This is why we need to have 90 dollar games! /s
TL,DR: Company fires hundreds of workers. CEO makes $25.6 million.
Apex Legends writer gets laid off 24 hours after the character she wrote is revealed, because that's what the games industry in 2025 looks like
Submitted 2 weeks ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Comments
EnderLaw@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sanctus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Bullshit like this is why our industry is a mess, Nintendo may be greedy fucks but their code is good because the same dudes have been working there since the fucken 80s.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I mean, if you want to emulate a corporate ethos, I don’t think Japan should be the benchmark, either…
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Their crunch culture is def bad (they’re going to kill Sakurai one day), but there is quite a few things they do right. They don’t lay people off and their executives take accountability. Iwata took a significant pay cut when the Wii U flopped.
pulido@lemmings.world 2 weeks ago
I think a lot of what comes out of Japan is better than the West because they haven’t given up their idea of the company man.
Like it or not, having to switch jobs every few years is going to impact your performance.
desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
at least the west is starting to acknowledge the torturous monotony of doing the same job for decades.
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
TIL Apex had writing behind it
Soggy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s set in the Titanfall universe, there’s lots of lore scattered around. People work hard to integrate a narrative into the level and character designs, to imply plot in incidental dialogue or cinematics, or just literally write text entries that the majority of gamers will never read because only shooting and rare skins trigger their dopamine.
telllos@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Honestly developer are making great work with how legends talk to each other during game. It’s always really cool
PraiseTheSoup@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
Nobody asked to have some pointless story injected into their online shooters. I’m pretty sure the people that want world-building and narrative and lore in their games aren’t playing online shooters. I know I’m not.
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
I hope these CEO’s get their reckoning some way some day.
They seem to think it’s all just business and cruelly wielding power is no issue, but I think they overestimate how isolated they are.
rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They won’t get any kind of reckoning that we’ll understand. They’re rich, powerful, and insulated from pain. They’ve all got golden parachutes via their weaselly networks. There will be no karma.
grue@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If we want them to receive a reckoning, it’s on us, the working class, to force it to happen.
pulido@lemmings.world 2 weeks ago
I don’t think they will receive a reckoning, but their children might.
It’s especially disgusting when we realize rich people are setting their children up to inherit a world where everyone hates them for being rich from exploitation.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
My question is when workers in game studios start to make unions. It’s a massive industry and the people actually making the games are constantly fucked over.
Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Many years ago. But as you said, it’s a big industry, and the US is not an easy place to unionize in.
buddascrayon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
and the US is not an easy place to unionize in.
Moreso now than ever before.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yes, but there are also European developers. Such as Ubisoft, which previously had major issues with harassment, and probably still does. If they have a union, it certainly isn’t a powerful one.
3dmvr@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
in my head its because its an industry where going solo is viable and if they arent working at a company thats their goal so they have full contol over the vision and make all the money and one day they want to exert the same creative control over others and get overtime/overwork out of them
ICastFist@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
The irony is that becoming a solo dev is rarely feasible and even more rarely leads to a product that pays up more than just working elsewhere.
That immediately makes people point to success stories, like Stardew Valley. Dunno about others, but I don’t have a family + girlfriend to sustain me for 4+ years, nor am I blinded by the dream possibility of reaching millions of sales when so many games struggle to reach 10k sales.
drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It will be used to justify raises AAA prices even more. Not that i care but it will be interesting to see.
MyDarkestTimeline01@ani.social 2 weeks ago
On the one hand it sucks that a writer lost their job. And it’ll never not suck. On the other hand I love when Apex Legends looks bad. I lost Titanfall 3 for that?
Baguette@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
In a better universe apex and tf3 could have existed at the same time
Unfortunately we live in the universe where games as a live service is the only model that big companies run on, which means all resources must go to just that one game
Tuxman@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
And then they feed the documents to a LLM and iterate over it
tagoth@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This is why we need to have 90 dollar games! /s Apex is literally free to play
MyDarkestTimeline01@ani.social 2 weeks ago
Don’t be pedantic you know what they meant.
Empricorn@feddit.nl 2 weeks ago
The exact opposite of what they said?
simop_jo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s sad and disgusting.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Apex has a story?
arudesalad@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
It’s a spinoff from titanfall, a series with a lot of cool world building, it would be a bit weird to have no story at all.
It’s also a live service so they need to
copy fortnitehave an in game explanation for the updatesIronKrill@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
No, they have “lore”: a bunch of 2 minute animations, vague plot points, and character bios that give just enough of a reason for their seasonal events to occur and for fans to drool over. Just like every other live service.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
While I feel sorry for her as a worker, I do not feel sorry for her as a writer.
Live Service writing for AAA studios has got to be the most disposable form of fiction. I can find old short stories from magazines that closed close to a century ago, but I can’t play the Destiny series from start to finish today?
