Take-Two Interactive Plans to Shutter Intercept Games, Roll7 as Part of Wider Layoffs and Closures |

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Take-Two Interactive Plans to Shutter Intercept Games, Roll7 as Part of Wider Layoffs and Closures | MMORPG.com

Take-Two Interactive appears to plan to shutter two of its subsidiary studios, Intercept and Roll7, under its larger subsidiary Private Division, which also faces layoffs.

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Quizzical

Kerbal Space Program was made by Squad, not Intercept. Kerbal Space Program 2 is made by Intercept, is in early access, and is widely regarded as a buggy mess with recent Steam reviews only 20% positive. Squad may have been beloved at some point, but it no longer exists.
Intercept is a very different studio trying to recreate the same game and mostly failing at it, so they're hardly beloved.

Scot

This downturn which we keep being told is just caused by "corvid over hiring" just isn't going away is it.

Angrakhan

I don't think anyone said it was "just" the over hiring. There's several other factors at play. One is the inflation which leaves people with a lot less disposable income for games. Two is the push to go back to in-office work leaving less free time in the day for games. Three is all these game as a service games which promote FOMO that lock players into a specific game meaning they're less likely to try out other games with their limited free time and money.

Combine all of that with the COVID over hiring and yeah you end up with a bit of a perfect storm and the market correction you see now.

Kyleran

Angrakhan said:

I don't think anyone said it was "just" the over hiring. There's several other factors at play. One is the inflation which leaves people with a lot less disposable income for games. Two is the push to go back to in-office work leaving less free time in the day for games. Three is all these game as a service games which promote FOMO that lock players into a specific game meaning they're less likely to try out other games with their limited free time and money.

Combine all of that with the COVID over hiring and yeah you end up with a bit of a perfect storm and the market correction you see now.

While all of this is a contributing cause, the root of the layoffs is investors are no longer as willing to throw money at the gaming industry due to economic uncertainty as they currently have better or safer places to put their money.

As the money pool dries up game studios have to scale back, particularly on anything not believed or proven to be a money maker.

Angrakhan

Kyleran said:

Angrakhan said:

I don't think anyone said it was "just" the over hiring. There's several other factors at play. One is the inflation which leaves people with a lot less disposable income for games. Two is the push to go back to in-office work leaving less free time in the day for games. Three is all these game as a service games which promote FOMO that lock players into a specific game meaning they're less likely to try out other games with their limited free time and money.

Combine all of that with the COVID over hiring and yeah you end up with a bit of a perfect storm and the market correction you see now.

While all of this is a contributing cause, the root of the layoffs is investors are no longer as willing to throw money at the gaming industry due to economic uncertainty as they currently have better or safer places to put their money.

As the money pool dries up game studios have to scale back, particularly on anything not believed or proven to be a money maker.

For sure that is the ultimate reason behind it. I just think investors "read the tea leaves" of the market based on those other factors and like in Shark Tank declare "I'm out".

riningear

Quizzical said:

Kerbal Space Program was made by Squad, not Intercept. Kerbal Space Program 2 is made by Intercept, is in early access, and is widely regarded as a buggy mess with recent Steam reviews only 20% positive. Squad may have been beloved at some point, but it no longer exists.

Intercept is a very different studio trying to recreate the same game and mostly failing at it, so they're hardly beloved.

Yeah forgot to throw in the "2" for that one even though I explicitly kept reminding myself to (like it's literally in the sub title), oops.

Scot

Angrakhan said:

I don't think anyone said it was "just" the over hiring. There's several other factors at play. One is the inflation which leaves people with a lot less disposable income for games. Two is the push to go back to in-office work leaving less free time in the day for games. Three is all these game as a service games which promote FOMO that lock players into a specific game meaning they're less likely to try out other games with their limited free time and money.

Combine all of that with the COVID over hiring and yeah you end up with a bit of a perfect storm and the market correction you see now.

You see up on this stuff, so surely you can remember when the gaming industry was being described as "recession proof"? So something like inflation was just not going to matter.

What I am getting at here is some of the reasons this has happened are being ignored by the industry, namely players getting fed up of live service, monetarization, oversupplied by the sheer number of games coming out, and fed up of both early access and proper launches not delivering as they promised.

Because of that I think the industry will do no course correction in those areas which means this downturn will just go on and on. If I am wrong we should be able to expect a bounce back this year, ok next year? I think this will still be with us in 2026.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Scot

tzervo said:

Scot said:

What I am getting at here is some of the reasons this has happened are being ignored by the industry, namely players getting fed up of live service, monetarization, oversupplied by the sheer number of games coming out, and fed up of both early access and proper launches not delivering as they promised.

Source?

I have no issues with live services or early access games, surely most players feel the same as me so these are not issues at all.

Live Service Games Are Exhausting - IGN

What Are Live Service Games (And Why Are They So Polarizing)? (howtogeek.com)

Live service game fatigue is real, but can it be fixed? | GamesRadar+

ValdemarJ

Scot said:

tzervo said:

Scot said:

What I am getting at here is some of the reasons this has happened are being ignored by the industry, namely players getting fed up of live service, monetarization, oversupplied by the sheer number of games coming out, and fed up of both early access and proper launches not delivering as they promised.

