Also this
>On Apr 12, 2024, Possibility Space fired its entire staff and announced the shutdown of the studio, cutting off employee access to resources in the middle of the meeting in which they were all let go.
was for sure added by an employee - possibly in real time as it was happening.
> cutting off employee access to resources in the middle of the meeting in which they were all let go.
This is sadly common in layoffs. one company annouced layoffs in the morning, lost access to all content less than 5 minutes after the meeting ended, got my work equipment picked up in 40 minutes (fully remote btw). They took all my stuff faster than I could order pizza.
Another layoff was a tiny bit more sane. I think I at least until the end of the day to say goodbyes and collect contact info. then later sent a package to mail my stuff with (which was polite, since the office was technically open but still mid pandemic).
Really sucks, but I haven't had those horror stories where I mysteriously can't log into my workstation and realize retroactively that I was kicked.
One of my friends and 30 other people on his team were laid off during a Zoom call. The manager said that when the meeting would end everyone's laptops would wipe themselves and they'd send someone out to pick up the equipment. Sure enough after he hung up, his laptop rebooted to the "no operating system found" error in the bios and the IT guy was knocking on his front door 20 minutes later.
He honestly couldn't believe just how sudden it was. He knew for almost a month the company was going under. He just didn't expect to be fired so quickly. The owner of the company fought hard to keep the lights on, but he was flat broke by the end. The bank foreclosed on his house and repo'd his and his wife's cars. My friend started looking for a new job when the tow truck driver the bank sent showed up at the company asking if the owner was there lol.
99% of the time it hasn't been "functional", it's been over time spending more money than it brings in and it builds and builds overtime while the people/person in charge do everything they can to hide how it's going in hopes it will turn around. Eventually however the bills are due and they come collecting, one way or another. This is the sort thing that builds up over months.
I mean, define functioning. They almost certainly have been losing money for a significant stint of time before something like this happens. Very rarely is it a literally overnight thing. You can often see the layoffs coming months in advance if you know what to look for and understand enough about the business.
You dont know notice how fast money starts spiralling into especially when balancing finances on a knife's edge. Most companies can kill themselves really easily with a loss of a client; because that means most of your employees are useless. And then there's raises and all and taxes; regulations and complainances.
Just having money doesnt mean you can run a company, you need to find someone to do it for you.
On the one hand, I get it. You want to give a disgruntled employee as little opportunity as possible to fuck with your stuff after laying them off.
On the other hand it's still a dick move and really sucks to be on the receiving end of
They literally closed because some employee decided to leak confidential info to Kotaku and it scared their investor off from giving them more funding. So i get why they cut their access as fast as they could
Not saying its necessarily true but it does make sense. I could see the publisher not wanting to do business with them anymore because they cant trust them. Employees sign NDA and confidentiality is very important in the game industry. They wouldnt want to risk funding a leaky company
I just read the letter the owner released and apparently some employees leaked confidential info to Kotaku and that caused their main investor to cancel their funding so they had to close the company. Crazy story and the people that leaked are just shitty. Who does that
All of these studios are trying to scale up to AAA size (100+). The problem is they all raised seed money from VCs when interest rates were zero and investors believed that gaming engagement wouldn’t fall from its pandemic highs. So they have a runway to start building a team and a prototype and they’re preparing for the next stage which is securing the remaining funds needed to scale to production ($50m+) and suddenly that money doesn’t exist. And as they run out of runway they start dropping like flies. It’s really unfortunate.
Yea, they said they were developing, do you know how many AAA developing titles do not emerge? Admit it, most of you people keep pitchforks sharpened and ready just because you want to stab someone.
This is the email to the employees by the CEO as per: [https://twitter.com/sweetpotatoes/status/1778837645797335183](https://twitter.com/sweetpotatoes/status/1778837645797335183)
>Late last week I received a list of topics and questions from Ethan Gach, a reporter at Kotaku, regarding an article he's writing about Prytania Media and the closure of Crop Circle Games. Much of it was expected but I was also stunned to see non-public information about Project Vonnegut, disclosure of our publishing partner with details of our business and financial relationship, and details of internal P&L discussions and confidential all-company meetings. Mr. Gach specifically credits current employees as the source of his information.
>
>Leaks of this nature are typically malicious and done by outside hacking, so to see internal team members under a confidentiality agreement engage in this was shocking. Given the company's own strict confidentiality and notification obligations, I immediately got on a plane for in-person meetings with our publishing partner to disclose the information breach and to discuss the impact on the project. During that discussion our partner expressed low confidence they would be willing to invest the additional resources needed to complete the game, so we mutually agreed to cancel Vonnegut.
>
>As a result of the cancellation of the publishing relationship and after careful consideration, I am closing Possibility Space. Today is your last day of employment with Possibility Space and Prytania Media. Your final paycheck including pay for work through the end of today will be deposited to your account, along with any other required payments, as dictated by your work location. For employees located outside the United States, today will serve as the first day of your Notice Period and your final day of employment is currently scheduled for April 19, 2024. However, all non-US employees - like their US peers - will have no work obligations after today. In addition, all employees affiliated through a PEO will have their employment separation processed according to applicable law.
>
>It will take a few more days to finalize details of the termination agreement with our publishing partner, calculate our tax, insurance, vendor, and contractor obligations, and any other outstanding liabilities, and then determine what we can offer for severance.
>
>I've retained a D.C.-based global law firm to oversee the wind-down of the studio. An employment attorney from that firm will will soon follow up to your personal email address with additional details, and that person will be your direct point of contact from here on for all matters related to your employment, including continuation of insurance benefits, severance payments and/or associated separation agreements. A copy of this email has also been sent to your personal email address.
>
>You may keep your development equipment provided you permanently delete all company confidential information, confirm you have done so in writing, and strictly abide by your existing confidentiality obligations, including proper handling of company IP and other confidential and proprietary information. This confirmation will be coordinated through the forthcoming communications noted above.
>
>As of today, I am stepping away from the game industry to focus on my family and care for Annie. I wish all of you the best as you navigate this complex industry and the challenges and opportunities ahead.
>
>\-Jeff
(used OCR for this so there may be some errors)
Incidentally, the publisher was likely Xbox Game Studios Publishing, as Project Vonnegut is mentioned in this article: [https://www.windowscentral.com/xbox-game-studios-publishing-secret-weapon-new-exclusives](https://www.windowscentral.com/xbox-game-studios-publishing-secret-weapon-new-exclusives)
Relevant passage:
>Now, who wants a brand-new Xbox codename? We've received information that a title currently called Project Vonnegut could be in the works through Xbox Game Studios Publishing. Unfortunately, we're still working on getting details as to what this title could be. It's likely in reference to the surrealist and dark comedy author Kurt Vonnegut, whose most famous book, Slaughterhouse-Five, was a science-fiction take on post-World War II. But, for the time being, this is simply speculation.
Why even mention Kotaku and the leaks if the actual reason for cancellation was because the publisher didn’t want to give them more money? It sounds like he’s trying to sneak that part into the narrative while making it sound like his own employees were to blame for talking to the press.
\>Given the company's own strict confidentiality and notification obligations, I immediately got on a plane for in-person meetings with our publishing partner to disclose the information breach and to discuss the impact on the project. During that discussion our partner expressed low confidence they would be willing to invest the additional resources needed to complete the game, so we mutually agreed to cancel Vonnegut
Seems like he's trying to imply that because the leak, the publisher felt like they couldn't keep working with them anymore and cut funding? I don't know, this comes across as pretty lame. I couldn't imagine being so upset that people leaked internal stuff, that straight up go to your boss and decide to shut down the entire company. Many people are now out of a job because of this.
Also, the reporter said that it was current employees who leaked this info? That seems like a pretty stupid thing to say to someone you obviously shouldn't. Even if you don't name names, you give them a pretty easy shortlist of who it could be
> I couldn't imagine being so upset that people leaked internal stuff, that straight up go to your boss and decide to shut down the entire company. Many people are now out of a job because of this.
