Nah this isn't on us, those games would have done quite well and the studio isn't large. Take two just sucks.
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Take-Two Is Shutting Down Intercept Games (Kerbel Space Program 2) & Roll7 (Rollerdrome, OlliOlli World)
- Thread starter JAY_HORROR
- Start date
- News
Nah this isn't on us, those games would have done quite well and the studio isn't large. Take two just sucks.
Roll8, please? Love the output of Roll7 and it's tragic to see them go this way.
Intercept... the writing was on the wall for a while there. Niche indie games and AAA publishers do not mix well.
I am hopeful all of those affected can end up on their feet.
Intercept... the writing was on the wall for a while there. Niche indie games and AAA publishers do not mix well.
I am hopeful all of those affected can end up on their feet.
Ridiculous take. Kerbal 2's development seemed incredibly messy but Roll7 were easily making the numbers to be self sustaining.
This is likely Take-Two making cuts to appease shareholders while making sure they don't impact the development of the cash cow franchises.
Damn I love Roll7, this is really sad as they really are talented :(
Didn't play the lolli olli world but loved the first ones (I think I bought the first one on PSN day one at the time)
It really had a nice aeshetic and I heard good things about it but never got around to check it out
Didn't play the lolli olli world but loved the first ones (I think I bought the first one on PSN day one at the time)
It really had a nice aeshetic and I heard good things about it but never got around to check it out
That feeling when in the space of a few seconds you learn that one of your favorite indie devs was actually owned by a major publisher... and that they have shut them down.
Fuck you Take Two.
Fuck you Take Two.
Hasn't that always been the case? How many studios survive after only releasing duds that aren't named Square Enix?
Define dud??
I don't think any studio survives continuously releasing failed products but studios in the past have survived one or two disappointing releases from a sales perspective (Resistance 3 and Fuse). Now it's an existential crisis. One bomb and you are shown the door and heck in the case of Roll7 I doubt it was even that as their games are fairly popular.
all Olli Olli games sold well. The last in the series was the best selling of them all, even.
And Rollerdrome passed 1 million players last month
View: https://twitter.com/rollerdrome/status/1770133260321825266
people showed up. Private Division is just a horrendous publisher ruled by insanely greedy executives who want to kill anything and everything that isn't bringing in millions of dollars in microtransactions.
Damn, Kerbal and OlliOlli I'd consider cult classics. This is truly sad. Hope the people who lost their jobs find new ones as soon as possible.
Working in the video game industry is surfing on an avalanche. You have 0.000001% chance to survive.
lol at people here trying to put the blame on players "not buying their games"
all olliolli games sold well and rollerdrome was also a success. but if youre going to blame players unless it sells 20M+, might as well not release anything not named GTA. which is probably what take2 wants anyway
all olliolli games sold well and rollerdrome was also a success. but if youre going to blame players unless it sells 20M+, might as well not release anything not named GTA. which is probably what take2 wants anyway
This is fucking shit, I got a friend at Roll7 and hes devastated. Fucking buy a world class studio to shut them down two years later, what a fucking embarrassment.
What shit, they won a BAFTA only a year ago. Aubrey is also a speaker at the Develop:Brighton conference this July (Wednesday at 2pm): https://www.developconference.com/conference-programme
Yeah i don't get it, they were an indie studio making indie/games for a niche audience but with very high quality.
What were T2 expecting from them, GTA shark cards kinda money?
OlliOlli World is amazing, bought it day one.
Yeah definitely done with Take Two as a publisher, including GTA, I'm not going to give them any money if they aren't willing to use their frankly insane profits to support developers that deserve it.
You don't need to write an essay. One word is enough. Greed.
A total lack of understanding a vital facet of our society was illustrated, so it felt reasonable to explain why that literally is never how general business has functioned in our lifetimes. We can hate the system, and I'm sure almost all of us do, but the fundamental issue is far deeper than 'business makes money, can't lay anyone off'.
I'd love to know I can't be fired if my company is thriving overall, but most of us in the US won't get that luxury unless actual laws and social structure change, but that's an entirely different subject. That's all I have to say about that, sorry for disrupting the natural outrage flow, I'm not happy about it or this industry either.
Agreed, although it's not a hard call to make. I was willing to give the new GTA a chance after being done with the series, but it's nothing I really need or am even all that interested in personally. It's hard to purposefully not buy a company's output when they don't make anything I'd want to give them money for in the first place any more.
One million *players* after two years and being on Game Pass and being a PS+ monthly giveaway is pretty awful my dude.
Take Two still sucks but yeah.
Terrible News.
If these layoffs keep up at this scale I get the feeling the industry heads will start to be flipped. If you bleed this much talent, eventually the talent will go make games without these big publishers. On top of it its breeding a bitter and untrusting talent pool that may not sell out to these big publishers so easily next time. The behavior is just becoming so reckless. What is the point of working for these places when even if you succeed, they pull the plug?
