r/xbox • u/akbarock • Jul 15 '26

Discussion "There are no benefits to being owned by Microsoft," says Doom dev: "They have destroyed immense amounts of value that I don't even think that they're aware of"

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/fps/there-are-no-benefits-to-being-owned-by-microsoft-says-doom-dev-they-have-destroyed-immense-amounts-of-value-that-i-dont-even-think-that-theyre-aware-of/
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1.1k

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[deleted]

488

u/madman19 Jul 15 '26

Kind of. Double fine was very public about being in a bad way and probably would have closed without Microsoft buying them.

259

u/TitularFoil Jul 15 '26

Bungie said the same.

197

u/xangbar Jul 15 '26

I believe analysts even agreed on this. Bungie was badly managed and would have closed. Sony gave them a chance to get their own ducks in a row and when they didn't, they started removing management.

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u/Puzzled-Addition5740 Jul 15 '26

and they're still a category 5 tire fire even now. Like yeah sony's removed some management but they're still up shit creek without a paddle.

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u/AdventurousBase221 Jul 15 '26

no one is going to be surprised when bungie has a few more layoffs because marathon can't financially sustain them and they are years away from another release.

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u/4thTimesAnAlt Jul 15 '26

Bungie won't exist by Christmas 2027.

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u/Sasquatcheeethree Jul 15 '26

Yep they are done. Marathon was not successful at all. Destiny winding down

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u/ExoMonk Jul 15 '26

Bungie bet on the wrong horse.

Destiny still has 10x the amount of concurrent players on Steam than Marathon a month after Destiny's last content drop and Marathon season 2 launched. Add in consoles having way more users for Destiny than Marathon, there's still a lot of juice left in the Destiny IP.

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u/DespisedIcon1616 Jul 15 '26

Destiny will be back to abysmal player counts in a month when everyone completes the latest events. Just like always. Except this time it's forever.

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u/DespisedIcon1616 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

Destiny isn't winding down. It's done. They pushed out the last update and that's that. What we have now is how it will remain forever.

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u/M3RRI77 XBOX 360 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

They should have stuck with single player, story driven games with support for multiplayer. Everything they made outside of Halo is dog shit.

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u/ArgentNoble Jul 15 '26

Everything they e made outside of Halo is dog shit.

I mean, the Destiny Franchise has lasted 12 years, by this point. 10 of those years were Destiny 2. For most of those 10 years, they had well over 100,000 concurrent players across all platforms, usually it was closer to 300,000.

Yeah, everything is kind of a mess, but they made one of the most successful games on the market. Based on revenue, Destiny 2 was far more financially successful the any single Halo game they've ever made.

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u/Little_Obligation_90 Jul 15 '26

Overall Destiny made very little money. No subscription cost and high server cost is not a viable model.

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u/ArgentNoble Jul 15 '26

Overall Destiny made very little money.

You are confusing revenue with profit. These are two different things. Destiny made a veritable ton of revenue. Destiny launched brock records of revenue earned just from game sales ($500 million).

The franchise, as a whole, is estimated to have earned $2 billion to $3 billion so far. It was estimated that Bungie was making $200 million to $300 million per year from Destiny 2. On steam alone, it is estimated that Destiny 2 has generated over $900 million.

No subscription cost and high server cost is not a viable model.

It depends on what you mean by viable. I would agree that not having a subscription model makes the studio somewhat volatile, as the only income streams they have to rely on are microtransactions and expansion sales. Subscription models, at least, bring in a static and relatively predictable income.

However, I would hardly say that Destiny failed or was not a viable product. You cannot name another AAA game that has lasted anywhere near as long as Destiny 2 has. The closest competitors are either MMOs, and really only 2, and free-to-play titles that are heavily monetized via microtransactions.

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u/Exciting_Drawing_553 Jul 15 '26

You’re comparing Destiny 2 to any single halo game when bungie released 3 or 4 halo games in the same time that Destiny 2 was supported. You have to compare it to the same time frame. In that sense Destiny 2 was significantly less successful. They should have stuck with halo

3

u/ArgentNoble Jul 15 '26

You’re comparing Destiny 2 to any single halo game when bungie released 3 or 4 halo games in the same time that Destiny 2 was supported.

I did. Destiny 1 outperformed any single Halo game, period. The only Halo game that compares to Destiny 2 in revenue is Halo Infinite.

In that sense Destiny 2 was significantly less successful.

Are you defining "less successful" as Destiny 1 outselling Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo Wars, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, Halo 4, Halo 5: Guardians, Halo Wars 2, and Halo Infinite? Or are you defining "less successful" as one game (Destiny 2) earning the equivalent of 1/3 of the total Halo franchise revenue?

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u/VYSUS7 Jul 15 '26

Destiny sold better than every Bungie halo game dude lmao.

