg, a spokesperson for Warner Bros. Games said the shutdowns were “not a reflection of these teams or the talent that consists within them.”"

 

I don't understand the mental gymnastics behind that statement at all. Let me see if I can follow the logic here. A team of game developers gets put together, under an experienced leader, and they create and publish a video game. Said video game bombs. Then a PR person says "Oh, it's not their fault their product sucked." Ok, did I get that right?

 

Well whose fault is it then? If it's not a reflection of the talent on those teams then is it a reflection of bad choices on the part of the C-Suite? You know as well as I do that's not what Mr. PR meant by that, so who was he referring to? Whose fault is it?

 

WB PR spokes-clown is blaming the customer for this.

 

3 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

Honestly think WB wouldn't know what to do with a creative team if they bit them on the backside.

You might be right about that. Personally I think it's more likely that the development teams for these companies sucked, made sucky games, and the studios were shut down because it's the easiest way to fire a bunch of "creatives" who suck. And it allows WB to get a tax write off for a "failed business venture."

Edited Wednesday at 05:10 PM by PeregrineFalcon

[Techwright]

Looks like they might be mothballing their Nemesis system as well.  I've never played a game it was utilized in, but it sounds great.  I'd love something similar added to our game (fully realizing it will never happen).

[Luminara]

3 hours ago, Techwright said:

Looks like they might be mothballing their Nemesis system as well.

 

From the linked article:

 

Not every game company uses patents to outright prevent others from using their systems. In January, Sega's head of Corporate Development HQ, Kikuo Masumoto, explained that Sega allows others to use their patented ideas if they're willing to apply for a license. The general manager of Konami's legal department, Shunsuke Murase, added that this offers a way for companies to recuperate investment.

 

 

recuperate investment

 

recuperate investment

 

Who do I defenestrate, the person who wrote the article or the editor who allowed that to be published?

[merrypessimist]

4 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

From the linked article:

 

Not every game company uses patents to outright prevent others from using their systems. In January, Sega's head of Corporate Development HQ, Kikuo Masumoto, explained that Sega allows others to use their patented ideas if they're willing to apply for a license. The general manager of Konami's legal department, Shunsuke Murase, added that this offers a way for companies to recuperate investment.

 

 

recuperate investment

 

recuperate investment

 

Who do I defenestrate, the person who wrote the article or the editor who allowed that to be published?

 

Por que no los dos?

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

6 hours ago, merrypessimist said:

Por que no los dos?

Seems fair.

I seem to very vaguely remember, back in the day, that a Nemesis system was going to be part of the game and was one of the major project threads… though I remember it being one persistent character who would show up in random missions and special arcs, adapting to your playstyle and powers.
 

Seems like too good an idea to waste.

[InvaderStych]

19 hours ago, Luminara said:

Who do I defenestrate, the person who wrote the article or the editor who allowed that to be published?

 

Yes.

[Oubliette_Red]

I didn't play any of those games and I am unfamiliar with those studios, where they home-grown WB developers or were they acquired by WB? On numerous occasions I've seen publishers acquire game studios, and for a while things go okay, them start throwing monkey wrenches into the works by giving marketing/bean counters creative license on the game in development, pushing for mechanics or player-facing changes that they think will generate more revenue and "the player will enjoy", and beyond that setting deadlines and publishing dates that are unrealistic or overriding the designers/developers/qa and pushing a product live with enough bugs to ensure that the players will blow up.

 

I used to work for a rather large company that had multiple revenue streams, I worked QA in one of their in-house mobile games studios and did the iOS/Android/Amazon/Windows Featuring certification testing. I had a rather large Excel spreadsheet with specific test cases for each platform's requirements for featuring and this lowly QA Lead, on occasion, had to hold up publishing to distributors over a failed test case. I rarely got overridden by the development team and once it bit them on the asscot.

 

Prior to that I did QA for a notable software company back when everything still cam out in boxes and on CD's, then you had the added crunch to meet the publishing deadline for mass-production, which for most software companies was all done by Sony, so if you missed your scheduled delivery of your master to them for reproduction, you slipped in the queue and your publication may slip by months simply because Sony pushed you back in the queue.

 

I think some companies still have that mindset when it comes to publishing their games even with digital distribution being so prevalent. Most studios I will give the benefit of the doubt and place the blame on their evil overlords, only because I've seen it happen from the inside. But hey, if anyone wants to buy a ship I've got a mint condition MISC Freelancer DUR. -.-

[lemming]

15 hours ago, Oubliette_Red said:

I rarely got overridden by the development team and once it bit them on the asscot.

Yea, I was in that position.   Had one where the VP overrode me on an item that caused a huge issue barely a month down the line.   I would have been fired if I hadn't had the documentation. Still got forced out and a month afterwards, another big issue happened and one person quipped in the meeting "If Lemming had still be here, this wouldn't have happened."  Didn't do me any good, but a little schadenfreude.