If these layoffs keep up at this scale I get the feeling the industry heads will start to be flipped. If you bleed this much talent, eventually the talent will go make games without these big publishers. On top of it its breeding a bitter and untrusting talent pool that may not sell out to these big publishers so easily next time. The behavior is just becoming so reckless. What is the point of working for these places when even if you succeed, they pull the plug?
the issue with your thinking is that you assume Roll7 wasn't thriving. They were. That doesn't matter. They are victims of a ritual sacrifice done for the sole purpose of pumping up stock market values. That's all this is. We have all been gaslit to think this is normal and acceptable instead of the insanity that it is.
i'm confused, do you think Rollerdrome is an AAA release with a 100 million dollar budget? One million players is not "pretty awful", at all and is well within their previous sucessful game releases. If T2 bought them thinking they could turn them into a 10 million sales studio, then the only people that should be losing their jobs here would be the insane executives at the top.
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I don't like how you are framing this, but to answer your question Bioware seems like a studio that has gotten a lot of second chances.
OlliOlli World is, no exaggeration, probably a Top Ten platformers of all time.
It's sublime as you get further into it. It looks good, it sounds good, but most importantly, it plays GREAT and the difficulty really ramps up later on. It's disguised a skate game, but it has more in common with Celeste or something than THPS.
It's sublime as you get further into it. It looks good, it sounds good, but most importantly, it plays GREAT and the difficulty really ramps up later on. It's disguised a skate game, but it has more in common with Celeste or something than THPS.
They only second chance they got is Anthem really. The Bioware that made Andromeda Bioware Montreal was merged into EA Motive after Andromeda flopped. Though it sounded like the relationship between the Bioware studios weren't great so that might have been a big factor in that too.
It's really unfortunate but not at all surprising. I know the original KSP was a surprise hit, but from what I've heard, 2 has been a disaster in general. I don't think any of the Roll7 games have been hits commercially. You can only release good games that don't sell for so long before you lose funding.
I think it's unfortunate since these games apparently are quality and beloved by some people here, but they don't appear to be commercially successful. I agree that 1 million players is not awful, except did that translate into revenue? It's not 1 million sold. And steam reviews are under 2k, extremely low for a ~2 year old game. Player count is extremely low. And this is all true, if not worse, for OlliOlli World.
Are the people that signed off on buying the studios losing their jobs too?
Take-Two is just a poor starving publisher, makes sense. *hits GTA 6 with broom to hide it back under rug*
Whooooa! I'm just finding out about this! KeokeN was responsible for Deliver Us Mars right? So the whole company just died or just staff let go? Sad that this even happened and It really bothers me when companies let go their staff, I was hoping for a final Deliver game that would tie up the story! ;-;
I ask for them and also buy them. What am I supposed to do, buy 200,000 copies of Rollerdome? The people asking for them aren't the ones not showing up.
And if that is true, are you relishing in the fact that more people have lost their jobs?
Of course I have no idea. I don't think your rhetorical question is as deep as you think. Roll7 was a private company. The owners sold it to Take2. And do you think they'd be better off financially if that had never happened, and their games just sold as poorly? I think it's not clear but if you actually think through it logically I don't think they'd suddenly be in a better position... but we'll never know.
Olli Olli was sucessful
so was Olli Olli 2
Take Two literally bought them up before World was out, and World was more successful than 1 and 2. literally every single one of their games is more commercially successful than the last. That's not the issue here. T2 is shutting them down as sacrificial goats to pump up stocks prices cause they're not GAAS devs bringing in millions in exploitative MTXs.
Roll7 would 100% be open today if they weren't aqquired, yes. Not a single one of their game has bombed and each one sold more than the last.
That probably requires more time and effort and the suits don't care enough to do that, especially as they probably won't get a lot if sold. They just want to cut costs, fuck everyone impacted basically.
One thing I keep wondering with all the closures and cutting of staff lately, when you add on the issue of dev times growing ever larger, when do we hit the point that release schedules become too anemic? Like there has to be a cliff coming
Then from there we've had really slow progress in EA, which again I think fans expected as the first game was pretty glacial too, but this is after being shuffled from one studio to another, and a pandemic between it, it was essentially incredibly far behind schedule by its current state and was probably expected to be released and onto dlc by now.
I think it's pretty sad how it ended up as there's people on the team who really love the IP and wanted to deliver on the promises. It's quite possible they also bear some responsibility in having optimistic windows and falling behind, but I'm personally of the opinion that the project was largely sabotaged by Take Two by the high price and EA starting before it should have, setting the narrative as a largely negative one and giving them and uphill battle
Tbh the problem with KSP2 is a mix of things, some bigger and smaller issues. The main road block was the early access price being basically the price of a full game and a higher price than KSP ever reached that I'm aware of personally. That stuck in people's craw and got the negative word of mouth moving. A smaller issue would be the game releasing with a slim feature set, slimmer that KSP1. I think this was expected by most fans, but combined with the high price it becomes a bigger factor.
Then from there we've had really slow progress in EA, which again I think fans expected as the first game was pretty glacial too, but this is after being shuffled from one studio to another, and a pandemic between it, it was essentially incredibly far behind schedule by its current state and was probably expected to be released and onto dlc by now.
I think it's pretty sad how it ended up as there's people on the team who really love the IP and wanted to deliver on the promises. It's quite possible they also bear some responsibility in having optimistic windows and falling behind, but I'm personally of the opinion that the project was largely sabotaged by Take Two by the high price and EA starting before it should have, setting the narrative as a largely negative one and giving them and uphill battle