The Indicative Incompetence Of Bungie's Leadership (The Jimquisition)
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- čas přidán 12. 09. 2024
- / jimquisition
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Bungie just indulged in a new round of layoffs directly as a result of incompetent management. Those inept leaders will suffer no consequences, and the terrible CEO will continue to spend millions on classic cars. The problems at Bungie serve as a definitive example of the game industry's most damaging element - the executives.
#Bungie #Layoffs #Destiny #TheFinalShape #Money #PeteParsons #JimSterling #Jimquisition #Games #Gaming #Videogames #Layoffs
I *do* recall a time when firing whole departments so you could afford to buy yourself luxury cars would warrant an embezzlement investigation. In the before times. In the long, long ago…
...of 20 years ago.
"B-But CEOs are above the law!!"
*licks boot*
Only weak CEOs from smaller companies.
That's the problem, though. Getting an investigation going often requires someone INSIDE to blow a whistle, but I'm pretty sure that if something nefarious is going on at Bungie, nearly all of the upper management is in on it, including Financials.
@@mesektet5776 The sad truth is everything he did was probably legal. Plus even if a CEO was embezzling millions he wouldn’t face a day in prison. Hell he could have “accidentally” overworked a whole department to the point of suicide, and still only gotten a slap on the wrist.
Game company: *makes record profits with great sales for its latest DLC.*
Also game company: “we have no choice but to lay off staff to meet our financial goals.”
Public: “What are your goals?”
Game Company: “To have all of the money available in the global economy and swim in it like Scrooge McDuck.”
Or in this case: More vintage Ferraris
Comparing Scrooge Mcduck with a CEO is an insult to Scrooge. He had worked his way up from almost nothing to the richest duck in the world. Most if not all CEOs start wealthy, and just get more wealthy while doing so little work. You would think that they are on holiday all the time.
It is only logical. You hire people to develop a game and when that game is developed, you fire all of them again, keeping any profits for yourself. What are bugfixes? Support? Customer service? Waste of money!
Public: "What are your goals next year?"
CEO: "To make at least 20% more than that."
Public: "But you already made all of the money?"
CEO: "... I don't understand the question?"
"Financial Goals"
You mean their money fetish, that can only be fed by increasingly stupider numbers and the blood of the innocent workers.
My mum used to work in a few lower management positions, admittedly in a different industry, but I do want to point out that calling CEOs ruthless and claiming that all they do is lay off workers is giving them too much credit. CEOs are spineless cowards who make other people make other people lay off workers so they never have to look the consequences of their decisions in the face. They probably don't even pick the victims themselves, since you can just pick a number to cut and delegate that task to someone else. It is really hard, absolutely heartwrenching to tell someone they don't have a job anymore, so you get people who can't afford to say no to do it for you.
To them, life is just an Idle Game with no consequences.
CEOs won't pick victims themselves. Unless he has feud with someone who spoke out facts that he did not like. That name goes to the top of the list. Just to send a strong message.
Just rich people doing what they've always done - turn poor people against slightly poorer people, make sure nobody's looking at them.
High time they all learned the downside of living in those tall ivory towers...
_Gravity._
An example of this happened around where I live a few years ago. A Canadian tech store got absorbed into Best Buy and they literally closed them all over night. I'm not using that as a turn of phrase either, literally one day they were open and the next they were closed. Employees showed up to boarded up stores, were escorted by security into their managers office and fired. The managers, who were also getting fired, were told that if they refused to do the firings the company would revoke their severance packages. Absolute complete scum fuck shit.
@@hazukichanx408Gravity was a great movie. 🍿
Video game CEO: “Some of you may become unhoused, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to make.”
Usually I baulk at using unhoused versus homeless as just a semantic, but here it is VERY appropriate. They are not without homes, they had their houses TAKEN from them by greedy corporate overlords.
Now I wish we had a pretty dragon to eat tf outta a CEO lol
Bungie lays off their employees after making a killer DLC. If it were my employees at my indie studio who made a fantastic game that sold like crazy i'd not only be handing out pay bonus's out the ass to the developers and free weed, taco bell, & drinks but would invite them all to have a thank you celebration at my big ass expensive house as a thank you to everyone who worked on the game.
That's how a CEO should treat their employee's.
A fitting paraphrase!
For those who don't know, it's by Lord Farquaad from Shrek, who was based on a previous CEO of Disney that the animators hated, so when they moved companies, they took a shot at him in their next film.
Lol I appreciate how many people liked this comment I made when I was as high as a kite on my day off.But in all seriousness, the state of videos games as an art form and source of entertainment is terrible right now. Corporate greed is actively ruining it(like it does everything)and I’m glad someone like Steph is calling attention to it everytime it happens.