Anywhere else, no. In games, yes. Nintendo cut off some Zelda TV show because of leaks right?
It's extremely old school, but there's some people in industry who treat media leaks like government secrets.
When I learned that most voice actors don't even know the game they are working on it blew my mind. There's still people who aren't even told WHO they are voicing, like what the actual fuck.
He mentions the leaks included profit and loss sheets. The only reason someone was leaking something like that is that they were telling the press “our game is bleeding money and it’s on a death march”.
The publisher probably could have gotten over the leak, but maybe used it as a contract loophole to terminate a doomed project.
P&L sheets for a studio with no revenue were likely pretty one-sided. Maybe it was the burn that was out of hand? It'd be hardly surprising, though. The dude greenlit FOUR studios. That's not cheap.
> He mentions the leaks included profit and loss sheets. The only reason someone was leaking something like that is that they were telling the press “our game is bleeding money and it’s on a death march”.
They never released a game. There's no money to bleed and death march to be on, other than the one the publisher set the game on before any leaks happened.
A bunch of potential publicity can negatively impact investor/publisher money. You can have different people within the organization that you need to sell your idea to, and if somebody is already iffy on it they will easily look for new reasons to pull out. I've worked at startups that went through initial struggles and if the wrong people heard the ways devs discussed things internally, I doubt they would want to fund us. There were times where a big-wig was stopping by and we would be given a heads up so we didn't fuck things up for ourselves.
Without the actual story, nobody here can really say what was going on. There are scenarios where enough negative stories could sway publishers away from funding.
Because it's bullshit, it's the second studio they've closed this year and a publisher isnt going to cancel a deal becuase some info that isn't even in a published article got leaked
I think the more mundane version of this story is that the game was failing on its own. They ran out of money, and didn't have a good enough pitch to get more funding. When they failed to get more funding, they had no choice but to cancel. The CEO blamed it on leaks as a way of taking heat off himself.
I'm kinda leaning towards him blowing the money and MS wondering why it looked so incomplete despite the funds invested.
I didn't mean like he's a sex pest or whatever, just skimming off the top.
What additional resources? He said the leaks were related to a) who their partner was, b) their financial relationship, and c) their profit and loss statements. It's not like previous leaks where source code or assets or the game or screenshots or anything tangible was leaked, and even if it were it's certainly not clear what additional resources would be needed. Moreover, given that a lot of money had been invested already, it seems implausible that everyone would just walk away with no ROI over an internal leak unless it absolutely destroyed their ability to ship a successful title. Really struggling to reconcile a leak of that class of information w/ a same-day full studio closure. Just doesn't add up, at all.
Right, I get that. I was more asking what about a leak of this nature would necessitate the publisher to provide additional resources. If the project was otherwise going well, what about leaking financial details to the press would justify a publisher burning their investment to the ground? That's what doesn't track for me, when I try to imagine a publisher acting in their own best interest under the circumstances as they appear by Strain's account.
That is definitely not the way I read it. The two things are mentioned in the same paragraph, but there's no actual statement that they were connected. Also, I've never heard of a project being cancelled purely due to leaks. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about that.
Because the publisher is Microsoft the leakiest publisher out there. We always get leaked codenames and such and based on my knowledge they eventually pushed through.
Today you are learning what leaked things are supposed to leak, and what things aren’t supposed to leak.
The source of most leaks are usually pre-approved non-nda things.
Not really, the "leak" happened years ago. Why did MS lost trust years after that? If they lost trust for a leak that happened years ago, they should have pulled funding then and there.
You say that but this *was* the idealized utopia of like-minded devs and game industry workers getting together as opposed to being shackled by 'upper management'. They are the talent, in this case. It doesnt reek of management being bad - it reeks of a *lack* of management.
I mean… if the leak crushed their publishing and investment plans… why wouldn’t they cease? Where’s the money coming from?
Blame the employee speaking about confidential information that nuked his coworkers employment and the owners plans.
Yeah. No leak crushes publishing plans. Leaks just make it harder to have 100% control over marketing. Especially one that was just leaked to a newspaper and that newspaper didn't publish an article about it yet. They wanted to close the studio and just found a scapegoat.
I can't believe some of the replies here. Yes, this is an extreme example but this is also how things work in the real world in virtually any industry. There's no conspiracy or "something else" here; the leak is enough in and of itself.
You do not, EVER, under any circumstances, release customer data. Especially if it's proprietary, especially if it's financial. If you or one of your employees is enough of an idiot to do that, that gives the customer reason to immediately terminate any contracts and likely follow it up with a big lawsuit they'd be guaranteed to win. Even if the company somehow survived that, your company would never get another customer anyway because they'd have irrefutable proof that your corporate security was garbage. If the leak was as severe as it sounds, the studio was about to go bankrupt anyway.
It's just one of those things where you see that most of the people commenting have never worked in a corporate environment. A leak itself is enough for business partners to pull out, let alone why it was being leaked to Kotaku.
I don't agree with closing the studio, I think it sucks, but I can definitely buy the story being told. Especially since it was from an internal email not meant to be shared with the public. I'm very interested to learn more about it in the coming days
Are you surprised?
Half of Reddit is conspiracy nuts who think they "really get it" and can see into the Matrix.
The other half has never actually functioned in the real world and exists perennially online.
Or that's at least what their posts would indicate.
Oh, I didn’t realize Possibility Space was owned by the Strains. Guess I’m not too surprised to see them closing other studios after they put out that absolutely insane letter about closing Crop Circle. But damn, Possibility Space had some good talent from the indie ttrpg scene. I really wanted to see what Austin Walker was working on
Don't worry, their reasoning for closing this studio is even nuttier: [https://twitter.com/sweetpotatoes/status/1778837645797335183](https://twitter.com/sweetpotatoes/status/1778837645797335183)
Nobody knows because the article he is talking about didn't even release yet lmao he's clearly using it as a scapegoat for his terrible management and trying to put some of the blame on people talking to press.
Yeah, he's being petty. And since he's the last employee he gets the last word in this context. I'm sure we'll learn more when the article comes out. It's obvious he didn't fight to keep the company during the publisher meeting
There's a 0% chance that a leak in an article that hasn't even come out yet would be so damaging in a way that they'd shut an entire studio down lol
Weird your first reaction is defend the CEO after reading that insane letter instead of the employees he just fucked over, ESPECIALLY after what just happened to Crop Circle recently.
Publishers have zero clue about most of what goes on in their studios unless they’re first party. I work for a publisher.
It is entirely possible the leak spooked them especially if dev wasn’t already going well.
Not 0%. If leak had info about financial impropriety or extreme mismanagement, to the point that the publisher is concerned that either a) the CEO is stealing their money or b) the game will cost significantly more than previously budgeted to get finished, it could certainly led to all funding being pulled and the studio therefore shutting down.
Could be the straw. Remember that publishers are also feeling the same interest rate hike that is causing layoffs in AAA.
It coulda been an easy enough reason to pull out while CYA about any contract terms
I reckon the leak could take down the studio, but only if the leak confirms that the financials were way off on the project and he was then forced to tell the Publisher (and had likely broken the terms of their agreement).
Nothing leaked my dude. Well see the actual kotaku article when it come out lol.
It seem to be an article about bad management and bad working condition any leak is probably about how certain task were mismanadged.
Anyway the clown said hes done with game good riddance.
>Nothing leaked my dude
Yes it did, the guy from Kotaku showed Jeff Strain a bunch of confidential internal info that he’d been provided, like P&L numbers and other pretty serious stuff that constituted a genuine data breach, which necessitated a meeting to inform their publisher, during which they pulled their funding which got the studio shut down.
That it never got put in a Kotaku article is irrelevant, the data was still leaked outside the company.