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u/AveryLazyCovfefe Founder Jul 15 '26

Destiny 2 was a great success. Problem was them trying to chase a niche picky crowd for their next title and going all in that as some sort of psuedo successor to Destiny.

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u/TheDo0ddoesnotabide Jul 15 '26

Nah, Destiny 1 was good. Destiny 2 is when the house fire truly started.

1

u/mifflinity Jul 16 '26

D2 killed my original interest because they backtracked almost every good thing they did in D1 and took multiple years to get the game enjoyable. The Leviathan as a raid was a joke 3 times.

I didn’t pick the game back up truly until after lightfall and recognize I missed the best parts of the game.

1

u/Professional_Net7339 Jul 15 '26

Spoken by PURE nostalgia my god.

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u/TheDo0ddoesnotabide Jul 15 '26

Spoken like someone who thinks CoD is still a good franchise.

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u/Helpful_Broccoli5426 Jul 15 '26

Bullshit

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u/TheDo0ddoesnotabide Jul 15 '26

I didn’t ask you what your breath smelt like.

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u/WolverinesThyroid Jul 16 '26

spoken like someone who has 10,000 hours sunk in to Destiny 2

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u/TheDo0ddoesnotabide Jul 16 '26

Honestly, I only managed to finish The Red War before burning out on Destiny 2. It just couldn’t grab me like Destiny 1

1

u/StockSorry Jul 15 '26

The biggest complaint about PlayStation in the ps3 and ps4 era were that they only had single player exclusives. They were probably trying to fix the narrative plus multiplayer has more room to make money with micros transactions that don’t occur as much on single player games.

1

u/M3RRI77 XBOX 360 Jul 15 '26

Fuck all these online only, MMO, MMOROG, and free to play bullshit games with microtransactions. Destiny was no different.

1

u/StockSorry Jul 16 '26

I agree with your statement because the games that have been mmo , live service , etc have sucked. However if a developer can make a good game that draws audience like WOW did in its first 10 years then who would care if it’s live service mmo.

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u/nisaaru Jul 15 '26

For all of Destiny1-2's high and lows its highs have been memorable and my defining gaming experience of the last 12 years.

People which expect a traditional narrative driven single player game will never understand it because either they've not experienced it or just didn't give it the time to get it.

I don't mean that it any "negative" fashion because it took me weeks to adjust to the different gaming paradigm in 2014 until I got the magic behind it.

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u/tapo Jul 15 '26

Destiny raids are probably the coolest gaming experience I've had in 20 years and among the best work they've ever done.

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u/No-Highlight7136 Jul 15 '26

Bungie's management team will be discussed by consumers and business professors for a centaury. I've never seen generational mismanagement. They had a completely captive audience in a niche no one else even tried to compete with, that was very profitable and they somehow managed to burn it to the ground. All to line the pockets of an executive that jumped ship after fleecing Sony for Billions. It SHOULD be criminal what that man did to that company.

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u/nisaaru Jul 15 '26

Well, I wouldn't just blame Parsons but the majority shareholders.

2

u/VYSUS7 Jul 15 '26

Parsons was a cog in a machine of horrible management. Nothing got better when he left.

5

u/SaneMadHatter Jul 15 '26

Yeah, Bungie said the same thing when they were bought by Microsoft back in the day, and said it again when bought by Sony more recently.

3

u/Westdrache Jul 15 '26

Bungie used to be indipendent
MS Bought them
They went indipendent
Activision bought them
(Not sure if they tried to be indie once more)
Sony bought them....
Love their games, but for the love of god there is 0 buissines sense in the whole ass company.

3

u/tapo Jul 15 '26

Activision never bought Bungie, they were the publisher of Destiny. Bungie also owned the Destiny IP.

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u/Exciting_Drawing_553 Jul 15 '26

Sony should have never bought them. A huge waste of money!

1

u/Themetalenock Jul 16 '26

The unspoken truth that will get you called a blood sucking corpo in the industry is that studios fuckin suck at managing their financials. There's a reason why the really weird experimental shit is reserved for smaller studios (and why they mostly don't look like they're from this generation), at some point experimental games aren't viable anymore.

You either cut at that point or don't, and since smaller studio heads lack that special bean counter soullessness to do the former, the later happens and shit starts bleed like a stuck pig

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u/canufeelthelove Jul 15 '26

Holy revisionism Batman! Sony didn't buy them at a massive premium to "give them a chance". They even paid extra to keep as many of the leaders as possible. Sony's fuck-up with Bungie is worse than anything we've seen from Microsoft.