"Was hit by layoffs", as if it's some natural disaster, something unpreventable and unforeseeable.
Makes me sick.
It's the same when they talk about company acquisitions. A big company buys a smaller one and the media reports about it as if it's a law of nature. It's just how things are. The big fish will eat the small fish. It's nature.
That's pretty much how they framed it at my workplace last year when they fired a good chunk of our engineers in USA/Canada. And IN THE SAME ANNOUNCEMENT, they told us that we'd start hiring in India/Pakistan to "help" with the gaping hole left behind. Psychopaths.
Also the whole "let's hire cheaper engineers overseas" thing completely failed and we had to spend over a year critically understaffed and overworked.
George Carlin's ramble about "soft language" comes to mind. Using gentle, inoffensive words to convey something that is anything but; to slip right by people just how bad things are, and how badly you're screwing them.
And who has softer language than corporations and their figureheads? "We're sorry that you had a non-ideal experience, and are excited to do better and offer you the best possible service!" ...Sure, fuckers. _Sure..._
Remember when it was a verbal phrase, as in "laid off"? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
The ceo was hit by the urge to buy a few more cars
"Management is suffering too" I think Pete doesn't realize that being criticized online for how you abuse your work force and actually losing your job are two very different kinds of suffering.
"some of you may die but it´s a sacrifice I´m willing to make "
How have I never noticed this before.
Layoffs is just embezzlement with extra steps.
Bingo. Companies have gotten so bad that they aren't even the greedy amoral bastards doing anything to maximise shareholder value any more. They're worse than that. They're running themselves into the ground to enrich the executives. Its legalised embezzlement
It's by design. Consumer capitalism is slavery with extra steps.
@lordofhnajuty yeah, especially if they do it at just the right time to affect the quarterly earnings.
Depressing fact 60% of all wealth generated over the last decade went to 1% of the population. If distrubition of wealth for workers was the same as it was in the 50s-70s today your wage would be double what it is now.
And even in the 50s-70s it wasn't great! Eat the fucking rich.
60% is actually lower than I would've thought
@@ennayanne it's 1% taking 60% that is huge
Yeah. It's why people of that generation, Boomers, just can't understand why younger people complain about housing, college and costs of having a child so much.
Heck, look at what happened to Unions since those decades or the progressively bigger steps at deregulation so companies could "create jobs". I mean, it has been at least a decade since it was ruled a company was techilnically a "person" and only got worse from there
@Alex-cw3rz especially when you consider that the other 99% are not all the same. Not all the greaady assholes are at the 1% level so it that remaining 40% is still futher filtered before it gets to any of us
fun fact back in the 80s when the practice of laying people off every quarter to make the financials look better really got into swing a noticeable pattern began to appear where the suicide rates spiked accordingly as people contended with losing their livelihoods. very fun and normal and functional economy.
There are no victimless crimes with fraud, waste and abuse if there are losses of life, limb and brightside. Pursuit of happiness or some such.
Every time someone gets upset over DEI BS, they're falling for the distraction from the real issue at play.
100% 😒🎯
Or every time they focus in on the one CEO at the top. No one considers the chain of yes men, enablers, or collaborators that went along with the decisions and never even tried to say something.
We’re finding out now, but people working at this studio have know for years and they never said anything.
There is a reason why Republican CEOs push "DEI is to blame" so hard. Too cowardly to it themselves once again so they pay the grifters.
Declining quality in games? Must be the blue hairs and not the fact that no one can develop their skills because they keep getting laid off.
And those people are far more likely to be laid off instead of ever becoming one of the ultra greedy, ultra selfish rich people that sold them said distraction in the first place!
When the management starts saying "You're integral to the company" or "you're critical to the business" it's time to start really worrying about your job.
When they say "we are a family" you run to the hills.
Literally run to the hills.
Being "valuable" is the management version of "paid in exposure".
"It was a difficult decision."
It probably was, which car he was gone buy first.
"it´s a sacrifice I´m willing to make"
thats the thing, they tend to just hoard the money thereby removing it from the economy.
"A difficult decision" the employees had no say in. This is why I push for co-op businesses.
Hey yacht fuel is expensive.
@@meewec2091Also, all those people being laid off won't be able to "contribute to the economy either". And if you're job can and will stop any day, you're probably making sure to save every single coin, for when you don't have a job anymore.
Over a decade ago I went into college wanting to work at Bungie... Today I've never been happier I didn't go into the industry at all.