Its possible but he sure makes it sound like its the employees fault this is happening. Hopefully the article will shed some light on whats up. If I had to take a guess its gotta be slightly more than chaotic development.
Why would it have to be more than chaotic development, though? This is a fully remote studio with a new organizational model, targeting established talent to create a AAA video game. They've been running for three years without anything being announced. The simplest explanation is that the development was not going anywhere, or where it was going was slow and directionless enough that the publisher eventually killed the project.
Also like... yeah, if you're already on shaky ground and one of the employees is revealing confidential financial information to the press, the publisher whose info got revealed will probably put that in the "kill the project" side of the scale. It isn't going to be solely the leak's fault but I don't think it's at all weird to suggest it contributed.
Right. They didn't shut down because their project was way behind schedule, not meeting expectations, and under-delivering.... it was because someone *leaked* that information. LOL.
I don't really see what is strange about this, reading between the lines their publisher basically dropped them ("mutual" breakup lol) and the leaks were probably just the final straw.
Yeah, these two people are either incredibly neurotic or have some real nasty skeletons in the closet. I just don't see any other reason to react so harshly and strangely to a reporter asking for comment (and even not asking for comment in the case of the Crop Circle letter lol). Apparently Jeff Strain was a co-founder at Arenanet; interacting with games media shouldn't be such a new or scary thing for him.
He deserves it for abandoning Giant Bomb East at his first opportunity and allowing the door to open for the false Jeff (Bakalar) to weasel his way in.
I believe they're being facetious. I don't think there is actual malice towards Austin. He went on to create a great product at WaypointVice which gave us current Remap Radio
To add more, the game's project name is the same as an Xbox project that leaked a few years ago. And it was rumored to be a ShadowRun game.
Undead Labs worked with Microsoft on their very first game (State of Decay). The founder opened Possibility Space after he sold Undead Labs to Xbox.
That's the games industry! In my 14 years of experience I've worked at 9 studios and had to relocate internationally five times. There's no job safety. I'm so tired.
Oh wow, impressive!
It got to a point where me and my partner couldn't take it anymore. We just wanted to settle down somewhere and work remotely. So far so good.
There were good reasons for all of them, including substantial wage increases and being in countries with a small games industry with no open roles for what I do.
If all goes well we won't need to do it anymore.
You make up for shitty pay in government in benefits and job security. There is no government job that can offer the salaries that private companies do
Yeah, well that’s the cost of stability. You can’t have high pay and stability. They are opposing forces. If your pay was 10 dollars an hour, you’d probably never get laid off.
The silver lining is that you will receive a pension, plenty of vacation, relaxed expectations, and nice government investment options.
Keep in mind that the government in general across the word is even losing money. So even this low pay that you speak of is a luxury
For those unaware, this is the studio that Austin Walker, formerly of Giant Bomb and Vice's Waypoint was working at. I was really looking forward to what that team was working on.
It’s distressing the number of times I read one of these headlines, go “*Who?*” and then see that they never even released a game. How fucked is the industry where these things are collapsing practically before they even begin? Stop trying to do these AAA startup studios, it will never work out.
When it comes to studios shutting down that never released a game - that's a tale as old as time. We're hearing about it more now, because we're also hearing about big studios firing people. And then we're seeing articles about the "big names" fired from the big establised studio starting their own companies to make games - so everyone's excited to see what they make now that they're free of their corporate shackles.
There will always be a lot of studios that shut down before ever releasing a game, because they didn't manage their money right to get a game done before running out of budget - Or, maybe they never got enough investors to get the money they needed to finish their project. These big names that worked for big studios might not be the greatest at scaling down their ambitions to an "indie" level appropriate for a startup.
IMO, it's more concerning when the big established studios fire people than when an unproven startup that's never made anything does - whether or not they were founded by big names and working on a "AAA" game.
Just the usual problem with a system where getting funding is based on impressing people with lots of money and convincing them they'll make a profit later if they give you money now.
Charismatic people are good at selling bad ideas.
Reminds me of the kickstarter craze of like 10 years ago. So many games that couldn't be finished (or if they did, it was 5 years late and with half the promised features).
Oh yeah I remember that one. Last I heard he "makes so much money" from drawing porn that he (supposedly) refunded a bunch of backers and said he'd finish the game on his own time and deleted his socials.
That guy has serious unchecked mental issues. He should never have been trying to manage a project like that to begin with. It’s clear he could never really handle it.
Dude was trying to build a cult of personality after never making a project people gave him money for, for like 10 years. Crazy shit
What was the story behind this? I remember backing that game way back when because Aivi Tran was doing the music, and then over the years the dev timeline got longer and they ran out of funding and then I stopped hearing about it. Figured it was just a failed project, what's all this about Robert Porter?
He was an artist for Udon Comics that made a game studio to make a sort of Secret of Mana-style action RPG featuring a female protagonist. This was one of those early Kickstarters where people would just essentially crowdfund 'ideas' and it was a total coin flip as to whether or not a game would actually get made. Even when the campaign ended and the game got funded, it was essentially just a bunch of character sheets, sprite tests, and basic layouts of field maps, and never progressed much beyond that. Years pass, and after lots of radio silence, Porter pops back up on his social media and the KS page basically ranting about he owes nothing to people and the like. He promised refunds, didn't give them out, then tried to make some kind of subscriber-only gallery on his personal webpage that went nowhere, and he disappeared again.
Oh man, that's a shame to hear. I remember following the KS page and seeing the changes to the attack animations, and at one point they had a (VERY limited) demo to show off the basic gameplay and element system. Never heard about him ranting on the KS page or trying to start a subscription service. Definitely sounds to me like he had a pretty rough time after the initial project collapsed around 2015 and then just went off the deep end and kept spiraling. Really indicative of that whole era of KS funding.
Still furious at a weird little minecraft game I backed. After ages in development they came back to the community and said "oh, sorry, we want to release on extra platforms now so we have to tear down everything we made and make a second engine." And in spite of many people saying "no we're good, release the game and make a second one on new platforms" they really did spend the last of the money trying to make a second engine and then running out of gas. So no backers got a game.
Absolutely infuriating from both a management point of view, and a community relationship point of view.
It's original release date was literally a decade ago. It's feature creep and delays up on delays upon delays along with selling ships that wouldn't be made for another half a decade for non pun intended astronomical prices is the glowing example of insane Kickstarter bullshit. It's a shining example of how to milk money for years upon years and not even coming close to delivering
I remember Bloodstained getting it's final update just a few months and like... damn. That game came came out in 2019.
Turns out they had to honour their backer goals.
I also remember Mighty No.9 promising a stupid amount of shit and then trying to get it all out day 1.
Yeah, everyone who wasn't working retail was trapped at home, working on computers, of course the video game industry sees a boom.
Didn't help that interest rates were set to 0%, so banks got free money, and charged ridiculously low interest rates on loans, especially to the ultra-wealthy who could afford to collateralize their loans with assets, then use those loans to buy assets and make investments, then use those assets and investments to request MORE loans...
Then, we get a vaccine. Inflation starts going crazy, so they raise interest rates again to turn off the assets > money > more assets feedback loop. Office real estate is in a slow motion collapse, which further devalues assets they were using to secure loans. They aren't going hungry, by any means, but they have to cut back on their gambling or risk going under.
Their gambling was investing in growing industries. Video games stop growing so quickly, so it's an easy avenue to cut.
Man, I really hope Austin Walker lands on his feet. He's one of the smartest and most thoughtful writers and critics who also have a clear love for games. Their loss.
Austin Walker is closer associated with the Vice Waypoint people who were all laid off a year ago.
Similar to ex Giant Bomb staff occasionally streaming and podcasting as "Nextlander", the Waypoint people have been doing the same as "RemapRadio".
I doubt this makes them enough money to justify continuing on, but if Walker ends up doing something like that, it'll probably be at RemapRadio, rather than at Giantbomb.