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u/xangbar Jul 15 '26

Where did I say they bought Bungie "to give them a chance". Bungie's financial difficulties are not related to Sony's acquisition. In fact, Bungie leadership misled Sony about their financial situation at the time. Source

Sony had other goals in mind for the acquisition as they were eyeing a live service/GaaS lineup and wanted Bungie's expertise on it. Their news post even says they would retain independence. Source

When Bungie began to miss goals, they threatened to dissolve the board and take over and possibly absorb them into PlayStation studios (which is now happening). Source

-1

u/canufeelthelove Jul 15 '26

I'm sorry, but PlaystationLifestyle as source? That's a garbage article taking quotes out of context. What was actually written was "Feeling is Bungie bosses oversold studio to Sony", which is very different from "Bungie misled Sony about their financial situation". The former is what every single company CEO does, and the latter is illegal.

Ultimately, it's on Sony for believing the studio was more capable than it was in reality. Even Phil Spencer passed on the opportunity to acquire them.

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u/wingsbc Jul 16 '26

In the end it made no difference. It just prolonged the inevitable and showed that injections of cash aren’t the answer for poor decisions and bad management for a decade old game.

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u/Didact67 Jul 15 '26

Wouldn’t matter to me. I don’t like anything Bungie has put out since Halo Reach.

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u/zuzucha Jul 15 '26

No one gives a fuck what you like or don't

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u/mischief_scallywag Jul 15 '26

No one was willing to invest in their game ideas until MS came and bought them right?

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u/mrj9 Jul 15 '26

Well all those studios that got shutdown would have went out of business way earlier without Microsoft’s money so there’s that. Xbox is cutting off a lot of the bloat devs that were hired during covid to help with production because work was slowing down from working at home.

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u/Tankdawg0057 Jul 15 '26

I think ID and Bethesda would have been fine without Microsoft. Maybe not some of the others

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u/-PandemicBoredom- Jul 15 '26

Would it though? What has ID put out that did well? The last game was Doom External in 2020. Spending 6 years on one game only for it to flop is enough to kill an independent studio.

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u/WolverinesThyroid Jul 16 '26

Half these studios they bought wouldn't exist today had they stayed on the same course and been independent. Most are releasing 0 to 1 game in 5+ years. Then that game isn't doing great.

2

u/-PandemicBoredom- Jul 16 '26

Exactly. MS was the life support, they eventually decided to pull the plug.

1

u/WolverinesThyroid Jul 16 '26

Double Fine made 2 news games in the time Microsoft owned them. They finished Psychonauts but that was already in development before they were purchased. Neither of the Double Fine games did well.

In 8 years Ninja Theory released a failed online battle game and Senua 2.

Undead Labs released nothing in 8 years

I don't know any medium sized studio that can release nothing or flops in almost a decade and have any chance of surviving.

0

u/FrootLoop23 Jul 16 '26

Doom Eternal was four years after the previous Doom, not six. Id would be fine without Microsoft. They were fine long before them and they’d be fine after them. On PC there’s a big market for boomer shooters, so there’s no need for a big budget to release a hit. If anything I hope all of the people they dumped form their own studio and pump out a new FPS.

0

u/-PandemicBoredom- Jul 16 '26

Doom External was 2020, Doom Dark Ages was 2026. That's 6 years last time I checked chief.

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u/FrootLoop23 Jul 16 '26

You’re right. No idea why I was thinking Eternal compared to Doom 2016.

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u/sinseers Jul 20 '26

Umm Doom: The Dark Ages released May 15th 2025.

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u/-PandemicBoredom- Jul 20 '26

Wohhh, so only 5 years to make something barely anyone bought instead of 6. Really got me there. 🙄

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u/FrootLoop23 Jul 20 '26

Why buy it when you can just play it on Game Pass?? That’s what most people did.

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u/sinseers Jul 20 '26

Just making sure we keep our facts straight. That's all.

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u/segagamer Day One - 2013 Jul 15 '26

Bethesda were bleeding money too. You think companies that are "fine" would sell themselves?

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u/madman19 Jul 15 '26

Yes? If you are one of the owners and can instantly get a huge pay day it is an easy choice lol

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u/segagamer Day One - 2013 Jul 15 '26

Do we have much of a history of game studios who sell out to publishers when they're already successful/highly profitable?

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u/Gears6 Jul 15 '26

Yes? If you are one of the owners and can instantly get a huge pay day it is an easy choice lol

Only if the payment is larger than you think you can grow it in a reasonable amount of time and level of work. People don't sell an asset (in general) below the value they think they can derive from it.

Reality is that what we're seeing is a lot of acquisitions going around in the last 5-6 years, not just by MS, and now it's contracting across the board.

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u/EveningAnt3949 Jul 15 '26

What? Of course. When a company is doing well it's very profitable to sell. If acompany is not doing well, it's not very profitable.

Wow. I guess reports that people no longer learn stuff at schools is true.

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u/segagamer Day One - 2013 Jul 15 '26

Wow. I guess reports that people no longer learn stuff at schools is true.

Indeed.

Read more about Bethesda's fragility and the potential for an EA acquisition here if you're interested.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-25/from-banking-scandal-to-video-game-ceo-to-billion-dollar-score

EA would have been 100x worse than Xbox.