When halo 3 came out working at bungie would've been a dream job, but sadly yea this industry has truly gone down the gutter. Larian is a great example of a big studio being valued by their management right now, and are even hiring some of the talent being laid off so their future games are gonna look even better already.
My brain's all fucked up because every creative industry I considered going into got completely demonic over the last 25 years. It's really taken its toll on me, working these brainless garbage jobs for trash pay, and knowing that doing that creative work i would have loved would wind up being just as soul-crushing and exploitative.
I don't give a damn who you are, you shouldn't be working more than 50 hours a week, and all overtime should be paid. Not this 80+ hour crunch BS with broken promises of bonuses and unpaid OT for MONTHS.
My heart goes out to you. When I was a kid I always wanted to make games like the ones I'd play near daily. But growing up, getting to learn how the industry functioned and how the people who made some of my favorite games were treated. It makes me feel sick, keeps me up at night. Fuck working for these publishers when I make a game it will be low budget and on my own.
Those aren't just classic cars, those are race cars. Somehow that makes things worse, because those are the most expensive cars, with the least amount of usefulness. Kinda sums Pete up doesn't it?
Certainly explains his tiny little man.
To be fair they weren't race cars, but even so, if I had that kind of money I'd still only get like a classic 911 or something, not 2.5 million worth of cars where you couldn't even drive them all if you wanted to
@@jameshedge198 A number of the cars in the long shot were race cars.
@@Robstafarian which ones?
@@Robstafarian ok I think I see the shot you were talking about and that's a screenshot from forza, if he bought a bentley speed 8 it would probably cost 2.5 million on it's own
I felt something was amiss that the CEO hadn’t the money for his employees, but enough for *another sports car.* (man buys sports cars like trading cards.)
Like damn, I said this elsewhere, but with how successful the final shape has been... These employees were fired for merely doing their job. These layoff are absolutely ridiculous, and if this isn’t a textbook example of what a failure of leadership looks like, idk what is.
Leadership doing their job as intended, increasing shareholder value. That is what they are employed to do
@@dominicparker6124 well, the way theyre doing it is making grabby hands at short term gains just for the sake of profits. So many vital teams at Bungie got gutted, future DLC is rumoured to be downsized, and community opinion on the gaame inverted overnight from "we are so back" to "we are so over". Theyre declaring Marathon as their next big thing when we're all but certain its doomed to fail, while Destiny seems destined for a slow decline into destruction. I wouldn't call that "doing their job as intended", because theyre LEADERS of a Company, theyre supposed to LEAD them into doing well! Layoffs is literally anything but well!
@@dominicparker6124 Worse. This isn't increasing shareholder value. This is increasing their own value. Shareholders are just stupid. If companies were actually *just* the greedy amoral bastards that they are, they'd be bad, but they wouldn't be doing this. This is legalised embezzlement, plain and simple.
Apparently it underperformed worse then Lightfall, but you have to wonder if the people making decisions hadn’t squandered the trust of the player base or burned through cash Final Shape may have in fact performed at expectations.
@@stevenkhan4203 Yeah from what we can gather Destiny 2 is likely to be put into 'Maintence Mode', which is the deathknell for any online only game unless it sort of lurches around like some sort of MMO zombie like Champions Online which hasn't had any content updates in like 10 years that wasn't just "we added a new lootbox" and the only reason it's still alive is because it shares server architecture with Star Trek Online.
Game Devs need to unionize.
they tried, and all of them were fired. Simultaneously. Almost as if a union would be a bad thing. Don't worry though Bobby Kotick is pro union.
@@darkangelgeneral What?
@@warwatcher91 they covered it in a video before. activision developers tried to unionize and were fired along with some people who mentioned unionizing. that 2nd part was across multiple companies
@darkangelgeneral No I get that, it's the whole that's why unions are bad thing that you said. That's what I'm wondering about.
@@warwatcher91 Well, unions _are_ a bad thing - for companies like ActiBlizz.
I have seen some people dismiss it by saying that that money wouldn't go very far. They overlook that it's just what he spent on toys, so he is getting way more. Plus, talking about his cars and inviting people that he planned to fire to se them shows he doesn't care.
That and there are other equally overpaid skeleton warriors.
That also if he has money to spend on a hobby so expensive it only shows he’s no going to bed worried about paying the bills for his likely expensive house with other equally expensive toys.