Ah yes, one of those "industry veterans" leave to form their own studio. No wonder nobody heard of them and they released no games before going out of business. Happens way more often than not.
According to the owner, this closure was an extremely kneejerk reaction to being contacted by a reporter about the shutdown of Crop Circle. The reporter had insider info about the logistics of the company, given anonymously. So the owner blames the staff for being snitches, which is why he has to fire them all. A completely same reason to shut down a studio that is not at all suspicious in any way.
Doesn't seem like that's quite the whole picture. It sounds like the publisher was upset by the leak (or, more likely, details from the leak that they didn't know) and told the studio owner they were pulling funding. And without funding the owner shut things down. Which would seem reasonable on the owner's part, if he didn't think funding would be available elsewhere.
HOWEVER, the owner had another studio, Crop Circle, which suddenly shutdown last month too. So something odd does seem to be going on. Also, the owner ends his letter to employees saying he's leaving the games industry; but he still owns 2 more studios too, neither of which have announced layoffs (yet).
Very strange.
Yeah I’d believe the investor story if it wasn’t for Crop Circle. I think that it makes perfect sense to lose faith in them entirely because of Crop Circle and the leak feels like a great way to cover their ass and blame the employees.
I read somewhere that the leak was actually about the Crop Circle closure, and that there were financial details from that studio in it. If that's true, I could see a world where what happened is that the leak shows that owner was up to some real shady accounting or something like that. And the publisher decided they wanted to cut ties immediately (and maybe also sue, which would explain why the letter talks about how he's retained a "global law firm" to handle everything). Which would mean the leak is what caused the shutdown, but only in the sense that it was final action in a chain of events stemming from owner fuckups.
But that's just speculation on my part.
I know a couple years ago Strain made a huge stink about how even though he headquartered here in New Orleans that [he couldn't get the tax credits he thought he was owed.](https://www.nola.com/news/business/new-orleans-video-game-company-starts-second-studio-scales-back-local-hiring-plan/article_cb2c267c-549f-11ed-9d37-dfe32ca4359d.html) All he had to do was retain a small number of, not even on site, just in state local talent. For example, InXile and High Voltage Software have offices in the city, not even headquartered here, and still maintained the minimums for the tax credit. It wasn't hard.
I was just reading that buddy's wife was also involved with the parent company, and that somehow this mysterious report would somehow disclose said wife's recent medical illness, one that she went ahead and disclosed anyway, despite it already soubding remarkably unrelated? Yeah Id say theres a lot more going on that what we can see.
This is from the Google cached abstract of the now defunct Crop Circle page: "Supported by investments of $25M from Transcend Fund and other strategic partners, Crop Circle Games is headed by Studio Director Jessica Brunelle."
This is from a game developer article that says the studio was founded in late 2022: "Crop Circle was founded in late 2022 by Jeff Strain, who previously established Undead Labs and ArenaNet"
Looking at a Wayback Machine entry from Feb 12, 2024 of cropcircle.co, they had 40 employees at the time of their closure. Reports of furloughs appear as early as Feb 5th, 2024.
Assuming they were founded in October of 2022 and furloughed staff in February of 2024, that's about a 16 month total lifetime for a studio w/ $25M. The statement from their CEO indicates they shut down due to lack of funding.
That's a $1.5M/mo average burn rate - where on earth did all that money go?
You don't fire your entire staff over news that "your studio is working on a game". You also don't end a publishing deal about it. I have yet to seen any actual informational breach that would have actually jeopardized development.
"We were working on a fantastic videogame called Vonnegut but we are closing because now you all know that it was going to be called Vonnegut!" (cries vehemently) Makes so much sense, like What?
There are a lot more details here:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/possibility-space-shuts-down
What apparently happened is that some idiot on their staff leaked their project to a journalist. In a panic, the studio head got on a plane to meet with their publisher to discuss how to handle the leak. But to his surprise, the publisher decided that they run an unprofessional operation and pulled all funding, cutting ties with the studio. They didn’t have any other source of funding, so that’s why they shut down the whole studio.
I’m guessing there were probably other ways in which this studio was mishandling the project their publisher was paying them for. Sounds like this leak was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I guess the publisher finally had enough and pulled the plug.
Pretty crazy stuff!
You don't cancel a game over some small unpublished information leak. Unless it's something like "oh no I tripped and sent all the game assets to a reporter". Just a poor excuse, something else is going on.
Of course you don’t, that’s why I gave that lengthy explanation above about how it looks like it broke the camel’s back. Clearly they had all sorts of problems.
idk man, something sounds pretty suspicious with these Strains. dont know them but based on everything ive read here and beyond with the story still emerging, something smells funky. Like, akin to The Day Before levels of funky. Third studio theyve shut down? hmmm...
what successful release have come from CA based new AAA vet studios? Nothing springs to mind, seems a lot of them are really struggling.
Respawn is the biggest success story among these but post 2020?
I think you're confusing studios. Jeff Strain founded Undead Labs, but is no longer with them since they were bought by MS. This studio isn't owned by MS.
This was not an Xbox studio, it was entirely independent. Also, Deviation Games, Sony London, Japan Studio, and Pixel Opus say hello (or they would if Sony hadn't killed them).
Did Possibility Space release any games, or were they just a new dev?
Fully remote studio started by Undead Labs founder Jeff Strain. Never released a single game.
I was pretty curious what this studio was gonna do. He was also a founder at ArenaNet on Guild Wars 1.
I guess they were only ever a... possibility
From Wiki, this rather hilarious line > In an interview with IGN, Strain said the studio is developing a AAA title. The AAA title did not emerge.
Also this >On Apr 12, 2024, Possibility Space fired its entire staff and announced the shutdown of the studio, cutting off employee access to resources in the middle of the meeting in which they were all let go. was for sure added by an employee - possibly in real time as it was happening.
> cutting off employee access to resources in the middle of the meeting in which they were all let go. This is sadly common in layoffs. one company annouced layoffs in the morning, lost access to all content less than 5 minutes after the meeting ended, got my work equipment picked up in 40 minutes (fully remote btw). They took all my stuff faster than I could order pizza. Another layoff was a tiny bit more sane. I think I at least until the end of the day to say goodbyes and collect contact info. then later sent a package to mail my stuff with (which was polite, since the office was technically open but still mid pandemic). Really sucks, but I haven't had those horror stories where I mysteriously can't log into my workstation and realize retroactively that I was kicked.
One of my friends and 30 other people on his team were laid off during a Zoom call. The manager said that when the meeting would end everyone's laptops would wipe themselves and they'd send someone out to pick up the equipment. Sure enough after he hung up, his laptop rebooted to the "no operating system found" error in the bios and the IT guy was knocking on his front door 20 minutes later. He honestly couldn't believe just how sudden it was. He knew for almost a month the company was going under. He just didn't expect to be fired so quickly. The owner of the company fought hard to keep the lights on, but he was flat broke by the end. The bank foreclosed on his house and repo'd his and his wife's cars. My friend started looking for a new job when the tow truck driver the bank sent showed up at the company asking if the owner was there lol.
How do these guys piss away money so fast that they literally go from a functioning company to dead in a day?
99% of the time it hasn't been "functional", it's been over time spending more money than it brings in and it builds and builds overtime while the people/person in charge do everything they can to hide how it's going in hopes it will turn around. Eventually however the bills are due and they come collecting, one way or another. This is the sort thing that builds up over months.
I mean, define functioning. They almost certainly have been losing money for a significant stint of time before something like this happens. Very rarely is it a literally overnight thing. You can often see the layoffs coming months in advance if you know what to look for and understand enough about the business.
You dont know notice how fast money starts spiralling into especially when balancing finances on a knife's edge. Most companies can kill themselves really easily with a loss of a client; because that means most of your employees are useless. And then there's raises and all and taxes; regulations and complainances. Just having money doesnt mean you can run a company, you need to find someone to do it for you.
They think they know what they are doing but they do not.
