This seems to be ~20% of their total workforce.
I absolute adore the first two Dead Space games and I could not believe my eyes when this turned out to be a shitty corridor shooter/button masher with like four enemy types.
Submitted 1 year ago by Carighan@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://www.ign.com/articles/striking-distance-studios-callisto-protocol-layoffs
This seems to be ~20% of their total workforce.
I absolute adore the first two Dead Space games and I could not believe my eyes when this turned out to be a shitty corridor shooter/button masher with like four enemy types.
I REALLY REALLY wanted this game to pan out because I love the genre. Too bad it flopped hard :(.
I bought it day 1 with the intent of (at a minimum) giving it a try until my refund period ran out and it ran like ass. The opening cutscene was a slideshow and that’s with me running a Ryzen 7 5800x, GTX 3070, and 32gb of ram. I started googling to see if it was an issue with drivers or my system and that was when I started seeing reviews for it that weren’t too great. I went ahead and refunded it at that point.
I ran it a couple months ago on a Ryzen 5600x paired with ab6800xt. Game ran brilliantly. I also really enjoyed it. I just didn’t go in expecting it to be dead space. I wanted something new and a little different and that’s exactly what I got. I was surprised I could even play it on steam deck.
TBH, it was literally Day 1 hours after they released it. I think they patched the issue within a couple days, but by then I had already refunded. I’m impressed that it runs on Steam Deck. That’s some good optimization especially for a triple A game that just came out.
This game was the definition of video game movie. I seriously think it’s probably just as good of an experience to watch it on YouTube as it is to play and that’s probably not a good trait.
I am sad this game didn’t work out. I mostly enjoyed it, they did pretty good job fixing it after the launch despite the problems and I just like the genre enough so I would have definitely played another game of this.
Oh well, I hope at some point Glenn makes another horror game.
I’m always bummed when a super-hyped game doesn’t perform well. I’m not into this genre so I don’t really know if I’ll ever play it to find out for myself why.
eyes@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s not unusual for games studios after shipping a game unfortunately. It likely means that they don’t have another project ramping up after finishing the Callisto Protocol DLC.
echo64@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is a studio wholey owned by a big company (pubg people), so the normal end of contracts after a game releases isn’t expected or normal at all. That’s because companies have to sell another publisher on a game to have a full workforce. That’s why those companies contract developers rather than employ.
This is employed people being laid off, it’s not normal, it is unusual.
Defaced@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s pretty known that this game didn’t sell as well as they had hoped. Or at Mars that’s what I thought was the scenario.
eyes@lemmy.world 1 year ago
End of contract stuff is an issue in the industry, with 15-18% being contractors, but that’s it’s a separate one - if you’re a contractor you’re going to need to find a new job no matter what at the end of the project unless you get lucky enough to snag a permanent role.
Layoffs for salaried employees at the end of a project is a systematic problem in the industry - This is a really (good article)[kotaku.com/why-game-developers-keep-getting-laid-…] from 2014 that’s covers a lot of the issues.