Great timing since I just learned a beloved local brewery was bought by a company in 2018, that company lied about improving distribution and helping the company grow, which led to the founder suing and being fired. That company was then bought by Monster of all thigns who promptly closed the brewery but is going to keep the beer names and recipes to make elsewhere. An entire breweries worth of employees unemployed because Monster wanted to play around with selling alcohol
Deep Ellum Brewing, right? I love how the billboard for it is still loomong over the motorway to promote the beer. Just a ghoulish tombstone above a gutted corpse.
I mean monster isn't the problem there, the old owners are. They were the ones that sold the brewery, they were the ones that reduced the job security of the employees.
It is criminal that layoffs are permitted to occur in the same fiscal year, let alone quarter as Executive Bonuses, Raises, and Increased Investor Payouts.
Corporations should be required to lower Executive Pay and Investor Payouts by at least the same percentage as the percentage of staff laid off, while at the same time prohibiting any Bonus Payouts. If they can’t afford that, then they can clearly afford to keep enough staff to keep the layoff percentages above that threshold.
Or just ban layoffs within a year of any dividend payment. If the employees have to go hungry, the shareholders should have to do so first.
It was such a hard decision to lay off these people.
Why not take a pay cut and save their jobs?
Oh, we're not THAT kind of company.
How is that not the most telling, grotesquely obvious admission of guilt that they're liars because they don't care?
They couldn't even be bothered to make something up. They know you're not going to do anything until this Pete gets the brakes on one of his classic cars cut
"If a group of clowns is too big, it tends to interfere with the communication process."
Fucking killed me
Word "literally" fucking the word "impossible" broke me. One happy spark in this sea of horrible
Using Warframe's corpus faces for CEOs is a nice touch
That and saying the word “entirely” with a picture of Bruce Lee in a tire was fantastic
I liked Serious Lee Fucked Up.
At least we get to shoot the Corpus in Warframe. Cold comfort, but it's at least an outlet for the frustration...
My friend worked for Bungie.
Worked. Past tense. As of last week.
As if I wasn't already mad enough at these bastards...
Sorry to hear that. I hope your friend is doing better.
"This helmet on legs."
Hey now, Steph, I need to take you to task on this one! That's a Met from Mega Man you're describing, and Mets are hardworking robots! At least Dr. Wily, a guy practically named "Evil McBad Guy," rebuilds his bots and tries to upgrade and upkeep them!
Dr. Wily is officially less evil than a video game CEO.
It's absolute carnage in the games industry right now, lost my job twice in the last 8 months and I'm applying for stuff outside the industry, looking to change my career long term if I can and it's pretty grim because companies seem to think I'll be bored and looking to move back into it asap when I'd be perfectly happy doing admin or whatever. If they ask about that then they seem to think I'm shit talking my old companies specifically rather than the industry as a whole when I say it's very unstable and not somewhere where one can feel secure trying to build a future. Feels tough.
Say what they want to hear in job interviews. Instead of saying ”i want to find a more stable career” say ”i want to expand my expertise” or something in that vein.
Man, that sucks for you. :( You deserve an industry that respects you...
@@klisterklister2367 nah, say you want a stable career. Job interviews work both ways - if you get _that look_ when you ask the question, go look at who else is interviewing!
@@markwelch3564 And what if we get that look EVERYWHERE we apply?
@@youtubeuniversity3638 life sucks, but at least you can try and pick the least worst panicked glance. Hope you find somewhere decent!
"We have to financially restructure, the business model is not viable, some of you in all departments even development will regretfully have to be made redundant .."
* swiftly walks to the car park and climbs into his newly purchased Lotus *
No matter how serious the subject I can't help but giggle every time they do the "replace every adverb with Bruce Lee" joke.
“Absolute” Lee killed me
in-tire lee
I actually forgot about that
1. Announce mass hiring because "we're expanding get hyped!"
2. Take on more people than you can handle without proper onboarding so there's a bunch of inefficacies.
3. Still Manage to profit pretty well, but you eventually don't make all the money.
4. Start Mass layoffs because your company didn't make proper use of the talent they had, or they failed to hire talented people.
5. Hire some people during this time like you didn't just lay people off, and say things to them like "this is what's best for the company."
6. Use the money you saved paying wages for the bonus pool, aka the bonus that pays for executive pools.
7. Rinse and Repeat!
Bonus: Gaslight your employees into thinking they should be so lucky to work here, that 2 weeks PTO is "generous" that you're paid more than well even though you're making at or below market rate, and they shouldn't be here for a paycheck, they should LOVE WORKING FOR SOMEONE ELSE'S DREAM!
Back when I was in school, my goal was to get into game development. It didn't work out due to circumstances and my own failures. Now, even though I can't exactly call my job great, I still feel like I dodged a bullet not getting into that hellish industry.