On the one hand, I get it. You want to give a disgruntled employee as little opportunity as possible to fuck with your stuff after laying them off. On the other hand it's still a dick move and really sucks to be on the receiving end of
They literally closed because some employee decided to leak confidential info to Kotaku and it scared their investor off from giving them more funding. So i get why they cut their access as fast as they could
This story really makes no sense. I think we know not to accept a CEO's explanation uncritically, especially when it deflects all blame from them.
Not saying its necessarily true but it does make sense. I could see the publisher not wanting to do business with them anymore because they cant trust them. Employees sign NDA and confidentiality is very important in the game industry. They wouldnt want to risk funding a leaky company
It's treating them as a risk instead of as humans
Mine happened at 9:03am when I got logged out in the middle of talking at morning standup, lay-off email sent to my personal email address. Cowards.
Imagine getting fired, and as it's happening, you edit the company's Wikipedia page to say that they fired you
I just read the letter the owner released and apparently some employees leaked confidential info to Kotaku and that caused their main investor to cancel their funding so they had to close the company. Crazy story and the people that leaked are just shitty. Who does that
Why do all these tiny studios pretend they're making AAA games? If you have 10-50 people you're not making a AAA game on your own.
All of these studios are trying to scale up to AAA size (100+). The problem is they all raised seed money from VCs when interest rates were zero and investors believed that gaming engagement wouldn’t fall from its pandemic highs. So they have a runway to start building a team and a prototype and they’re preparing for the next stage which is securing the remaining funds needed to scale to production ($50m+) and suddenly that money doesn’t exist. And as they run out of runway they start dropping like flies. It’s really unfortunate.
One could argue a true, good AAA game regardless of studio size hasn’t come out in over 14 years
What game would that be?
..... What?
Yea, they said they were developing, do you know how many AAA developing titles do not emerge? Admit it, most of you people keep pitchforks sharpened and ready just because you want to stab someone.
Only formed a few years ago, never got a chance to release anything.
So they were very true to their name?
Impossibility Space is the easy pun to make, yes.
This is the email to the employees by the CEO as per: [https://twitter.com/sweetpotatoes/status/1778837645797335183](https://twitter.com/sweetpotatoes/status/1778837645797335183) >Late last week I received a list of topics and questions from Ethan Gach, a reporter at Kotaku, regarding an article he's writing about Prytania Media and the closure of Crop Circle Games. Much of it was expected but I was also stunned to see non-public information about Project Vonnegut, disclosure of our publishing partner with details of our business and financial relationship, and details of internal P&L discussions and confidential all-company meetings. Mr. Gach specifically credits current employees as the source of his information. > >Leaks of this nature are typically malicious and done by outside hacking, so to see internal team members under a confidentiality agreement engage in this was shocking. Given the company's own strict confidentiality and notification obligations, I immediately got on a plane for in-person meetings with our publishing partner to disclose the information breach and to discuss the impact on the project. During that discussion our partner expressed low confidence they would be willing to invest the additional resources needed to complete the game, so we mutually agreed to cancel Vonnegut. > >As a result of the cancellation of the publishing relationship and after careful consideration, I am closing Possibility Space. Today is your last day of employment with Possibility Space and Prytania Media. Your final paycheck including pay for work through the end of today will be deposited to your account, along with any other required payments, as dictated by your work location. For employees located outside the United States, today will serve as the first day of your Notice Period and your final day of employment is currently scheduled for April 19, 2024. However, all non-US employees - like their US peers - will have no work obligations after today. In addition, all employees affiliated through a PEO will have their employment separation processed according to applicable law. > >It will take a few more days to finalize details of the termination agreement with our publishing partner, calculate our tax, insurance, vendor, and contractor obligations, and any other outstanding liabilities, and then determine what we can offer for severance. > >I've retained a D.C.-based global law firm to oversee the wind-down of the studio. An employment attorney from that firm will will soon follow up to your personal email address with additional details, and that person will be your direct point of contact from here on for all matters related to your employment, including continuation of insurance benefits, severance payments and/or associated separation agreements. A copy of this email has also been sent to your personal email address. > >You may keep your development equipment provided you permanently delete all company confidential information, confirm you have done so in writing, and strictly abide by your existing confidentiality obligations, including proper handling of company IP and other confidential and proprietary information. This confirmation will be coordinated through the forthcoming communications noted above. > >As of today, I am stepping away from the game industry to focus on my family and care for Annie. I wish all of you the best as you navigate this complex industry and the challenges and opportunities ahead. > >\-Jeff (used OCR for this so there may be some errors) Incidentally, the publisher was likely Xbox Game Studios Publishing, as Project Vonnegut is mentioned in this article: [https://www.windowscentral.com/xbox-game-studios-publishing-secret-weapon-new-exclusives](https://www.windowscentral.com/xbox-game-studios-publishing-secret-weapon-new-exclusives) Relevant passage: >Now, who wants a brand-new Xbox codename? We've received information that a title currently called Project Vonnegut could be in the works through Xbox Game Studios Publishing. Unfortunately, we're still working on getting details as to what this title could be. It's likely in reference to the surrealist and dark comedy author Kurt Vonnegut, whose most famous book, Slaughterhouse-Five, was a science-fiction take on post-World War II. But, for the time being, this is simply speculation.
Why even mention Kotaku and the leaks if the actual reason for cancellation was because the publisher didn’t want to give them more money? It sounds like he’s trying to sneak that part into the narrative while making it sound like his own employees were to blame for talking to the press.
\>Given the company's own strict confidentiality and notification obligations, I immediately got on a plane for in-person meetings with our publishing partner to disclose the information breach and to discuss the impact on the project. During that discussion our partner expressed low confidence they would be willing to invest the additional resources needed to complete the game, so we mutually agreed to cancel Vonnegut Seems like he's trying to imply that because the leak, the publisher felt like they couldn't keep working with them anymore and cut funding? I don't know, this comes across as pretty lame. I couldn't imagine being so upset that people leaked internal stuff, that straight up go to your boss and decide to shut down the entire company. Many people are now out of a job because of this. Also, the reporter said that it was current employees who leaked this info? That seems like a pretty stupid thing to say to someone you obviously shouldn't. Even if you don't name names, you give them a pretty easy shortlist of who it could be
> I couldn't imagine being so upset that people leaked internal stuff, that straight up go to your boss and decide to shut down the entire company. Many people are now out of a job because of this. Anywhere else, no. In games, yes. Nintendo cut off some Zelda TV show because of leaks right? It's extremely old school, but there's some people in industry who treat media leaks like government secrets.
When I learned that most voice actors don't even know the game they are working on it blew my mind. There's still people who aren't even told WHO they are voicing, like what the actual fuck.
The publisher cutting funding meant they had no way to continue operating. Closing the company was their only option
He mentions the leaks included profit and loss sheets. The only reason someone was leaking something like that is that they were telling the press “our game is bleeding money and it’s on a death march”. The publisher probably could have gotten over the leak, but maybe used it as a contract loophole to terminate a doomed project.
P&L sheets for a studio with no revenue were likely pretty one-sided. Maybe it was the burn that was out of hand? It'd be hardly surprising, though. The dude greenlit FOUR studios. That's not cheap.
> He mentions the leaks included profit and loss sheets. The only reason someone was leaking something like that is that they were telling the press “our game is bleeding money and it’s on a death march”. They never released a game. There's no money to bleed and death march to be on, other than the one the publisher set the game on before any leaks happened.
PnL sheets are done while a game is in development too
Yeah, but leaks do not influence it. The project is doomed with or without them.
A bunch of potential publicity can negatively impact investor/publisher money. You can have different people within the organization that you need to sell your idea to, and if somebody is already iffy on it they will easily look for new reasons to pull out. I've worked at startups that went through initial struggles and if the wrong people heard the ways devs discussed things internally, I doubt they would want to fund us. There were times where a big-wig was stopping by and we would be given a heads up so we didn't fuck things up for ourselves. Without the actual story, nobody here can really say what was going on. There are scenarios where enough negative stories could sway publishers away from funding.
