The 7th Guest posted:

gently caress capitalism and gently caress everyone involved with this. :/

Cantorsdust posted:

To add an even more exaggerated example of how IP isn’t enough to make video games without heavy investment in development:

Games Workshop has a very in-demand IP that has spawned multiple successful video games (and many not-successful games). With the demand for their IP well-established, why don’t they develop their own games in house?

Kalko posted:

Pokemon is actually the most valuable media IP in the world, by a lot

lih posted:

the sonic movie was pretty successful, enough to get a sequel, and only got mediocre reviews instead of terrible ones.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

The MCU includes most of the other Marvel stuff though, right? You can't just add them all together then.

Metis of the Hallways posted:

Cythereal posted:

In any event, Microsoft is making promising noises about Blizzard.

DC Murderverse posted:

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1484556399262814210?s=21

I wonder if the purchase caught them off guard and they’re doing it because they worry it might be now or never. Regardless I hope this goes well even if I know ABK is gonna fight this with every fiber of their being

Feels Villeneuve posted:

People have occasionally tried making offbrand football games after the EA Sports era began and it never works. Remember Blitz: The League? Or All-Pro Football?

Bust Rodd posted:

https://twitter.com/ign/status/1485613613591285761?s=21

It worked?

Dick Burglar posted:

Ah, yes. Definitely been planned for months. Not something we suddenly decided when our employees created a union. Totally legal and above board, yessirree.

rargphlam posted:

The thought is likely that if you're embedded it is harder in your day/week in the life activities to actively organize or participate in a union.

In practice I don't know if it will play out that way, with digital solutions mediating a lot of the strain they would likely feel in organization efforts.

Kaboobi posted:

lmao why

Edmund Lava posted:

It seems you have used up your five free Wordles this month. Would you like to subscribe for only 7$ a week?

Endorph posted:

the new york times just did this

SirSamVimes posted:

Ninja Theory's doing very well too, with the success of (and upcoming sequel for) Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.

Kotaku posted:

Ubisoft’s ongoing NFT odyssey continues to bewilder and demoralize not just longtime fans but also its own developers. The company recently held another workshop aimed specifically at addressing the concerns of skeptical employees, yet also started giving out special NFTs to some members of the Ghost Recon team to “celebrate” the series’ 20th anniversary. One developer likened it to the staff saying “We hate this crypto stuff,” and Ubisoft responding with, “OK, come get some.”

Last week, VP of Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovations Lab, Nicolas Pouard, claimed in an interview that players’ overwhelmingly negative reaction to the company’s NFT rollout was because “they don’t get it.” His remark was roundly derided on social media, but also by some within the company, according to posts from Ubisoft’s internal communications platform viewed by Kotaku. In addition to disagreeing with Pouard’s position, they expressed frustration over the company’s continued botched messaging around the controversial tech.

“They don’t get it” was also the tone of a recent internal Q&A with the Quartz team aimed at addressing skeptical employees, sources familiar with the event told Kotaku. (Quartz is the name of Ubisoft’s recently introduced proprietary crypto platform.) Instead, it bolstered some developers’ concerns about security vulnerabilities in the Quartz technology and its lack of interesting design possibilities. Pouard and other blockchain proponents have pitched scenarios in which cosmetic items can follow players between games. That’s not something current Quartz NFTs are set up to do, however, and according to sources, Pouard admitted internally that the “interoperability” question remains unanswered. In the meantime, the core use-case for Quartz NFTs remains in-game hats.

“It’s three to four years of work for a loving Auction House,” one current developer told Kotaku.

Ubisoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Players aren’t the only ones being treated to these new in-game hats, however. Ubisoft prepared special Quartz NFTs specifically for developers on the Ghost Recon Breakpoint team where the technology was first implemented.

“With the opening of the Ubisoft Quartz platform in December, we thought of creating an exclusive Digit for you, the ‘Ghost Recon 20th anniversary cap!’” the announcement read, according to a copy of it viewed by Kotaku. “If you want to receive this exclusive Digit, we will inject it into your crypto-wallet on the 9th of March.” (“Digit” is Ubisoft jargon for NFT.)

The NFT hats are a strange way of saying thank you to a team that has struggled over the last two years to win back fans through patches and updates after Breakpoint’s disastrous 2019 launch. Bloated with open-world features and survival elements some players hated, Ubisoft’s Paris studio has had a long road to travel to rebuild player trust. Ubisoft’s NFT plans, according to an internal survey, torpedoed much of fans’ goodwill within the first week they were announced.

It’s unclear if the Ghost Recon anniversary caps will end up being any more popular than existing Quartz NFTs. But where rivals like FIFA maker EA have retreated from the crypto-backed collectibles, Ubisoft appears committed to their potential, even if its own developers still aren’t sure what it is.

Kotaku posted:

Ubisoft employees continue to push back on the company’s plans to utilize blockchain technology for, among other things, the distribution of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), according to a new Bloomberg report.