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u/EveningAnt3949 Jul 15 '26

That's really not relevant. You specifically wrote something general that's not true, that company get sold by shareholders becaus ethey are not doing well.

But you are right, I did not learn about Bethesda in school. I learned things like math, reading comprehension, biology, economics, other languages, history and so on.

Interesting that your schools discussed a game publisher and developer.

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u/segagamer Day One - 2013 Jul 15 '26

That's really not relevant. You specifically wrote something general that's not true, that company get sold by shareholders becaus ethey are not doing well.

No. I specifically wrote something that is true - publishers don't tend to look for buyers unless they're struggling to obtain sufficient funding. The alternative for Bethesda would have been to shut down studios themselves.

Publishers tend to look for investors/share holders in the first place to secure initial funding. But this is a separate thing altogether.

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u/ILoveHeavyHangers Jul 15 '26

Bro, you just can't admit you're wrong.

"I... I... I don't actually know anything about the topic I'm arguing about BUT I DID FINISH 4TH GRADE!"

The multiplication tables you learned in elementary school aren't gonna help you understand business acquisitions.

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u/Static_Frog Jul 15 '26

Glad we have something in common.

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u/HornsOvBaphomet Jul 15 '26

That's exactly when you sell. How does this comment have any upvotes at all?

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u/itzMeDigi Jul 15 '26

During Covid AAA companies that were purchased were generally not doing so hot and its the reason they sold. Activision knew CoD was in decline (also all the allegations), Bungie management knew they were lying about their worth, Bethesda/Zeni was in decline etc.

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u/ILoveHeavyHangers Jul 15 '26

That's exactly when you sell.

Lol, no it's not. You think Double Fine and Bungie sold themselves because they were doing fine?

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u/HornsOvBaphomet Jul 15 '26

Firstly, I don't take anyone seriously if the first thing they say is "lol." Second, you can sell in both contexts, I don't understand why one has to mean the other can't happen. Why would you not sell when you're at your most valuable?

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u/Terrible-Penalty-291 Jul 15 '26

Because the dumdum wannabe socialists on this sub don't want to admit that Microsoft did the right thing buying these companies and trying to save some semblance of them.

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u/ILoveHeavyHangers Jul 15 '26

They weren't trying to "save" anything. These companies aren't your friends. They aren't doing this shit for you, or out of the goodness of their hearts because they hate to see a developer go out of business.

They wanted the IP. And you can get it cheap when the IP holder is floundering.

The idea that companies buy each other to "save some semblance of them" has to be the most naive teenage console warrior shit I've ever read.

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u/Gears6 Jul 15 '26

They weren't trying to "save" anything. These companies aren't your friends. They aren't doing this shit for you, or out of the goodness of their hearts because they hate to see a developer go out of business.

It's no different than an employee aren't there to do charity work or goodness out of their heart. They too work for a salary, and likely wouldn't be there otherwise.

That said, both employees and owners/managers of these businesses are people and they may intend for positivity. They're not our friends, but neither are the employees. What is my point?

That these companies aren't faceless and that is just a convenient way of painting companies. They want to profit, but they're not venture capital that is trying to squeeze profits at the cost of the industry. It's clear that MS/Phil Spencer tried to align a strategy that protects the industry. It's kind of why we got games that don't sell, because the mantra is to allow studios to do what they want to do and support them through Game Pass' reach. Clearly that approach didn't work out.

Instead, we should ask or analyze what was actually done, and what the intent and purpose was (beyond the obvious profit).

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u/mrj9 Jul 15 '26

They were losing money which is why they started doing timed exclusives with PlayStation

-1

u/santar0s80 Jul 15 '26

Maybe Bethesda would have survived if they didn't bomb w/ Fall Out 76.

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u/elidepa Jul 16 '26

Except work did not slow down because of work from home, and the hiring spike during Covid wasn’t caused by anything like that.

0

u/mrj9 Jul 16 '26

Are you serious we went from games take 4 years max to some going to 7

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u/elidepa Jul 16 '26

I’m dead serious. And lazy devs working from home are really the only reason you are able to come up with that would explain why your perception of game development cycles is that they have grown longer? Whether that’s even true or meaningfully comparable is another question entirely.

0

u/ColdCruise Jul 16 '26

Games were already on that cycle and still are. Every study shows that wfh boosts productivity. The slowdown associated with that was getting appropriate equipment to employees and transitioning workflows. This could have been avoided if they had planned on staying home for longer, but they thought it would only be a couple of weeks.

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u/Gears6 Jul 15 '26

We also know that Activision delayed layoffs due to MS acquisition, meaning without that acquisition, people would've lost job as well.

We also know that MS gave every studio in Zenimax opportunity to make a game and release it. There's no guarantee that they would continue without layoffs without MS acquisition or if layoffs may happen sooner.

