The Games Industry Bull Thread

Team17 is the latest publisher to look more than a little off.

Unsurprised after the NFT debacle they had, but that still made for grim reading. There's more information in the Eurogamer article if you click through to that.

A gaming positive as Haven is getting an update where you can play as a same-sex couple


The comments seem positive as well, which is good, as you can imagine how stuff like this can go.

Now it just needs an update to not be shite, amiright

It makes me happy knowing that annoyed all the wrong people. Not really 'bull' or 'industry' though Mas!

It's a positive thing in the gaming industry, is it not?

...you know what, it's a good thing that happened and I've got a glass of wine, I'm not going to argue the technicalities.  I hope somebody makes Putin play Haven on same-sex mode.

(The wine's a bit rubbish, but never mind.)

Ohh another one, this time Moon Studios of Ori fame.

Sounds similar to what happened at Fullbright with Steve Gaynor, where success gone to their heads.

I guess also with no corporate stuff to follow as well (like that went well for Ubisoft) than casual racism, sexism and bullying is unmonitored.

A key point in there was that it was mostly a work-from-home studio. It seems like the founders approached it with internet brain - so it was like being employed by 4chan. Ooft.

I saw People Make Games have just published a 40-minute deep dive into some abusive indie studios.

Yeah, does sound like that and hopefully they'll learn from this or step-down or something as know that what Gaynor did.

Likely a few in that deep dive, and we keep hearing about more and more. Maybe I don't know a crazy thing like union might help.

As does feel like soon be can't play anything as everyone is a numpty or in bed with a Tencent etc.

Edit
Not watched the deep dive but seen tweets about it, yet again sounds very much like you said Buska about the approach from the founders of these studios.

Think Kate Gray RT something like great at making games, suck at leading and should stick to the games not the leading or along those lines.

Buskalilly wrote:

A key point in there was that it was mostly a work-from-home studio. It seems like the founders approached it with internet brain  -  so it was like being employed by 4chan. Ooft.

That's a big ooft. I'm all for working from home, but not like that. I wonder if Phil Spencer will step in? Moon Studios seem pretty closely tied to XBox, and Spence has been fairly crushing recently on things that might damage the brand. (Apart from arguably buying Activision, but there's still time for him to boot Kotick out ASAP after the merger). To anybody who does watch the video: any other studios I should avoid?

I'm interested in Jim Sterling's video tomorrow. Apparently it's going to be about FromSoftware, which is the first I've heard about anything bad coming out of them.

They're a Japanese company, so . . .

I don't even think I knew they were Japanese.

The founders in the doc are Ken Wong at Mountains who did Florence, Steve Gaynor at Fullbright who did Gone Home and Robin Hunicke at Funomena who did Wattam. And it is the heads that are the issue here, not the whole companies, being abusive, much like Thomas Mahler and Gennadiy Korol at Moon Studios in the NLife article.

This does bring up indie games have a founder problem that sort goes into the RT I mentioned from Kate Gray.

And I've talked about Steve Gaynor in these posts, who said this:

"My leadership style was hurtful to people that worked at Fullbright, and for that I truly apologise," he wrote.

"Stepping back has given me space and perspective to see how my role needs to change and how I need to learn and improve as part of a team, including working with an expert management consultant, and rethinking my relationship to the work at Fullbright.

"I care deeply about Open Roads and the Fullbright team. I'm sad to have stepped back from day-to-day development of Open Roads, but it's been the right thing to do. The Open Roads team has my full faith and support as they bring the game to completion."

that when it comes to Open Roads not sure what involvement he has had and if it should any have baring on playing it or not as the rest of Fullbright may have caused no harm.

You may have noticed some of these games are published by Annapurna, who are mentioned in the video, as some people at the studios reached out to them. Another hard one, as let's say we hear something happened at Playground well then Xbox who now owns them would step in (You'd hope), where Annapurna is just publishing someone's work. This does include the upcoming Open Roads from Fullbright and a game from a new studio setup from a woman who was at Fullbright, that may have left because of Gaynor, you'd think she is on good terms with Annapurna.

Yeah, that I'm not really sure how you approach this, as I doesn't feel like it is with Ubisoft a big corp with lots of issues, that should have practices in places that these things don't happen and are you know fixed. This does seem more like smaller indie teams led by someone that has got two big for their boots after some success and being smaller don't have HR teams etc to sort it. And as these are indie teams, like Open Roads has 6 people working on it, shouldn't be punished for one guy's actions.

So, which company is the latest to attract the scent of bull dung behind it? It must be one of the big Western publishers, right? We've had Ubi and ActiBlizz, we've had CD Projekt Red and EA. Could it be Microsoft's turn next?

Nope. Sigh. This is why we can't have nice things.

This is the first time I've actually cared about a Nintendo story. Any time it's "anti-consumer" or they're just exercising their copyrights, I don't give a fuck, but this leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. I hope they react well to having a spotlight on them.

Hopefully but as I've said in the past, they've got deals with Tencent etc that I'm not too surprised about other goings on.

Buskalilly wrote:

This is the first time I've actually cared about a Nintendo story.

I feel kind of similar. I do wish Nintendo would be less voracious about some of the legal stuff it does, on YouTube and the like; but I don't mind mind that. It doesn't stick in the memory. This definitely tastes worse.

Like Mas, I can't see Nintendo doing anything material sadly. Scullion's Discord reminded me that something similar, arguably worse, happened before in Nintendo Russia; and the chap only got a ticking off. I guess I wasn't as grim about that because Nintendo Russia feels like a smaller part of the whole. Nintendo America does not, but I can see the same thing happening, or less.

Been some more things comeout about Nintendo and allegedly this all started after Iwata past away.

With stuff being NoA has a card system which red card is a worker can use cafe mario, the soccer pitch etc and blue is for contractors that can't use anything along with this being how they're monitored.

Ohh also that systems in the contractors building, yep they've got they're own building have to use systems with XP still on them and VHS tapes for things as well.

Link Mas? I've not been able to find this on VGC, Nintendo Life, or Kotaku. Not sure where I should be looking.

IGN, I believe, but I saw two videos on it yesterday.

Found the link, have also seen more videos etc on this and more info as guess more will speak up.

Further rubbish from the evil state of Saudi Arabia, buying 5% of Nintendo and becoming the fifth biggest owner. Scum.

Said before things like this doesn't surprise me, and will get harder if you want to buy things and not support Saudi Arabia, China etc which Nintendo have more dealings with.

You’ve got it all wrong guys. I heard that The Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund only bought the bad 5.01% of Nintendo. That just means they’ve got ownership of the license for Wario: Master of Disguise, the footage from Nintendo’s E3 2008 conference and the tens of trillions of unsold copies of Chibi Robo!: Zip Lash.