Source?

I have no issues with live services or early access games, surely most players feel the same as me so these are not issues at all.

Live Service Games Are Exhausting - IGN

What Are Live Service Games (And Why Are They So Polarizing)? (howtogeek.com)

Live service game fatigue is real, but can it be fixed? | GamesRadar+

So, three other people share your opinion also with no hard data to back up their claim.

Meanwhile "Windows Central" just published an article claiming that the most played games last year, except for Starfield, were pretty much ALL live service games. Who's telling the truth here?

edit: found the link 

https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/the-most-popular-games-from-last-year-were-over-7-years-old

Asm0deus

ValdemarJ said:

To be fair that article you just linked isn't about those game being live service games but rather about the power of older, established nostalgia games having lots of staying power and making it difficult for new games to break through.
Minecraft and roblox are not so popular cause they are "live services" games and I would argue they are so popular for other reasons so lets not conflate their success with that one aspect.

Like I said our speculation is all anecdotal even the "hard data" can pretty much be manipulated to mean w/e.

No one here really has any "hard data", we all just have "hard speculation" based on our own anecdotal evidence/experience and what little "data" we can find online that may or may not be accurate.

One thing for sure while there may be lots of people that like live service games there is also lots of people that don't as evidenced by lots of the pissing and moaning in many game forums etc etc.

Personally I don't care so much for live service games such as gacha games, even though I sometimes play them I put zero cash in them, I don't mind it as much in mmo's.

However we see lots of...essentially single player games with some form of multiplayer with live service options which I frankly despise such as D4 for example. Like for example that data is also based on "monthly" active data so how that data is collated can change what is shows drastically, for example If it only counts how many people log in a one month period and people log in for like 1 hour a month it doesn't mean much if those same people are playing other non live service game for 60 hours per month rather than the 1 hour they logged in roblox and minecraft.

Asm0deus

edit

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

ValdemarJ

Asm0deus said:

ValdemarJ said:

To be fair that article you just linked isn't about those game being live service games but rather about the power of older, established nostalgia games having lots of staying power and making it difficult for new games to break through.
Minecraft and roblox are not so popular cause they are "live services" games and I would argue they are so popular for other reasons so lets not conflate their success with that one aspect.

Like I said our speculation is all anecdotal even the "hard data" can pretty much be manipulated to mean w/e.

No one here really has any "hard data", we all just have "hard speculation" based on our own anecdotal evidence/experience and what little "data" we can find online that may or may not be accurate.

One thing for sure while there may be lots of people that like live service games there is also lots of people that don't as evidenced by lots of the pissing and moaning in many game forums etc etc.

Personally I don't care so much for live service games such as gacha games, even though I sometimes play them I put zero cash in them, I don't mind it as much in mmo's.

However we see lots of...essentially single player games with some form of multiplayer with live service options which I frankly despise such as D4 for example. Like for example that data is also based on "monthly" active data so how that data is collated can change what is shows drastically, for example If it only counts how many people log in a one month period and people log in for like 1 hour a month it doesn't mean much if those same people are playing other non live service game for 60 hours per month rather than the 1 hour they logged in roblox and minecraft.

The article is about old games, but still relevant. All of those games are also live service or hybrid online only with a live service component. So, even though the point of the article is emphasizing older games, I think the fact that they dominated play time last year at least indicates or calls into question whether players actually have "live service fatigue".

I disagree with the article trying to imply that people are playing 7 year old games, because it's much more accurate to say they're playing massively evolved versions of games that launched 7 or more years ago. For example, Minecraft and Roblox feel like completely different games, while still offering the core mechanics of what they first offered. Same with GTA V online. It is much different today than at launch.

In my opinion the article only helps illustrate that player engagement with live service is nuanced and much more complex than those articles cover. I'm using the term live service in my post, but that includes anything with an online multiplayer aspect or hosted component (including MMOs).

Scot

ValdemarJ said:

So, three other people share your opinion also with no hard data to back up their claim.

Meanwhile "Windows Central" just published an article claiming that the most played games last year, except for Starfield, were pretty much ALL live service games. Who's telling the truth here?

edit: found the link 

https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/the-most-popular-games-from-last-year-were-over-7-years-old

In fact what I did was google and link the first three, there are many more and as I am sure you know these are gaming journalists not just "people" I found. I think being misleading like this shows you don't want to look for any truth here. In fact you then went on to quote another one of those "people" in support of your argument.

Part of this is that players are as you say sticking with live service, but what they are not doing is going on to new live service.  Once again, this is not about the death of live service, it is about players starting realise just how much time they have to put into these games and deciding they cant stick another one on the rotation.

I do think their is increasing realisation that these games monetarization is very excessive (with some exceptions like Fortnite) but such players are still small fry when it comes to the total player base. It could be that there is an element of that concern in the decision to buy yet another live service game but it seems fatigue is the big factor here.

When you think about it, a sufficiency invasive form of monetarization becomes gameplay, take loot box gambling for example. We have seen players react against that but maybe now they are just getting tired of it.