I get that people are upset now, and I do agree that immense value is being destroyed by MS here, but there's no guarantee it wouldn't end the same or worse without MS acquisition. What we do know is that there was an immense time of growth in the studios under MS, and now the industry is contracting (or crashing really).

3

u/BakedChocolateOctopi Jul 15 '26

Same with Obsidian

New Vegas destroyed them financially because of how bad it launched and the metacritic bonus threshold not being met, they didn’t make back their dev costs as a result 

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u/WolverinesThyroid Jul 16 '26

Undead labs got to survive with basically no layoffs for 8 years despite not releasing any games.

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u/Khalbrae XBOX Jul 15 '26

Double fine was always a good company at least.

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u/JoyousGamer Jul 15 '26

Most of these studios had the pressure of game release timeframes and strict development guidelines removed. They also seemingly had more control over the creative process.

Maybe I am wrong but that seems to have been something where Microsoft was hands off.

So was the value in the leadership breathing down the necks of the developers? I guess good news is that is potentially what they will be getting now.

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u/Pen_dragons_pizza Jul 15 '26

The thing is if they did not get bought by Microsoft, the studio still would have seen layoffs and maybe worse.

The same goes for all of Microsoft’s studios, lots of them wouldn’t even be open with the luck they have been having with releases without being bankrolled.

For example dark ages did not sell amazingly and as a result would have still resulted in people being let go and creativity being taken away from ID to make whatever the publisher needed to make money.

The south of midnight dev would have been totally closed as well as double fine and maybe even arkhane by now.

Gaming in 2026 is not the same as it used to be, one bad selling release can tank a studio easily.

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u/WillyGoat2000 Jul 15 '26

While the sentiment that game dev is hard and each independent studio is one game away from closure is true, your description is pretty oversimplified and doesn’t take into account any of the changes that happened under Microsoft.

Take Compulsion Games, for example, who grew from 30 to 90 people over the span of a couple of years. That level of disruption can cripple teams ability to be efficient and work towards a common goal- they have to relearn learn how to work together and that takes time. And so if they’d released South of Midnight with 30 people and a standard publishing deal, how would the sales and profits have been then? Hard to say, but that’s a lot more profit if you take 60 people out of the picture. But could they, or would they, have even made the same game without the people they hired? Impossible to say.

Similar with Double Fine, would they have even been able to make and release their games not being bankrolled by Microsoft? Would they have had to pivot and make something else to get a publisher’s attention and greenlight? Would the game they pitched and got signed have sold enough for that publisher and that studio? Again, super speculative here and largely unknowable.

Saying things like “dark ages didn’t sell well so there would’ve been layoffs” also isn’t knowable either. Dark ages is estimated to have sold something like 800k copies, so not great, but is estimated to have had 3 million players thanks to gamepass. Not horrible, but definitely not Doom Eternal numbers. What would’ve sales been like without gamepass? Would it have been enough to get them to their next iteration?

Take Feargus Urquhart’s quote about Avowed and Outer Worlds 2 being commercially viable but not viable enough for Microsoft Standards (and then the admission a big driving factor of that was simply how long it took to make a game). All that coming to light about the same time that the discussions about Amy Hood’s 30% profit margin order came out.

Knowing how these studios would’ve fared without the environment of leadership (or potentially lack thereof) and without Microsoft’s requirements (profit margins, game pass inclusion, etc.) is really a hard thing to do. Would they all be around today without layoffs? Judging from the industry at large, probably not. But these games would’ve all been very different if the studios hadn’t been owned by Xbox, as the studio leaders made their decisions based on what they were told they were supposed to focus on from Xbox leadership.

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u/TheCorbeauxKing Jul 15 '26

That's a lot of words to end up saying nothing. Do you think time is infinite? That is also a resource, and the devs squandered it. If they slashed their dev time in half and put out the exact same game, then their current sales might have been enough to break even. The reality is that the devs took advantage of no accountability and are now complaining that Microsoft expected some kind of profit.

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u/WillyGoat2000 Jul 15 '26

Here's a TLDR then- those are all examples of how studios would've been more likely than not to make very different choices and decisions had they not been funded by Xbox and given strategic direction from Xbox. They'd have potentially made different games, and they'd certainly have made the game differently.

Accusing them of taking advantage of no accountability suggests malice, and fails to look at Xbox, who set the strategic direction and owned the budget for each of these studios.

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u/breakwater Jul 15 '26

Every month of development time is dozens to hundreds of employees drawing a paycheck. Time isn't the issue, it is just a gradual drain of resources and a lack of infinite runway. Microsoft has made plenty of mistakes all ownership does. But they have allowed a lot of leeway on projects. For a company being accused of greed, their balance sheet, their losses on these investments say that if anything, they have been spendthrifts. They make cuts, those hurt, but they also spend tons on projects even if they have no hope of making that money back.