Imagine being so rich that you can afford dozens of classic cars, but also so sad that you have to go into the office and ask the people you pay to come to your house and look at your cars.
The best part of this is that Destiny has a shitty cash shop. Supposedly, this was to support the studio. This was clearly a lie, lol. Final shape was the last major installment, but supposedly, there were going to be a few other projects after that. That's obviously not going to happen.
I think you mean allegedly instead of supposedly (both times).
the line they used to pitch the cash shop in D1 was that it would fund free updates. In D1, I never touched it. In D2, I caved for a period and got myself some nice skins. Fast forward a few years and we're paying more for less on a lot of things, and dungeons are a separate purchase. I was a solo player for the most part but seeing that made me rethink my relationship with the game. I made my peace with it and quit on a relative high note after playing the Witch Queen campaign. Since then, nothing has made me want to reinstall.
I have a lot of problems with Nintendo. A lot of them. But every time I hear about layoffs, I think about how when the WiiU and 3DS failed to meet expectations in sales, instead of laying people off or cutting their pay, the higher ups took the paycuts instead. And they were just fine. I think there's a lot of other companies (not just in games) that should do the same...
Also, since you asked, I really like blue raspberry soda with either an apple or some beef jerky as a snack.
to be fair, that is something they had to do in accordance to japanese labor laws, which is probably what the US also needs for this shit to stop happening
well, that, and the end of capitalism, of course
To be more fair Nintendo of Japan had no layoffs, Nintendo US did if I remember correctly James Steph did an episode on that.
Keep in mind that Japan has very high job retention rates.
@@sunnyletomThis is a commonly repeated myth. The Labor Contract Act (2007) does prevent abusive dismissals (i.e. firing people for anything outside the scope of their work), but does not demand that CEOs take paycuts. A paycut from leadership is a socially acceptable, but never legally enforced way for companies to prove they have done their due diligence to prevent layoffs.
If Japanes law forced CEOs to take paycuts you would hear about it all the time, but there's a reason you only name one name in the whole industry when the topic arises.
Fortunately Nintendo realizes you don't break up a working team.
Weird how both employees who got asked to come see his cars were female and young. I'm not gonna speculate about that but I will let the implications hanging there.
Thank you for always calling out the horrible and unethical choices that leads to these inevitable outcomes. I hate how greed had just been allowed to run rampant and unchecked
Serial Destiny addict here, and this entire incident is infuriating.
The first layoffs came in the midst of a bad time for the game - Lightfall sold well on paper, but was plauged with issues during production that made its campaign disjointed and dissatisfying to a lot of people. This was followed by falling player numbers and criticism of the seasons afterwards, and then immediately after the announcement of a massive delay for the next expansion came the layoffs and reveal of being shockingly below target - which was, at least part, because of unrealistic targets. They let go of people like the games main composer, with seemingly no rhyme or reason, gutting vital teams in the process.
Honestly, the delay was the only reason the Final Shape was received so well, as it (combined with management caving on giving the devs more freedom to do the shit they wanted) gave them time to add a ton of new stuff. Final Shape is the best received expansion in Destiny's history, toppling previous most popular expansion Forsaken, and potentially heralding a better era for the game... AND THEN THIS SHIT HAPPENED. Even more laid off than the last round of layoffs, decided LONG before Final Shape dropped and yet with so little warning that some found out over FUCKING TWITTER, and with the reveal that management is potentially driving the game even further into the ground by downsizing future expansions and generally giving us less content - presumably for the same buck, going all in on the LiVe SeRvIcE angle.
Word is that new title Marathon is being touted as "the saving grace". Whatever happened to the best expansion ever for your sole moneymaker, huh? Mood among the community is that Marathon is destined for failure, being an extraction shooter several years late to a horribly oversaturated market from an unrelated IP that hasn't been seen in decades, or its a hero shooter now if rumours might be believed. Regardless, the community has done a total 180 from singing the games praises to doomposting en-masse, as if not even a sterling success can stop layoffs like this... what will?
And yeah, the car thing really pissed us off, too. Everyone agrees that Parsons and whatever management schmucks caused this need to be jettisoned immediately if the game is to survive.
It's genuinely wild to me as a fellow Destiny player how every time we hear the priorities of the actual leadership how infuriatingly ass backwards they are, and that Marathon is such a big hit in their eyes that they're now actively culling D2 teams and clearly trying to kill the game once the Episodes and Frontiers is done.
Add in all the leaks on how Marathon has no clear direction and was not at all well received at tests and it's just absolutely baffling that the one thing keeping the lights on is the game they're desperately driving into the ground to force everyone to jump to Marathon. They wasted millions on incubation projects to oversell themselves to Sony and nothings come from them outside of one that Sony itself is taking over because they don't trust Bungie.