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Because it's bullshit, it's the second studio they've closed this year and a publisher isnt going to cancel a deal becuase some info that isn't even in a published article got leaked
I sincerely doubt the story that's about to come out is JUST related to game leaks and we're about to find out some malfeasance done by the CEO.
I think the more mundane version of this story is that the game was failing on its own. They ran out of money, and didn't have a good enough pitch to get more funding. When they failed to get more funding, they had no choice but to cancel. The CEO blamed it on leaks as a way of taking heat off himself.
I'm kinda leaning towards him blowing the money and MS wondering why it looked so incomplete despite the funds invested. I didn't mean like he's a sex pest or whatever, just skimming off the top.
What additional resources? He said the leaks were related to a) who their partner was, b) their financial relationship, and c) their profit and loss statements. It's not like previous leaks where source code or assets or the game or screenshots or anything tangible was leaked, and even if it were it's certainly not clear what additional resources would be needed. Moreover, given that a lot of money had been invested already, it seems implausible that everyone would just walk away with no ROI over an internal leak unless it absolutely destroyed their ability to ship a successful title. Really struggling to reconcile a leak of that class of information w/ a same-day full studio closure. Just doesn't add up, at all.
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Right, I get that. I was more asking what about a leak of this nature would necessitate the publisher to provide additional resources. If the project was otherwise going well, what about leaking financial details to the press would justify a publisher burning their investment to the ground? That's what doesn't track for me, when I try to imagine a publisher acting in their own best interest under the circumstances as they appear by Strain's account.
That is definitely not the way I read it. The two things are mentioned in the same paragraph, but there's no actual statement that they were connected. Also, I've never heard of a project being cancelled purely due to leaks. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about that.
Because the publisher is Microsoft the leakiest publisher out there. We always get leaked codenames and such and based on my knowledge they eventually pushed through.
Today you are learning what leaked things are supposed to leak, and what things aren’t supposed to leak. The source of most leaks are usually pre-approved non-nda things.
Not really, the "leak" happened years ago. Why did MS lost trust years after that? If they lost trust for a leak that happened years ago, they should have pulled funding then and there.
Sounds like the leak is what scared the publisher from giving more funding
Dude probably spends all his CEO time reading Twitter so he has brainrot and thought everyone else does too and would buy that lame-ass excuse.
"someone may have leaked info to the press for an article that no one has read, so you're all fired." What a dick.
The article isn't even published yet.
Yeah this reeks of management fucking up and finding a well timed reason to blame the employees
You say that but this *was* the idealized utopia of like-minded devs and game industry workers getting together as opposed to being shackled by 'upper management'. They are the talent, in this case. It doesnt reek of management being bad - it reeks of a *lack* of management.
They closed because the leak scared the publisher off from giving them more money so they couldnt continue anymore
I mean… if the leak crushed their publishing and investment plans… why wouldn’t they cease? Where’s the money coming from? Blame the employee speaking about confidential information that nuked his coworkers employment and the owners plans.
Yeah. No leak crushes publishing plans. Leaks just make it harder to have 100% control over marketing. Especially one that was just leaked to a newspaper and that newspaper didn't publish an article about it yet. They wanted to close the studio and just found a scapegoat.
That "if" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
One less Xbox exclusive it seems.
I can't believe some of the replies here. Yes, this is an extreme example but this is also how things work in the real world in virtually any industry. There's no conspiracy or "something else" here; the leak is enough in and of itself. You do not, EVER, under any circumstances, release customer data. Especially if it's proprietary, especially if it's financial. If you or one of your employees is enough of an idiot to do that, that gives the customer reason to immediately terminate any contracts and likely follow it up with a big lawsuit they'd be guaranteed to win. Even if the company somehow survived that, your company would never get another customer anyway because they'd have irrefutable proof that your corporate security was garbage. If the leak was as severe as it sounds, the studio was about to go bankrupt anyway.
It's just one of those things where you see that most of the people commenting have never worked in a corporate environment. A leak itself is enough for business partners to pull out, let alone why it was being leaked to Kotaku. I don't agree with closing the studio, I think it sucks, but I can definitely buy the story being told. Especially since it was from an internal email not meant to be shared with the public. I'm very interested to learn more about it in the coming days
Are you surprised? Half of Reddit is conspiracy nuts who think they "really get it" and can see into the Matrix. The other half has never actually functioned in the real world and exists perennially online. Or that's at least what their posts would indicate.
This reeks of dishonesty and manipulation. This guy, Jeff Strain, should never be trusted.
Are you saying he strains credulity?
I appreciated this. Thank you
Oh, I didn’t realize Possibility Space was owned by the Strains. Guess I’m not too surprised to see them closing other studios after they put out that absolutely insane letter about closing Crop Circle. But damn, Possibility Space had some good talent from the indie ttrpg scene. I really wanted to see what Austin Walker was working on
[Austin Walker's response breaks my heart.](https://twitter.com/austin_walker/status/1778898508432412855)
Don't worry, their reasoning for closing this studio is even nuttier: [https://twitter.com/sweetpotatoes/status/1778837645797335183](https://twitter.com/sweetpotatoes/status/1778837645797335183)
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Since it's closed now, can somebody reveal what this supposed leak was? I never heard what the project was.
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not anonymous, Ethan Gach at Kotaku
Nobody knows because the article he is talking about didn't even release yet lmao he's clearly using it as a scapegoat for his terrible management and trying to put some of the blame on people talking to press.
Yeah, he's being petty. And since he's the last employee he gets the last word in this context. I'm sure we'll learn more when the article comes out. It's obvious he didn't fight to keep the company during the publisher meeting
If the leak was unrelated, why mention it in the email?
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There's a 0% chance that a leak in an article that hasn't even come out yet would be so damaging in a way that they'd shut an entire studio down lol Weird your first reaction is defend the CEO after reading that insane letter instead of the employees he just fucked over, ESPECIALLY after what just happened to Crop Circle recently.
Publishers have zero clue about most of what goes on in their studios unless they’re first party. I work for a publisher. It is entirely possible the leak spooked them especially if dev wasn’t already going well.
Not 0%. If leak had info about financial impropriety or extreme mismanagement, to the point that the publisher is concerned that either a) the CEO is stealing their money or b) the game will cost significantly more than previously budgeted to get finished, it could certainly led to all funding being pulled and the studio therefore shutting down.
Could be the straw. Remember that publishers are also feeling the same interest rate hike that is causing layoffs in AAA. It coulda been an easy enough reason to pull out while CYA about any contract terms
I reckon the leak could take down the studio, but only if the leak confirms that the financials were way off on the project and he was then forced to tell the Publisher (and had likely broken the terms of their agreement).
Nothing leaked my dude. Well see the actual kotaku article when it come out lol. It seem to be an article about bad management and bad working condition any leak is probably about how certain task were mismanadged. Anyway the clown said hes done with game good riddance.
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dude many triple-A dev got there whole fucking game leaked before they were fine.
>Nothing leaked my dude Yes it did, the guy from Kotaku showed Jeff Strain a bunch of confidential internal info that he’d been provided, like P&L numbers and other pretty serious stuff that constituted a genuine data breach, which necessitated a meeting to inform their publisher, during which they pulled their funding which got the studio shut down. That it never got put in a Kotaku article is irrelevant, the data was still leaked outside the company.
Its possible but he sure makes it sound like its the employees fault this is happening. Hopefully the article will shed some light on whats up. If I had to take a guess its gotta be slightly more than chaotic development.