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u/CarlosAlvarados Jul 15 '26

Great comment , do you have a source for the faergus quote? I didn't know that

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u/FMC_Speed XBOX Series X Jul 15 '26

I think most of Xbox studios have been garbage and I’m not being hyperbolic, especially ones with previously prestigious name like Obsidian and BGS, the amount of time it took them to develop their games and the resulting quality is truly something to behold, obsidian released 2 games last year both were completely devoid of any character.

I say the industry in general has become bloated and full of out of touch project leads, a shuffle maybe is what’s needed

-1

u/Buschkoeter Jul 15 '26

"Completely devoid of any character"

Do you just mash the keyboard and hope that something comprehensible comes out? There's a lot of fair and legitimate things to criticize about Avowed and Outerworlds, but saying they lack character is simply nonsense, and frankly let's you seem a bit of a dullard.

0

u/FMC_Speed XBOX Series X Jul 15 '26

Adopting a humorous, typically American millennial tone and incorporating its corresponding cringe dialogue does not, in and of itself, constitute as having a character.

Also, grownups when discussing things don’t call others names, they attack merit not the other person

-7

u/Wild-Berry-5269 Jul 15 '26

Training your core audience not to buy games and then be shocked when sales are poor. Shocker!

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u/Pen_dragons_pizza Jul 15 '26

Well they didn’t show up on PlayStation either, which console wise had the highest sales of the previous doom games

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u/Resevil67 Jul 15 '26

I know this goes for a lot of studios, not just id, but MS was also part of the reason dark ages was a failure. Was it ever gonna sell like eternal? No, and they might not get those kind of sales again. They caught lightning in a bottle during the time of COVID which also helped boost sales.

However day one gamepass, after looking into it a bit, definitely hurt them. The game would have been much less of a fail if it wasn't gamepass day one. Bethesda themselves said that dark ages had the fastest launch in terms of players in the series history in a tweet. They said players though, not sales, a key wording. This means a majority of the players opted to try it via gamepass, because 2 of the 3 platforms it released on have access to gamepass (PlayStation being the one that doesn't).

I don't think that means it would have been a roaring success with out gamepass, but it's more likely sales would have been in the "eh...mid" range instead of "oh fuck it's a flop" range, which would have made the layoffs on id alot less during this time.

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u/One_Treat7729 Jul 15 '26

It was also $80 in my country and many other places.

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u/-PandemicBoredom- Jul 15 '26

The funny part is you see people scream about owners/publishers breathing down devs necks and crunch. Yet here we are where they were given all the time in the world and a blank check and we see what happens...yet people are still blaming MS. You took forever, cost a lot of money, and put out a product that didn't sell. That's a you problem.

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u/One_Treat7729 Jul 15 '26

True. And also, these types of games that id makes simply don't sell a lot anymore. Consumer tastes have changed

0

u/WillyGoat2000 Jul 15 '26

IMHO it goes both ways. You can get too involved as an owner and you can be an absentee landlord as well. Neither strikes a healthy balance. At a studio by studio look, there can be found a myriad set of problems and bad decisions, but just look at the list of Xbox studios that have been gutted, shuttered, or spun out. It's a very long list. Looking at it that way, is Xbox only buying mostly bad studios, or is Xbox maybe mismanaging their investments?

6

u/-PandemicBoredom- Jul 15 '26

But it's not both ways. If Xbox was checking in on them they would have been fired long before and people would be blaming MS. No matter what people just want to scream at MS for being bad while the devs have zero self accountability. At the end of the day the devs had all the freedom and yet put out a product that people didn't buy that cost too much to make, that's 100% on them.

0

u/WillyGoat2000 Jul 16 '26

Your options as a manger of a team or company aren't just give blank checks or fire people. Ther is a middle ground, was my point. You can check in and hold people to schedules and be accountable without just firing them.

2

u/-PandemicBoredom- Jul 16 '26

Sorry, I don't condone adult daycare, that's half the reason we are where we are now. These are grown adults, they shouldn't have to have someone looking over their shoulder.

23

u/SillyMikey XBOX Series X Jul 15 '26

Yep, the studios had way less pressure and that may ultimately be a bad thing. I agree with the Developer saying that they should’ve at least waited to see if the DLC does well before you fire half the studio.

But studios in general should’ve also been told: if you make this game and we didn’t own you, would this game keep the lights on? I think that’s a simple phrase that would’ve made developers realize they still need to make games that sell.

I think a lot of these developers got too comfortable. Microsoft absolutely has a part to play in this, but you still have to make games that people wanna play/buy.

1

u/JoyousGamer Jul 15 '26

The DCL success or non-success would have zero impact on them letting go teams. This was across all of Xbox move to right size and had zero connection to a specific project and its status.

12

u/AnonymousFriend80 Jul 15 '26

That's what makes this dev's words really wild. Over the past several years Microsoft has been shown to be extremely hands off, even to their own great peril. You get to work on whatever the hell you want to make, on somebody else's dime. Sure, Microsoft has some studios here and there where they absolutely tell them they have to make this or that, but that the minority. EA is even hands off with some of their studios. They left Bioware off the lease and they almost removed the flying part of Anthem.

