I think there can be an intermediary step where things get a little better before they get much worse. I’m thinking of Youtube, which pre acquisiton, iirc, was getting slow and bad. Google infrastructure made it faster, but then, well…
This is really just the first step of enshitification - first they make things good for users, then introduce advertisers, then claw back all the value for themselves.
Or put another way
- "don’t worry you favourite thing will stay the same - we don’t want to mess with a winning formula!
- “these changes will benefit users!”
- “we have to comply with industry standards and best practices. please read our updated terms of service.”
- "in order to compete in a dynamic marketplace, we’re introducing an add supported tier!
- “we’ve made changes to our subscription model!”
- “we’ve made changes to our subscription model and we’re introducing adds on paid tiers! suck it!”
- “sure, you paid for it, but our agreements are expiring and we don’t value you as a human being!”
- “really, where else are you going to go? lololololol”
CorrodedCranium@leminal.space 5 months ago
I feel like there have been some positive outcomes of mergers and acquisitions but I am having trouble thinking of them. What comes to my mind is Meta acquiring Oculus, Activision merging with Blizzard, and Mojang acquiring Minecraft. All of those have led to a shitty Russian nesting doll of launchers and DRM.
The positives might be harder to note though. There must have been a couple times where some kind of acquisition has brought a series into the mainstream.
I know a lot of people prefer the classic Fallout games but I do wonder how people would be aware of the series if it weren’t for Bethesda buying the right to Fallout for example.
ptz@dubvee.org 5 months ago
That’s true, and also why I added that last part about it being confirmation bias on my part. Definitely not saying there aren’t good examples, but like you said, I’m also having a hard time coming up with any.
Has Valve ever bought any other company? lol They’re one of the few I could see actually making the child company better xD
CorrodedCranium@leminal.space 5 months ago
I’m not sure. Portal and Team Fortress both have really interesting back stories that I think have a bit to do with Valve acquisitions
ptz@dubvee.org 5 months ago
Interesting. I’ve never played TF but Portal is one of my all-time favorites (I’m not much of a gamer lol). Will try to look into that when I have time because it’s definitely interesting if true (and can be my token good example lol).
uninvitedguest@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
They would bring other game developers or mod developers in house.
Wasn’t Turtle Rock (or whomever made L4D) basically acquired?
LoamImprovement@beehaw.org 5 months ago
As someone with industry experience working with VR, I can tell you it’s a mixed bag. I think there’s certainly no way Oculus (and consumer VR in general) takes off the way it did without Facebook’s dollars behind it, and it’s certainly paved the way to the outstanding quality of standalone HMDs that are on offer today. However, it killed the initiative for PCVR hardware with the non-consolation that Meta, Pico, and HTC offer “Link mode” on all their headsets and it’s iffy on good days, which makes B2B PCVR very difficult to facilitate without some serious legwork on lowering latency over the air connections. Would that we could revive the Rift S, that headset was perfect for our needs.
BarryZuckerkorn@beehaw.org 5 months ago
After being acquired by Google, YouTube got better for years (before getting worse again). Android really improved for a decade or so after getting acquired by Google.
The Next/Apple merger made the merged company way better. Apple probably wouldn’t have survived much longer without Next.
I’d argue the Pixar acquisition was still good for a few decades after, and probably made Disney better.
A good merger tends to be forgotten, where the two different parts work together seamlessly to the point that people forget they used to be separately run.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
I recently discovered the excellent suite of Affinity Photo, Publisher and Designer. Not open source, but very good and they sell them at a reasonable price with no subscription. Seemed pretty ideal. Then a week or two ago they sent out an email saying they had been bought by Canva. I kind of hate Canva because it functions like one big infuriating ad for their subscription service. They promised not to change, but I too have never known such promises to be kept after an acquisition.