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The Real Reason Your Favourite Game Studios Are Getting Closed Instead Of Sold (www.thegamer.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 97 points 6 months ago (3 children)

By shutting down a studio instead of selling it off or even letting it buy itself out, Microsoft ensures that no studio it has ever owned can become viable competition. Who cares about a diverse industry when you can keep all the IPs developed under your umbrella and shelve them for decades, instead of letting the studios that made them go on to work on their creative visions?

Article also mentions that it breaks the employees of those studios up so there is less chance of a competitor that makes another successful IP

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

Microsoft getting back to the business strategy that made them successful

[–] [email protected] 59 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Ironically if the developers band together and start another studio they would probably have Microsoft knocking on their door with an acquisition offer in a few years.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

Infinite money glitch

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The trouble is the upfront capital though, but at the same time another publisher would surely bite at the thought of getting a talented studio's staff in one go?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

hello welcome to my new venture capital firm: we specialise in funding game studios where 90% of the staff got fired in an acquisition turned shutdown

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If only someone had money from their company being bought by Microsoft

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

There's absolutely noncompetes baked into that sale. Noncompetes might not be legal, or applicable, torards employees anymore, but they sure as shit are still legal and binding as a condition for a business's sale.