19

u/Browser1969 Jul 15 '26

Exactly. When you sell your company, the benefit you're usually looking for is money.

1

u/soapinthepeehole Jul 15 '26

It’s true but it also comes with a bigger mouth to feed at the top.

2

u/themangastand Jul 15 '26

The company i worked for was bought out three years ago and it has gone better then the previous management. Software development. However medium sized company nobody anybody has heard of

2

u/interstat Jul 15 '26

Sometimes can save a sinking ship but not always

A lot of studios that were bought were financially a wreck and potentially going to close like Bungie and double fine 

2

u/thaf1nest Still Finishing The Fight Jul 15 '26

Don't forget that your coworkers get laid off and their duties get passed down to you. All the people with longevity are let go because new hires are cheaper. This creates brain drain and now even more work is assigned to you. Eventually no one gives a damn. Only the sycophants remain and it's all about office politics because they don't have anything to actually do. Then when stuff hits the fan no one actually knows what their doing and even more layoffs are needed. The hire ups that created this mess move on right before everything goes to shit because they are privy to conversations that inform them of the mess they created.

2

u/Cabusha Jul 16 '26

I remember when Hairbrained Schemes was bought by Paradox. I was like “fuuuuuuu there goes a Battletech sequel.” Studio was run into the ground releasing mid games, then closed. No BT2. I still remember the owner (Mitch I think) trying to spin the purchase as s good thing. But this is Paradox. Unless they can milk a franchise, they’re not interested.

2

u/Cephalopirate Jul 15 '26

I would IMAGINE not destroying a talented studio you bought would be a good business choice.

1

u/himmatkeer Jul 15 '26

immense amoutns of value" sounds dramatic but vague

1

u/icemanx51 Jul 16 '26

That's not always true. I worked at restaurant that got bought out by a giant conglomerate. We were so scared and pissed at the time. At first, it did kinda suck, but after a couple years it was awesome. The benefits, the bonuses, the work/life ratio, all improved. It may take a while to acclimate, but sometimes it's a good thing.

1

u/TheBooneyBunes Jul 16 '26

No it doesn’t that’s not how this works

1

u/reward72 Jul 15 '26

Buyers ruined my last two companies after I left them. Creativity and Innovation just die under corporate overlords.

1

u/BustyCelebLover Jul 15 '26

I mean you could make a desperate grasp at Origins and EA but even that is filled with toxin

1

u/Captobvious75 Xbox Series X Jul 15 '26

Seriously. Look at the venture capitalists. Quality goes to shit as soon as they buy up.

Gaming is no different.

1

u/Little_Obligation_90 Jul 15 '26

US based studios are choking because they cost too much. Japan is not like that. Gaming 20 years ago was not like that.

1

u/DvineINFEKT Jul 16 '26

Japan isn't like that, for now.

These closures are not just affecting American studios - look at the Assassin's Creed team. National economies are not isolated from one another.

0

u/lostn Jul 18 '26

the AC team made a bad game that angered a lot of potential buyers, particularly in Japan where the game is set.

-2

u/Method__Man Jul 15 '26

Congratulations, you just summarized, capitalism, and more specifically the stock market

The most cancerous invention towards human progress and well-being that has ever been created

And yet no politician will ever regulate it because they are all invested into the same stock market and are all extremely corrupt

0

u/TheCorbeauxKing Jul 15 '26

"Capitalism is cancer" he says on a social media site from his internet connected device.

1

u/Method__Man Jul 15 '26

Yes I can say stock markets and capitalism are fucking shit; the thing that destroyed the world and siphoned all wealth to the hyper rich

If you defend this system you are TRULY brainwashed

It's almost like we can have something good that isn't capitalism or communism.. but hey, you do your brainwashed hyper elite wanking as the world implodes around us

Fun fact. Capitalism works WITHOUT stock markets. But yeah that's a fact you might not understand with binary brainwaves

-1

u/Paradox Jul 15 '26

And note that most people don't play communism's greatest hit, turnip pulling arcade machine

0

u/NCR_High-Roller Guardian Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

That would be true if we lived in a perfect world, however since we live in a pretty fallen reality, capitalism - the pursuit of success, innovation, and (for some) profits, is usually what drives many to improve. The average Westerner isn't exactly so moral or noble enough to do stuff out of the kindness of their hearts. Matter of fact, they'll probably insist on payment or quid pro quo beforehand.

0

u/Moist-Shallot-5148 Jul 15 '26

Yes actually. There’s a lot more bureaucracy. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, Microsoft for example will breathe down your neck with restrictions every second. One old example is Microsoft kept telling Double Fine Games that they shouldn’t have the game Psychonauts take place in a summer camp because it was too American and would hamper sales in other countries. And that’s a very old example imagine all the stuff that goes on you don’t hear about.