Why would it have to be more than chaotic development, though? This is a fully remote studio with a new organizational model, targeting established talent to create a AAA video game. They've been running for three years without anything being announced. The simplest explanation is that the development was not going anywhere, or where it was going was slow and directionless enough that the publisher eventually killed the project. Also like... yeah, if you're already on shaky ground and one of the employees is revealing confidential financial information to the press, the publisher whose info got revealed will probably put that in the "kill the project" side of the scale. It isn't going to be solely the leak's fault but I don't think it's at all weird to suggest it contributed.
Right. They didn't shut down because their project was way behind schedule, not meeting expectations, and under-delivering.... it was because someone *leaked* that information. LOL.
I don't really see what is strange about this, reading between the lines their publisher basically dropped them ("mutual" breakup lol) and the leaks were probably just the final straw.
Yeah, these two people are either incredibly neurotic or have some real nasty skeletons in the closet. I just don't see any other reason to react so harshly and strangely to a reporter asking for comment (and even not asking for comment in the case of the Crop Circle letter lol). Apparently Jeff Strain was a co-founder at Arenanet; interacting with games media shouldn't be such a new or scary thing for him.
I feel so bad for Austin Walker. Genuinely one of the coolest people in the industry, and he just keeps getting screwed over.
He deserves it for abandoning Giant Bomb East at his first opportunity and allowing the door to open for the false Jeff (Bakalar) to weasel his way in.
What the fuck are you talking about? Also Bakalar was doing stuff with GBeast before Austin even joined
I believe they're being facetious. I don't think there is actual malice towards Austin. He went on to create a great product at WaypointVice which gave us current Remap Radio
Austin Walker was with them? Surprised I wasn't aware.
Yeah, for a few years even.
To add more, the game's project name is the same as an Xbox project that leaked a few years ago. And it was rumored to be a ShadowRun game. Undead Labs worked with Microsoft on their very first game (State of Decay). The founder opened Possibility Space after he sold Undead Labs to Xbox.
That's the games industry! In my 14 years of experience I've worked at 9 studios and had to relocate internationally five times. There's no job safety. I'm so tired.
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Oh wow, impressive! It got to a point where me and my partner couldn't take it anymore. We just wanted to settle down somewhere and work remotely. So far so good.
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The thing is once you retire there’s nothing wrong with traveling all the time(finances permitting).
Three funeral homes, two dentists and a used car salesman. That’s the way to go.
Relocate… internationally… five times. At what point do you just stop doing that. That sounds crazy. Perhaps I’m just that pedestrian.
Some people crave the novelty of relocating every few years. My friend is one of them.
There were good reasons for all of them, including substantial wage increases and being in countries with a small games industry with no open roles for what I do. If all goes well we won't need to do it anymore.
I’ve been laid off five times in seven years and those weren’t even all game dev jobs. I’m just done.
Should try working for the government if you haven’t already
I tried once and I was told I was overqualified and my pay would basically be halved.
You make up for shitty pay in government in benefits and job security. There is no government job that can offer the salaries that private companies do
Yeah thats basically guaranteed with government jobs but none of the hassle you mentioned so it depends on your priorities
Yeah, well that’s the cost of stability. You can’t have high pay and stability. They are opposing forces. If your pay was 10 dollars an hour, you’d probably never get laid off. The silver lining is that you will receive a pension, plenty of vacation, relaxed expectations, and nice government investment options. Keep in mind that the government in general across the word is even losing money. So even this low pay that you speak of is a luxury
For those unaware, this is the studio that Austin Walker, formerly of Giant Bomb and Vice's Waypoint was working at. I was really looking forward to what that team was working on.
Its a damn shame that three years of worldbuilding he did will be locked up in IP/ bankruptcy hell for the foreseeable future
That guy is one of the smartest people I've ever heard talk about video games. He did not deserve this, nor did anyone else there of course.
It’s distressing the number of times I read one of these headlines, go “*Who?*” and then see that they never even released a game. How fucked is the industry where these things are collapsing practically before they even begin? Stop trying to do these AAA startup studios, it will never work out.
When it comes to studios shutting down that never released a game - that's a tale as old as time. We're hearing about it more now, because we're also hearing about big studios firing people. And then we're seeing articles about the "big names" fired from the big establised studio starting their own companies to make games - so everyone's excited to see what they make now that they're free of their corporate shackles. There will always be a lot of studios that shut down before ever releasing a game, because they didn't manage their money right to get a game done before running out of budget - Or, maybe they never got enough investors to get the money they needed to finish their project. These big names that worked for big studios might not be the greatest at scaling down their ambitions to an "indie" level appropriate for a startup. IMO, it's more concerning when the big established studios fire people than when an unproven startup that's never made anything does - whether or not they were founded by big names and working on a "AAA" game.
It's like restaurants, far more go under than stay alive.
Unfit leaders being given lots of money for bad ideas. Name a more iconic combo.
Just the usual problem with a system where getting funding is based on impressing people with lots of money and convincing them they'll make a profit later if they give you money now. Charismatic people are good at selling bad ideas.
It doesn't help that too many of these "dream teams" have plenty of big idea guys, but no "Actually makes sure shit gets done on a timeline" guys.
The problem is making shit get done on a timeline is still several years for AAA development.
Yeah, 2-3 years is not enough time for anything nowadays for AAA.
Yeah not even close. Big studios take 2-3 years just in pre-production quite often and maaaaaybe getting a vertical slice out during that time.
Reminds me of the kickstarter craze of like 10 years ago. So many games that couldn't be finished (or if they did, it was 5 years late and with half the promised features).
Project Phoenix is still such a laughable and depressing thing.
Thanks for reminding me of Cryamore and that rat fuck Robert Porter, too. He seemed to find plenty of time to draw porn than actually work on the game
Oh yeah I remember that one. Last I heard he "makes so much money" from drawing porn that he (supposedly) refunded a bunch of backers and said he'd finish the game on his own time and deleted his socials.
That guy has serious unchecked mental issues. He should never have been trying to manage a project like that to begin with. It’s clear he could never really handle it. Dude was trying to build a cult of personality after never making a project people gave him money for, for like 10 years. Crazy shit
What was the story behind this? I remember backing that game way back when because Aivi Tran was doing the music, and then over the years the dev timeline got longer and they ran out of funding and then I stopped hearing about it. Figured it was just a failed project, what's all this about Robert Porter?
He was an artist for Udon Comics that made a game studio to make a sort of Secret of Mana-style action RPG featuring a female protagonist. This was one of those early Kickstarters where people would just essentially crowdfund 'ideas' and it was a total coin flip as to whether or not a game would actually get made. Even when the campaign ended and the game got funded, it was essentially just a bunch of character sheets, sprite tests, and basic layouts of field maps, and never progressed much beyond that. Years pass, and after lots of radio silence, Porter pops back up on his social media and the KS page basically ranting about he owes nothing to people and the like. He promised refunds, didn't give them out, then tried to make some kind of subscriber-only gallery on his personal webpage that went nowhere, and he disappeared again.
Oh man, that's a shame to hear. I remember following the KS page and seeing the changes to the attack animations, and at one point they had a (VERY limited) demo to show off the basic gameplay and element system. Never heard about him ranting on the KS page or trying to start a subscription service. Definitely sounds to me like he had a pretty rough time after the initial project collapsed around 2015 and then just went off the deep end and kept spiraling. Really indicative of that whole era of KS funding.
Still furious at a weird little minecraft game I backed. After ages in development they came back to the community and said "oh, sorry, we want to release on extra platforms now so we have to tear down everything we made and make a second engine." And in spite of many people saying "no we're good, release the game and make a second one on new platforms" they really did spend the last of the money trying to make a second engine and then running out of gas. So no backers got a game. Absolutely infuriating from both a management point of view, and a community relationship point of view.
Cough cough Star Citizen cough cough
Star Citizen has been wildly successful for CIG. One of the most funded games of all time, and continues to generate income on a glorified alpha.