They don't seem to realise Destiny got through its first hurdles partly because of goodwill thanks to Halo. Bungie has no goodwill left for Marathon, it has to be perfect at launch and even if it is extraction shooters are the new battle royale, they're a dime a dozen.
I think Hasbro is watching the Jimquisition. They've started down the path of the video game developer. Even got a few faces featured here in the past.
Layoffs aren't about saving money. They exist to manipulate share price. In tough times, line goes up when staff gets the axe.
Later, in boom times, line goes up when they hire more than they need "to meet demand".
It's not even that way anymore. They're cutting staff WHEN the line goes up, not after it starts to decline, and they're not hiring anyone to replace who they cut anymore because that would be too expensive to maintain the all powerful god that is growth.
The wrestling story in this episode deserves more money than those executives are getting, easily
And this is why I'm in favour of an upper income limit: No executive may make more than 10x that of the lowest paid employee. This includes bonuses, stock, capital gains, any income.
"But if the stock goes up more than the limit then what?" 100% tax rate or they sell it and it must be invested back in the company.
And the any "executive", "officer" or board member must take a pay cut up to 90% and remain that way for a minimum 6 months before they can even consider layoffs.
A future Steph Sterling video will be titled "Peter Parsnips gives himself huge salary bonus for reaching record profits." Probably in a month or two.
7:02 I love the use of Darvo to throw flak at Destiny
Sterling you hella know how to throw salt in the wound, I admire, approve and praise that hell-raising chaos
Top-heavy compensation at a company is a sign of coming insolvency. The *plan* is to take the money and run, regardless of industry.
Hey, Stephanie Sterling, off topic but... have you heard of the Stop Killing Games, uh... initiative? Long story short: Ross from Accursed Farms is on a mission to prevent corporations from doing scummy, anti-customer business practices - such as taking the game _that you bought_ away from you, like what happened to _The Crew._
Friendly reminder that the difference between the salary of the CEO of Nintendo and the former CEO of Activision Blizzard is so large that just 3 years of time would suffice to have enough money to for the entirety of the Budget of Cyberpunk 2077.
I mean, hit by lay-offs is not excactly wrong. Workers are hit by lay-offs. In the face. When those lay-offs are thrown by shareholder off-jerking skeleton warriors.
“Basically, Bungie’s management are a bunch of Skeleton War-“
*”cuuuuuuunts.”*
As important as this is, man do I wish we could have talked about "Thank Goodness You're Here!"...
ya 😔 exactly. played the demo , watched streams, was cool as heck
The only gaming mechanic worse that 'pay to win' is 'yearly profit targets are the gauge of success'. And just as with the former, the only way to ultimately win the latter is not to play the game.
It's always a delight to hear you rant about greedy execs.
I just wish there were no occasion for such rants :(
Remember when Larian Studios spent a ton of money to hire human voice actors for every character in Boulder's Gate 3, and made sure all the audio was high quality? And made an awesome game that while it did have some technical issues they continued to support and address while even adding content post launch? Without Micro transactions, without zero-day DLC? and how the "AAA" game industry panicked at what would become nearly everyone's Game of the Year saying things like "Oh this game had an insane and unreasonable scope, no AAA game will ever be like this in the future". Because as a private company not beholden to the business executives the owner of Larian who cares about making good games can and does... make good games.
You know it's serious when Steph doesn't call them Skeleton Warriors.
We need a game developers union, it is only way we can stop this is.
Hear Hear
Didn't think we'd have a cold open with an RKO outa nowhere, but it does seem fitting to the topic. LOL.
as soon as I found out it was a 24/7 title I knew what was going to happen at some point in the video
This one’s been a long time coming, thank god for you Steph ❤
Just a point: you said there were no safe jobs, that’s not quite true. The executives are safe
Stopped playing D2 at the last layoffs. I was so angry. This only solidifies my decision. Fuck CEO's.
I do like how in japan its rhe norm for the CEO to take a pay cut when a company under performs. It they're so important that they deserve to make multiple hundreds more than the average worker, then why would they not be the ones who should take the pay cut?
It's not the norm, it's the law. When Japan, the place known for death by overwork, has better labor protections than the county you live in, you know you're in a bad place. America is a disaster
it might not be my favorite overall beverage but my favorite soda at least is dr. pepper, all the different flavors in it and its slight spiciness make it a lovely treat. don't really have a favorite snack though, i kind of just pick things at random to snack on
EDIT: also the truly baffling thing about CEOs is how when they walk away from the ruins of companies they've destroyed, so many of them _get positions as CEOs in another company_ afterwards. sometimes even in industries that were completely disconnected from their previous "work"! could you even imagine if anyone in the working class could get away with that kind of shit???