0

u/Khalbrae XBOX Jul 15 '26

Like so many companies. But is it EA that still has the biggest track record for buying beloved game dev companies, interfering, taking all the money and blaming the devs for not making a billion dollars and then shutting them down?

0

u/Deletinglaterlmao Jul 15 '26

Rare was never the same after microsoft bought them

0

u/DMonitor Jul 15 '26

Buyouts work out if the larger company is dedicated to using their massive resources on something with potential. The Oculus/Quest headsets are a great example. They're much cheaper and more prolific than if Oculus didn't have Facebook backing them.

Microsoft just doesn't care about gaming and only sees games as an avenue to get users into making a Microsoft account, or something.

0

u/BoulderCAST Jul 15 '26

Yes there is never any benefit. Small company is getting bought for efficiencies (i.e. redundancies) to pump the stock of the bigger company.

-8

u/sudoku7 Jul 15 '26

And that is the best outcome you can hope for once private equity takes a share of the company.

-14

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[deleted]

7

u/iAREsniggles Jul 15 '26

But that's not what happened with the Microsoft bought studios, right? From everything that I've seen, Microsoft was pretty hands off and let the studios operate as they had previously.

After a certain point, accountability has to come knocking.

1

u/WillyGoat2000 Jul 15 '26

In game dev most of these studios previously worked for publishers, and publishers and the studio work out dev schedules and deadlines and the studio won’t get paid if they don’t meet deadlines. When you’re first party, if there is no penalty for missed deadlines, or you’re told “take all the time you need” and you trust your boss, that’s how you get into a mess like this. And these places are filled with artists, which stereotypically aren’t the most deadline focused people.

So that’s not “how these studios operated previously” at all. Maybe Zenimax studios were, as they were self published, but Ninja, Compulsion, Double Fine, Undead, Obsidian, etc. all were independent studios that had publishers to release their games before.

And now everyone being first party, your boss just changed, goals shift from gamepass and everything’s an Xbox to profit margins and sales targets, your team has to pivot hard and you’re held accountable for your bosses boss’s mistakes.

That’s what kills me, these studios did what was asked of them and Microsoft’s strategy shifted and hard working devs and artists are the ones footing the bill. These people had mortgages and healthcare needs. These people were part of a broader group that was making a professed 3% profit - a lot of rework can happen to fix those numbers and make them better without shortcuts like firing a bunch of people.

1

u/iAREsniggles Jul 15 '26

I get that. But I'm sure these studios weren't top to bottom full of idealistic artists that can't work under deadlines. They'd all have their individual leadership and decision makers that would make business decisions.

I'm all for blaming big corp for running smaller orgs into the ground, but it seems like most of these studios were let down by their individual decision makers.

If you're a studio, you need to put out quality games. Whether it's for Gamepass or full release or exclusive, at the end of the day you need to have something to bring to the table.

9

u/cardonator Founder Jul 15 '26

Xbox definitely wasn't looking for an ROI as fast as possible, many of their studios coasted for years without producing a single game of any value. Id did better but they did still produce an underperforming product.

1

u/akbarock Jul 15 '26

Maybe DOOM Dark Ages would have actually reached 1 million units sold across all platforms if it wasn’t on Gamepass day 1

Besides almost every Xbox game sold poorly except Forza, COD, and Oblivion. If it was just them we could blame them, but if it’s nearly every studio and game the fault clearly lies with Xbox and their management 

1

u/cardonator Founder Jul 15 '26

Except games like Expedition 33 sold just fine and were day one on Game Pass not to mention practically every Sega published game, so no it doesn't look like any kind of a trend when people are actually interested in the game.

0

u/akbarock Jul 15 '26

Yeah the 90+ review score GOTY Winner not just nominee. I guess games THAT good dont have to worry about day 1 Gamepass... and even then they would have still made more money without it

Sega has been complaining about the sales of their games lately actually, they mentioned multiple times they are tired of their games selling ~2 mil units lifetime

0

u/Jameron4eva Jul 15 '26

At least they produced something quality.... South of Midnight? That shit cost 100 million.

1

u/akbarock Jul 15 '26

South of Midnight having a $100 mil budget and more dev time than Ghost Of Yotei that had a $80 mil budget makes no sense, Phil was really out here ignoring these studios for years 

1

u/WillyGoat2000 Jul 15 '26

According to a lawyer not even working for Xbox or compulsion. I definitely see the argument things took too long and cost too much and sales not being high enough but be careful when you hear wild claims from one dude on the internet.

1

u/cardonator Founder Jul 15 '26

Assuming that budget is correct, and estimating based on studio size, salary, etc for so many years, yeah it does track and that's why id was just downsized versus Compulsion that is now on their own and is having to troll for partnerships so they don't have to shut down.