this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
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It seems like every other week a game studio is massively laying off employees; sometimes after years of development. What I'm reading is that it's a quick way to lower expenses and pad the investors' pockets, flooding the market with developers and reducing their value, to then hire them back a few months later at lower salaries.

So, what's holding back gamedevs from banding together to either unionize or start their own companies with better conditions that the purely money-driven studios? Why aren't they trying to be better? Nobody willing to invest in them? Does starting a company together mean they will now be the bosses who have to answer to the investors, ensure returns, and fire employees? Is the world just an entire shit-cake?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

You see the results of indie devs that are successful but you don't see the ones that failed.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

They do, though. Like, all the time. Many Indy companies start this way, and a lot of AA to even AAA studios started after high profile people were let go or otherwise left a bigger company to start their own.

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

Right, like wild light

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

There were a bunch of game company closures in Australia in the 2000s and now there are a bunch of Australian indie devs, as an example. The cycle takes a long time though.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 6 months ago (1 children)

They do. There are plenty of indie Devs.

The reason why everyone doesn't do it is because it requires significant capital to be able to support a dev team through production for a number of years.

Not to mention they will still have to deal with publishers potentially fucking them over, as shown with the Helldivers 2 PSN fiasco.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Indie studios do in fact exist. I haven't bought a game from a major publisher since... uhh... well, I guess I bought Portal for $1 last year, does Valve still count as a major publisher?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

@Eiim @onlinepersona nah, just as the filthy richest one

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago

As a counterpoint to most of the cynicism here, this is how the company I now work for formed. Caveats include: the founder had a lot of money because he had previously worked for a big name Internet company when it was a startup, and we spend almost all of our time as contractors for other studios rather than developing in-house IP.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

it takes time for a company to become profitable. the intentionally make sure to pay us so little we never have any run out

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Short answer: money. It's no secret devs are usually overworked and underpaid so even a large-ish group of developers from even some of the more popular companies getting murdered simply can't afford to start a business. Some of them could go the Kickstarter route but few would be successful as is the way for Kickstarter.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 months ago

Why does anyone who works not make their own company? It takes capital and a certain skill set as well as a risk tolerance.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Because game devs have to pay their rent.

If they go off to form their own studio, they probably have to take out a business loan to pay themselves for the time being. Interest rates are high right now, and rent and food are both expensive. It's a huge gamble to make a game and put it out on the assumption you'll be able to pay back 6%+ interest on whatever you took out. Games are not a reliable money maker. Especially from new studios.

Even if you get some sort of deal with a publisher to fund your first endeavor, there will still be strings attached to that, and publishers are pretty tight with the purse strings right now.

Which means really the only viable option, assuming you're not already independently wealthy, is that you have to work another job to work on the game in the meantime, which means it will take even longer to come out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

To add to this:

Ain't no way a brand new game studio is getting a loan at 6%. If they can even get a business loan at all (good luck!), it would be at a much higher interest rate due to the risk, and/or require assets to be held in collateral (only an option if you're already wealthy to begin with...)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (3 children)

the only viable option, assuming you're not already independently wealthy, is that you have to work another job to work on the game in the meantime, which means it will take even longer to come out.

Or be ConcernedApe.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago

Which means using up your savings and relying on your partner to support you

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

Except he also didn't work on Stardew Valley full-time for the first

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

So many Indie developers are making the mistake of thinking they'll be the next [insert currently successful one-man dev here] and banking their careers and life savings on it. 99.999% of them are not.

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

Survivor Bias - you only see the ones that "survive", which may lead you to underestimate just how many tried and failed and vanished from attention.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

This might be tangentially relevant https://fed.dyne.org/post/146187

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