More people need to internalize the idea that CEOs and upper echelon people at a company making millions while laying off the people that do the work is in fact a failure of management.
Just about the only consequences leadership gets for these ‘difficult decisions’ is some bad PR.
And even that’s too much for the ‘don’t bring Pete Parsons cars into this’ and ‘it’s just business’ corporate defenders.
Bad PR that the majority of consumers never hear about
People should simply unionize and demand their jobs and pay be kept. After all, it's 'just business' right? 😂
Don't publish anything critical about Pete "Pisspants" Parsons or he might have to fire people again so he can stressbuy some vintage cars
It feels like we live in a dystopia.
Feels? FEELS!?
Are you just catching up with reality?
Literally the perfect James Stephanie Stirling case study.
Sucks how every time good people are proven correct, good people suffer while terrible people win.
"If the group of clowns is too large, it tends to interfere with the communication process"
God, I hope this clip makes regular appearances for the rest of the year
My favorite beverage is Minute Maid fruit punch blended with frozen strawberries. I call it “the big baby“
This guys ruining peoples lives over the CEO equivalent of fucking Pokémon cards
These nonstop layoffs across the tech industry and games are why I'm still looking for an entry-level job two years after graduating with a CS degree. Nobody wants to take a chance on a new grad when there's hundreds or thousands of experienced engineers applying for the same job out of desperation. These bastards are making life hell not only for the ones they're directly laying off, but also for everyone who was told that a career in programming was a sure way into the middle class only to be faced with an utterly broken job market
Thank you for indulding in some Stan Lee. All the Lee puns were absolutely marvelous, as usual.
Unions would help, and are a decent stopgap measure. But ultimately we need worker-owned co-ops.
REALLY???
All that Pete-Talk and NO
'for Pete Sake?'
Fell Off 😂
Unless I missed it, haven't slept in a obscene amount of time.
in construction whenever the building gets finished they lay off everyone. This industry needs a union fashion in the same way since these layoffs reminds me when a project is near completion and only Formans stay working. A union that pays vacation checks and OT just like construction unions work. This needs representation, programmers are being treated as non union construction workers basically being paid nothing. in my opinion anyway
B-but unions are literally worse than Hitler and steal all your money while doing absolutely nothing! Pay no mind to the millions upon millions of dollars we spend each year to destroy unions and to spread anti-union propaganda, that's totally unrelated! Also ignore how unions gave us the weekend, end of child labour, limited work to only 8 hours a day instead of up to 14, and made workplaces safer!
Thank God for Steph Sterling
As someone who has enjoyed D2 for many years, I dont think my spirit has been more heartbroken. The thing I've spent so much time on, where I met most of my friends, my favorite game. It feels wrong to enjoy it now. It feels wrong to enjoy my passion.
They actually laid off a woman about to take a maternity leave? Wow. That's a new low.
It's low but hardly new. Very common story, in fact.
i jumped when i saw the bloody gir at 11:07
i used to go crazy trying to find it in the invader zim intro as a kid because everyone and their mother said it was hidden in there
idk if it was actually ever there or not its been a while but i still remember that bloody gir and i love it
Well-spotted!
Long live Steph Sterling.
I think CEO's if they fail to meet expectations they have to give their entire damn pay package back....
Have we ever seen a year of year full spending report from a development studio? I mean I do agree that black hole that is executives is with out a doubt swallowing a lot of money, but have we ever revived data on how much is going where.
I don't think anyone has ever published those, for the simple fact that it would make things significantly easier on the IRS and the US DoJ
I was in management at a nonprofit a few years ago. Cash was tight, as it is at all nonprofits. I was the only manager to turn down a raise the whole time I was there. I ended up getting fired for looking for a job. Then, the guy who fired me got into some really bad legal trouble, and I laughed because I warned them he was a weasel.
So does that mean that Bungie is now being controlled by the Fallen Lords, the villains from Bungie's earlier Myth games? If so, which of Bungie's leaders resemble Balor, Soulblighter, The Watcher, Shiver, and The Deceiver? It would be all too fitting if they had a combined undead and Myrkridia army lurking in their company basement.
In Myth 1, some of the ways the Fallen Lords were destroyed were either through exploiting their vanity; turning them to stone by shooting them with arrows made from their bones; or paralyzing them with a magic stone, decapitating them, and throwing their heads into the Great Devoid. You can't do that to company CEOs, of course, but I'm sure there are means to defeat them which are metaphorically similar to what I described.