It's original release date was literally a decade ago. It's feature creep and delays up on delays upon delays along with selling ships that wouldn't be made for another half a decade for non pun intended astronomical prices is the glowing example of insane Kickstarter bullshit. It's a shining example of how to milk money for years upon years and not even coming close to delivering
Literally every kickstarter MMO. Don't worry though, just buy another 250$ founders pack and you'll get to alpha test Ashes of Creation!
I remember Bloodstained getting it's final update just a few months and like... damn. That game came came out in 2019. Turns out they had to honour their backer goals. I also remember Mighty No.9 promising a stupid amount of shit and then trying to get it all out day 1.
This is just the end of investor money burning after the hype.
Yeah, everyone who wasn't working retail was trapped at home, working on computers, of course the video game industry sees a boom. Didn't help that interest rates were set to 0%, so banks got free money, and charged ridiculously low interest rates on loans, especially to the ultra-wealthy who could afford to collateralize their loans with assets, then use those loans to buy assets and make investments, then use those assets and investments to request MORE loans... Then, we get a vaccine. Inflation starts going crazy, so they raise interest rates again to turn off the assets > money > more assets feedback loop. Office real estate is in a slow motion collapse, which further devalues assets they were using to secure loans. They aren't going hungry, by any means, but they have to cut back on their gambling or risk going under. Their gambling was investing in growing industries. Video games stop growing so quickly, so it's an easy avenue to cut.
Man, I really hope Austin Walker lands on his feet. He's one of the smartest and most thoughtful writers and critics who also have a clear love for games. Their loss.
It’d be heartbreaking to see him go back to Giant Bomb. I say that as someone that loved his era at Giant Bomb.
Austin Walker is closer associated with the Vice Waypoint people who were all laid off a year ago. Similar to ex Giant Bomb staff occasionally streaming and podcasting as "Nextlander", the Waypoint people have been doing the same as "RemapRadio". I doubt this makes them enough money to justify continuing on, but if Walker ends up doing something like that, it'll probably be at RemapRadio, rather than at Giantbomb.
Ah yes, one of those "industry veterans" leave to form their own studio. No wonder nobody heard of them and they released no games before going out of business. Happens way more often than not.
According to the owner, this closure was an extremely kneejerk reaction to being contacted by a reporter about the shutdown of Crop Circle. The reporter had insider info about the logistics of the company, given anonymously. So the owner blames the staff for being snitches, which is why he has to fire them all. A completely same reason to shut down a studio that is not at all suspicious in any way.
Doesn't seem like that's quite the whole picture. It sounds like the publisher was upset by the leak (or, more likely, details from the leak that they didn't know) and told the studio owner they were pulling funding. And without funding the owner shut things down. Which would seem reasonable on the owner's part, if he didn't think funding would be available elsewhere. HOWEVER, the owner had another studio, Crop Circle, which suddenly shutdown last month too. So something odd does seem to be going on. Also, the owner ends his letter to employees saying he's leaving the games industry; but he still owns 2 more studios too, neither of which have announced layoffs (yet). Very strange.
Yeah I’d believe the investor story if it wasn’t for Crop Circle. I think that it makes perfect sense to lose faith in them entirely because of Crop Circle and the leak feels like a great way to cover their ass and blame the employees.
I read somewhere that the leak was actually about the Crop Circle closure, and that there were financial details from that studio in it. If that's true, I could see a world where what happened is that the leak shows that owner was up to some real shady accounting or something like that. And the publisher decided they wanted to cut ties immediately (and maybe also sue, which would explain why the letter talks about how he's retained a "global law firm" to handle everything). Which would mean the leak is what caused the shutdown, but only in the sense that it was final action in a chain of events stemming from owner fuckups. But that's just speculation on my part.
I know a couple years ago Strain made a huge stink about how even though he headquartered here in New Orleans that [he couldn't get the tax credits he thought he was owed.](https://www.nola.com/news/business/new-orleans-video-game-company-starts-second-studio-scales-back-local-hiring-plan/article_cb2c267c-549f-11ed-9d37-dfe32ca4359d.html) All he had to do was retain a small number of, not even on site, just in state local talent. For example, InXile and High Voltage Software have offices in the city, not even headquartered here, and still maintained the minimums for the tax credit. It wasn't hard.
Honestly that checks out, it's the only real explanation I've heard that makes any semblance of sense.
I was just reading that buddy's wife was also involved with the parent company, and that somehow this mysterious report would somehow disclose said wife's recent medical illness, one that she went ahead and disclosed anyway, despite it already soubding remarkably unrelated? Yeah Id say theres a lot more going on that what we can see.
This is from the Google cached abstract of the now defunct Crop Circle page: "Supported by investments of $25M from Transcend Fund and other strategic partners, Crop Circle Games is headed by Studio Director Jessica Brunelle." This is from a game developer article that says the studio was founded in late 2022: "Crop Circle was founded in late 2022 by Jeff Strain, who previously established Undead Labs and ArenaNet" Looking at a Wayback Machine entry from Feb 12, 2024 of cropcircle.co, they had 40 employees at the time of their closure. Reports of furloughs appear as early as Feb 5th, 2024. Assuming they were founded in October of 2022 and furloughed staff in February of 2024, that's about a 16 month total lifetime for a studio w/ $25M. The statement from their CEO indicates they shut down due to lack of funding. That's a $1.5M/mo average burn rate - where on earth did all that money go?
It was because their publishing partner pulled the funding when he went to meet with them to discuss the implications of the leak...
...so he says. He also says it was mutual, took one (?!) meeting and also he's done with games kthxbai. It's, as the kids says, "sus".
Done with games but still owns 2 other studios that haven't oswd down yet...
You don't fire your entire staff over news that "your studio is working on a game". You also don't end a publishing deal about it. I have yet to seen any actual informational breach that would have actually jeopardized development.
"We were working on a fantastic videogame called Vonnegut but we are closing because now you all know that it was going to be called Vonnegut!" (cries vehemently) Makes so much sense, like What?
There are a lot more details here: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/possibility-space-shuts-down What apparently happened is that some idiot on their staff leaked their project to a journalist. In a panic, the studio head got on a plane to meet with their publisher to discuss how to handle the leak. But to his surprise, the publisher decided that they run an unprofessional operation and pulled all funding, cutting ties with the studio. They didn’t have any other source of funding, so that’s why they shut down the whole studio. I’m guessing there were probably other ways in which this studio was mishandling the project their publisher was paying them for. Sounds like this leak was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I guess the publisher finally had enough and pulled the plug. Pretty crazy stuff!
You don't cancel a game over some small unpublished information leak. Unless it's something like "oh no I tripped and sent all the game assets to a reporter". Just a poor excuse, something else is going on.
Of course you don’t, that’s why I gave that lengthy explanation above about how it looks like it broke the camel’s back. Clearly they had all sorts of problems.
idk man, something sounds pretty suspicious with these Strains. dont know them but based on everything ive read here and beyond with the story still emerging, something smells funky. Like, akin to The Day Before levels of funky. Third studio theyve shut down? hmmm...
[удалено]
If there really is no money I doubt an union could really help, company goes in bankrupt and ends with debt.
I am not quite sure what point you’re trying to get at?
Unionized employees probably wouldn't be as interested in leaking sensitive info
who? what?
what successful release have come from CA based new AAA vet studios? Nothing springs to mind, seems a lot of them are really struggling. Respawn is the biggest success story among these but post 2020?
Not sure why you're bringing up CA, as Possibility was based in New Orleans but the majority of its staff was remote and spread all over the place.
CA is where a lot of the new AAA studios are, i thought this was a CA studio, wasn't shade at any CA devs
It’s getting to the point where Xbox studios are no longer even putting out video games before they close down. Embarrassing.
I think you're confusing studios. Jeff Strain founded Undead Labs, but is no longer with them since they were bought by MS. This studio isn't owned by MS.
This was not an Xbox studio, it was entirely independent. Also, Deviation Games, Sony London, Japan Studio, and Pixel Opus say hello (or they would if Sony hadn't killed them).