As we know, random events segregate ‘non-randomly’, and things bunching together isn’t a trend. But it’s still pretty chilling to see so many lay-offs in the games industry all at once. So we express our sympathies and best wishes to those at Funcom, PopCap, and THQ who’ve found out their jobs are no longer in the last few hours.
First of all, PopCap has confirmed the rumours that fifty people from their Seattle offices have been let go, along with an unknown number – possibly all – soon to go from the Dublin HQ. Co-founder John Vechey took to their company blog to explain the bad news.
“Today’s news is something you expect periodically from a company in a fast-changing industry, but it sucks if you’re one of the people losing his or her job. These people are our friends and we don’t like doing this. We’ve made hard decisions before, even had cuts before – at this time in North America there are about 50 people who will no longer work at PopCap. We’ve hired aggressively this past year and PopCap is still growing. Even with the cuts we expect to end the year with roughly the same number of people we started with.”
He goes on to explain that the explosion of the free-to-play model has directly affected a company that has been comfortably charging $20 for its games for years. But he also stresses that this has nothing to do with their owners, EA, adding, “If we didn’t have EA behind us, the cuts would have been worse.” Quite how a company that has sold more copies of Bejeweled than there are atoms in the universe can be in this position I’m not sure, but then I don’t understand business.
Times are bad at Funcom too, with The Secret World having failed to make the money they were banking on. Numbers aren’t yet confirmed, but Polygon are saying it could be as many as half of the employees around the world (they have studios in Norway, Montreal and Hong Kong). Polygon received a confirmation from Funcom that lay-offs are happening, mentioning last week’s shocking drop in share value, but saying the process is ongoing and undecided. Which is usually business speak for “we haven’t told them yet”.
And lastly in today’s sad round-up, the cash-strapped THQ is to fire 20 non-development staff. An email leaked by 3D Realms’ George Broussard reveals that “restructuring” is taken place, with marketing and production jobs affected. He tells staff that he doesn’t anticipate this having any impact on games development. He also adds that Saints Row developer Volition is intending to add to its numbers by about 20 this year, and that both marketing and production escaped the job losses other parts of the company saw in January.
The irony for THQ is they’re the publisher who have been putting out the most consistently interesting products in recent months. But for whatever reason, they’re failing to turn this into success for themselves. Yet they keep making deeply bizarre decisions, like releasing Darksiders II a full week later in Europe than the US. Hopefully the “restructuring” will see some slightly more sensible choices being made by a company that is currently investing in the right development studios.
Clearly we wish our absolute best to those who have lost work, or are about to, and hope they quickly find new positions within the industry. It’s brutal to see the traditionally recession-resistant entertainment industry taking a hit.
Another article concerning the f2p model-free to play
Ubisoft Boss Declares F2P Is Because Of 95% Piracy Rates
By John Walker on August 22nd, 2012 at 1:00 pm.
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Rock, Paper, Shotgun is read by over 92% of the Earth’s population, and our most frequent readers are in the top 15% most attractive people on Earth! Yes, we all love statistics we don’t provide any evidence for. There’s so much fun to be had. Ubisoft have also been revelling in that fun, by telling GI.biz that they experience “93-95% piracy” rates. Which is odd, what with all their boasting that their always-awful DRM has been so darned effective at combating piracy. How incredibly confusing! Anyway, this, says bossman Yves Guillemot, is why they’re heading down the path of F2P games.
Here’s the logic: Only 5-7% of people ever fork out cash for the F2P models that are out there. And that just happens to match the piracy rates seemingly plucked out of the air. You may immediately say, “Er, if it’s the same, why bother doing something different?” But Guillemot explains that with the F2P model, that 5-7% who pay will keep on paying, over and over, making more money for the F2Ping company in the long run. Thus making the F2P model more financially effective.
But the problem is deeper than just believing that piracy rates are 95%. (Because of course you just can’t measure that. You can count torrents and compare it to sales, etc, but it’s still a guess.) Let’s just say that piracy rates are 95%, because I’ve no more evidence to say they aren’t than they likely have to say they are. The issue is determining what it’s 95% of.
There is no hard evidence to show that piracy affects sales. If Ubisoft has some, then they should share it. There is evidence to show that pirated copies almost never translate to lost sales (and as much anecdotal evidence to show that piracy encourages sales as there is to show it discourages them), and we absolutely cannot take the music and film industry’s laughable route of declaring every pirated copy as lost revenue. That’s plain deceitful, and of no help to anyone. So instead you could, if you were actually interested in business and not in scaremongering, say “We sold X hundred thousand copies of game Y”. Or indeed Z hundred copies. And then you could stop saying anything else, since that’s the only useful data you actually have.
Because really what matters is how many you sell, or – in F2P land – how much money you persuade people to give you.
The 95% figure is based on two numbers (one of them guesswork) happening to match up: F2P rates, and alleged piracy rates. It’s a comparison that is completely meaningless, as the two have little in common. When I buy a game, as much as the vile EULAs and licenses we are required to agree to may say otherwise, I do on some vague level have (if not own) a copy. When I play an online game, I am only ever visiting that game’s house, and the moment they switch it off (and they will) all my investment is gone forever. And one of them IS FREE. It says so right in the business model. I’m allowed to play it for free. And in doing so, by Ubisoft’s logic, means I am being compared with a pirate. That is so damned distasteful.
Conflating F2P numbers with piracy “numbers” is a handy way to excuse going down the path of the far cheaper development for F2P gaming, where sticking it in a browser, or cutting it down for a downloadable client, means players have their expectations severely cut down. A path that can, if you strike lucky, find your product catching a very large audience of people willing to constantly fork out small increments in order to be able to keep playing. Most don’t succeed, but one big hit can be enough. They’re cheaper to develop, they also have the potential of having players just keep on paying, and people don’t expect them to be nearly as good as full price boxed games – and hey, they’re free, right? So why would anyone complain?
Of course it’s absolutely fine for Ubi to head off in the F2P direction. It makes business sense for people to leap and grab cash before the fad is over, and the next new thing comes along. You may not like the business model, you may even think the way pay-to-play’s insidious increments work is distasteful. But if you’re a publisher, it’s a revenue stream you’ll want to tap into. But Ubi, please don’t make ridiculous excuses. Honestly, I find it bewildering that the entirety of Ubi’s board of directors hasn’t decreed that Guillemot is never allowed to say the word “piracy” again as long as he lives. Their reputation amongst PC gamers is so utterly terrible right now, despite releasing a ton of great games on the machine. It would just be amazing to see the company, for once, celebrating their PC customers, rather than berating them. Because they have customers. Paying customers. Maybe instead of pointing out that whatever their imagined piracy rates are, they could acknowledge they also have people who pay a huge chunk of cash for their games, and just maybe act like they’re grateful. Just maybe.