An announcement outlining Ubisoft’s blockchain strategy on its internal messageboard was reportedly inundated by hundreds of negative comments, with one pointed reaction saying it was a “deeply embarrassing day” to work for the French video game conglomerate.

This latest round of criticism follows a Kotaku report from December 2021 detailing similar responses to the reveal of Ubisoft Quartz, a largely maligned NFT platform that allows players to purchase exclusive, in-game items with the backing of the blockchain. Quartz supported only Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint at launch and has yet to expand to other games in Ubisoft’s portfolio, probably because no one gives a gently caress about it.

But enough back story. I know you’re all here to witness Ubisoft workers dunking on their bosses, and boy, are there some doozies in Bloomberg’s report.

“Are we competing with EA for the ‘Most hated Game Studio by the public’ title?” wrote one Ubisoft employee. “Because this is how you do it.”

“I think the kids call this entire comment section ‘being ratioed,’” wrote another before pointing to Ubisoft’s ongoing issues with company culture. “Seriously, our confidence in management was already shaken by the handling of harassment cases, and now this?”

“You know what else makes a lot of money?” a third chimed in, reportedly unafraid of using their real name to criticize Ubisoft’s decision-making. “Making fun spectacular groundbreaking blockbusters. Why don’t we focus on that instead?”

Update 02/11/2022, 3:56 p.m. ET: Ubisoft leadership is understandably displeased with these comments being shared with the public.

“Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab has received a lot of feedback, and we take the encouragement as well as the concerns to heart,” an Ubisoft rep told Kotaku. “How players can benefit is and always will be at the core of our thinking. At Ubisoft, we value these internal exchanges and think they help make our games and our company stronger. However, sharing confidential information, including from internal forums, is a violation of our employment agreement, and, more importantly, a violation of the trust that team members place in each other to be able to freely express themselves and have candid, productive discussions. In light of that, we won’t comment further.”

It’s not clear what effect, if any, this internal pushback will have on Ubisoft’s flirtation with blockchain technology. Just two days ago, the developers of The Sandbox—basically a digital landlord simulator—announced a partnership with Ubisoft to introduce the Rabbids to the “metaverse.” Yes, the same Rabbids that went on an adventure with Super freaking Mario just a few years ago. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

muscles like this! posted:

loving why? What does Epic get out of this?

Metis of the Hallways posted:

https://twitter.com/gmgunion/status/1500588322791559171

Heran Bago posted:

The company founder posted a big rear end screed in advance of this. Features hand-washing and no apology.

https://medium.com/@jeffstrain/today-kotaku-will-be-running-an-article-about-undead-labs-b7a8fcb40ab3

Vegetable posted:

Skull and Bones is their flagship project

PCGamer posted:

Days after Raven QA got the green light to go forward with their union vote, another QA unit working with a big developer has moved to unionize. This time, external contractors doing QA for Bioware have applied to the Alberta Labor Relations board to form a union. A representative of the group told Game Developer that its members could no longer bear "struggling to make ends meet" working on Bioware's games, and this sentiment was echoed in a similar report by Kotaku.

A notice regarding the application from the Alberta Labor Relations Board was first shared on Reddit several days ago. The QA unit in question consists of employees from an external company, Keywords Studios, who have been contracting with Bioware. These workers have contributed to QA on the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, The Old Republic: Legacy of the Sith, and the upcoming Dragon Age 4, and are being represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

In both the Kotaku and Game Developer stories, the Keywords QA representatives pointed to the contract company's return to office plan as a primary motivator for the union push. Keywords recently announced that all staff would be returning to office full time May 9, despite a concerning rate of new COVID-19 cases in Alberta and uncertainty regarding future outbreaks.

Full time Bioware staff, meanwhile, will continue to be allowed to flex between work-from-home and being in-office. This is not the only disparity between contract and full time staff: the representative who spoke to Game Developer claimed that the Keywords contractors had to report to work on days Bioware full-time staff had off, and both reports cited pay close to Canada's minimum wage of $15/hr ($11/hr US) as motivating factors for forming the union.

Despite working closely with Bioware on numerous projects, the worker speaking to Game Developer characterized their grievances as lying primarily with Keywords, claiming that "Our coworkers at BioWare have treated us really well, but we are obviously limited in our interactions by our contract."

The workers' representative speaking to both outlets seem confident in their ultimate success, and the workers only require a simple majority of "yes" votes from their organizing unit to form a union. The Alberta Labor Relations Board is set to complete its review of the workers' application by May 3, and, if approved, a vote will likely be held shortly thereafter.

TOOT BOOT posted:

Can they both cut your profit-sharing and keep you locked into exclusivity? That seems it would require you to resign the agreement since that's a very big change. Maybe they aren't too worried about it since where else are you going to go and still make a living?

Regalingualius posted:

https://www.videogameschronicle.com...ination-report/