CaptainBasculin@lemmy.bascul.in 2 weeks ago
Had over a thousand hours in Apex, while I quit way back because of different reasons, their actions definitely are not going to bring me back
RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
We should pay way more attention to other industries.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I got laid off 3 months after I launched a modern website to replace my former company’s old platform that none of their other developers wanted to work with.
I did exactly what they told me, something they wanted for years and years, and then I got laid off as a thanks instead of a bonus.
lol
noobdoomguy8658@feddit.org 1 week ago
Somewhat typical for type of work that has a clear end in sight. And they typically never tell about the project-based plans in mind. Sorry you had to go through this.
Had something like that when I automated stuff for a small company.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
It wasn’t a clear end in sight, there was still lots of content and systems that needed to be ported over to the new system, a new payment system to be integrated, and other new features they needed. They had two developers who were familiar with the system, me and another dev. I did kind of suspect that something like this was possible, but I didn’t think they would be dumb enough to actually do it. It turns out, they were dumb enough to do it.
They were just really cheap, and I was most likely their highest paid developer on my team, and myself and another dev were replaced by friends of manager that laid me off.
After that manager laid me off, I asked for a reference or a letter of recommendation, and was ghosted entirely. It happens.
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I think at this points it’s better to not join up with a large developer or publisher. The indie market has better job security.
MadBigote@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Or better yet, organize like the Hollywood actors have WGA.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This is why we need copyright laws
In a sensible world we would not allow our society to steal the work of artists and then throw away the artist.
PraiseTheSoup@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
Apex legends? The fully online battle Royale style competitive shooter? Can anyone tell me why a game like this needs a “character writer” anyway? I’ve never played it so maybe there’s some grand story I don’t know about, but to me this sounds like writing a character for Counter Strike which I think we all agree would be completely pointless.
telllos@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ll try to explain, I’m not a specialist in the lore of Apex legends. But the game is based in the world of Titanfall. It released in 2019 with a few characters. Each 1 or 2 season bringing a new characters with new abilities and background in the story. They have done a pretty good job so far and I really enjoy each characters.
CS at least back in the day didn’t have a class based gameplay, each characters had the same abilities. So I guess it doesn’t really compare.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
It’s more like asking why you need a writer for an Overwatch character than CS. The characterization is half of the point compared to CS/Halo/MW/Whatever
eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
I was gonna get snooty about being an indie game buyer, then I remembered that I bought a Larian game developed in partnership with Hasbro, so my snootiness will have to wait for another day.
Ibuthyr@lemmy.wtf 2 weeks ago
Hasbro is a requirement for the D&D license, no?
Larian at least went against the grain of the AAAAA Industry and delivered something truly wonderful.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Sure, but they’re still a AAA studio since BG3 is a AAA game. AAA studios can absolutely create wonderful games.
daggermoon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Haven’t played since they removed Linux support. Will never play again.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
This is why they need to unionize.
9point6@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I cannot wrap my head around why the game industry hasn’t already unionised massively—I hear horror story after horror story and everyone working in the industry seems to have convinced themselves they’re special and it won’t happen to them
Lemjukes@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
It’s called “a decades long campaign to erode trust and even awareness of unions by corporate business interests”.
SorteKanin@feddit.dk 2 weeks ago
It’s not that hard to understand. The whole gaming industry is filled with people who are super passionate about games, like passionate to a fault. This makes it very, very difficult to unionize as there’s almost always some other game dev out there who would take the job for less pay and more hours.
I actually know a friend like that. He was job jumping a lot, looking for game dev roles almost exclusively. He finally landed such a role. Far as I heard, he’s working overtime a lot (voluntarily) and he earns less than half of what I earn as a “regular” software developer.
j0ester@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’m sure it will get a lot worst with AI bs.
digitalnuisance@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
AAA dev here; it’s not that. It’s that attempting to standardize development in a highly fluid and innovative sector kills your competitiveness ad a studio. That being said, unionization is desperately needed. Blizzard recently unionized across their while studio, which is probably the best model out there right now; allow companies of a certain scale to unionize so that positive and competitive aspects of company culture/organizational structure can be maintained/improved while ensuring worker’s rights against exploitation from the top-down and abused of shareholders/management. Games, and by extension their studios, are intended to be things greater than the sum of their parts, and this is reflected by each company’s unique internal culture. How many big studios have you seen shed a sizeable amount of senior devs, after which they no longer seem to be able to make the same quality games as before? Happens all the time, and this is why. That’s the magic of gamedev studio culture and the people that create it, and that needs to be protected while also upholding workers’ rights simultaneously. The best way to do that is to allow all members of said culture to create their own rules of union governance from within, not to have standards that maybe disrupt said culture from without.
KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
We (large European gaming companies employees) have been trying to get a CBA for a year and a half now, sometimes it takes time.
drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
To be in the entertainment industry you got to really really really want it. And when you want something that bad you learn to eat a lot of shit because the people with the money that can make it happen know how badly you want to be there.
I am in entertainment too and right now i pretty much work for free because that’s just how it is.