- cross-posted to:
- games@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- games@lemmy.world
Full title: Doom dev blasts Xbox after Microsoft ‘Gutted’ id Sofware with layoffs: “they fundamentally don’t understand art” and “it’s hard to make a game when there are entire departments that are gutted that you need, entire disciplines that are gone”.
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They are being extremely random and utterly stupid with layoffs, all of the larger developers.
I’ve seen the best technical artist being fired right in the middle of transition from built-in rendering pipeline to URP, which is THE thing where you need a technical artist that understands your shaders, especially if the game has a lot of custom ones. There wasn’t even a reason for it, just general layoffs. I’ve seen people who have been in the middle of working on larger features that are important part of the game being fired, without any warning and cut access after the weekend, so there’s no time or chance for handover.
It sucks, even AI could do a lot better job with this, i.e maybe not firing the devs that thave the most important knowledge.
The reason is money. Companies intentionally fire people who are worth more because they have to pay them more.
They care only about short-term changes to the balance sheet to keep shareholders and bookkeepers happy. Sure the knowledge deficit might affect long-term profitability, but that’s a problem for another day. The underlings can figure that part out, and if they can’t, they’ll just get laid off too.
It’s so unbelievably stupid, I don’t know how Xbox is constantly surprised many of their games flop when they are constantly booting the only talented devs they had. id Software is one of the most talented studios they have, and one of THE most talented graphics programmers in the industry. WHY would you fire them when at the very least you could move them to help in a different project instead of firing them? Literally just take them and make them help with the next Fallout. God.
Microsoft also heavily relies on contractors, which according to law says if you hold a contractor for longer than 18 months they deserve benefits. So Microsoft has a whole system of contractors who after 18 months are promptly let go, and then in 3 years can reapply.
343/Halo devs gave reported they have lost wildly talented devs because of this, and many pount at least half the blame of Infinite squarely at this. (Contractors are mandated my Microsoft)
Microsoft hugely believes everyone is a cog and easily replaceable.