I truly can't understand how after Nintendo led by example when the Wii U was falling to meet expectations and cut executive pay that it wasn't used so much as a shining example that this got pushed out of the gaming industry. Every time there have been layoffs, the story from all ends should have been, this company here is doing layoffs, rather than what one of the big three of the industry did and cutting executive pay. The media truly had failed the working class, once it turned into a propaganda machine for the rich and powerful.
I'm glad you mentioned Nintendo and the Wii U. It jumps to mind every single time a story like this is reported.
I propose we title this the "Satoru Iwata fallacy", or maybe just the "Iwata fallacy"; in which the termination or undercutting of labor or the forms of remuneration given are argued as a necessary step in maintaining en entity's viability, despite being chosen before any other avenues are explored or attempted, and not even precisely addressing the issues to company was facing to begin with.
You know things are real if Stephanie drops the Skeleton Warriors bit and actually calls them Cee U Next Tuesday.
Wow. That worker that asked if the managers would get a pay cut... Legend. Iconic. Braver than me, and definetely an example to follow.
I don't know if it's you, Steph, or your Z Manzilly doing the editing with the little inserts - 'literally fucking impossible' and all the Lees - but they're proper on point, keep it up.
Thank you so much!
(and now I'm gonna tell people I'm going "Z Manzilly" whenever I act out :P )
@@ZMannZilla Yeah, that was a genuine typo and I've no idea how I managed it, but it worked, so I left it in there!
"Look at you Steph, with your wrestling belts and yer videogames and yer Z Manzillys"
Cherry Vanilla Creme Soda with cane sugar. I don't have soda too often any more, but it's my ambrosia and a far less harmful indulgence than collectors cars apparently.
I can't begin my week without my Bruce Lee variants. And Steph's commentary, of course!...
I spent 10 years trying to get a job in the industry, then in December of 2021 got reached out to by the guy who would be my art lead for the past 2 and a half years at Bungie. I'd be lying if i said the layoffs came out of nowhere, we all kinda expected them, but maybe not this soon. The job market is slim pickens for game artists atm, but here's hoping it wont take another 10 years. Thanks for covering this Steph.
How this industry can stay operating when it works like this is baffling. How has this industry not crashed again? Also, my favorite beverage is lemonade, and I my snack to go with it is whatever I got in the house.
The contradictions of an economic system will eventually become increasingly obvious and a crash will happen. Just look at how many studios have been closed in recent years, how many people laid off, how many CEO’s who crashed companies into the ground and made off with fortunes, and how many corporations have swallowed up or amalgamated numerous studios under their umbrella. That’s simply not sustainable. It’s just the ‘line go up’ meme, but it’s real life 🤦♂️
It can operate this way because this is the way most companies operate. So long as the products at large sell, the company remains solvent. Ultimately most gamers don't give a toss if the companies were crushing these devs in compactors to make the games. They just want the product to have the product.
@DiggingForFacts yeah I get that. But I'm seriously wondering how much longer the "product" will remain solvent. Games keep getting bigger and shareholder cretins expect more money infinitely, I'm wondering how much longer that will continue.
The tale of Pete makes me think of the infamous Pat Lee, alleged artist and CEO of long-defunct comic publisher Dreamwave. If you know, you know, and you know how frickin' RANCID that is.
For anyone who feels bad about them being the original makers of Halo fallen from grace, I'm pretty sure barely anyone who worked on Halo is actually still working there so you probably don't need to worry about that detail.
Darvo in gag disguise glasses as the anonymous source kinda works actually. He's a scumbag, but he's our scumbag.
100% tax on > $1 million
Personally, I like the phrase "Bungie decided to hit its workers with layoffs." It brings to mind an image of the company using layoffs as a tool to bludgeon its employees.
I gotta say, Sterling, it's got to be torture shouting into the void about this for decades.
she is the cassandra of video games after all
@@coobk truly the dark souls of triple a apologists hunting
No matter what, I will always appreciate you for calling out corporate bullshit. I'm glad you're at a level where you aren't beholden to industry money: we need more voices like you.
Now that your easter eggs ask: Actually just water, maybe some light lemon soda on special days. And some stracciatella or vanilla pudding. With berries.
The Bruce Lee adverb puns were particularly choice today; my hat is doffed to Zilla. 😂
A-thank you! (bows)
Great coverage but that ending: MY BELT MINE!~
Using Nef Anyo as a representation of greed was an inspired choice