Topic: Irrational Games shutting down

Actually, IIRC the Publisher/developers only ever make back 20-30% (Perhaps even less) of the actual price of games. If they made $15 for every game, that's $60 Million. Yeah...

Ok, all the people who lost their jobs should just form their own team. Nintendo should hire them to make a new exclusive western IP. Note: I'm just blabbering.

It is sad to hear that these people lost their jobs because of an egomaniac, but if they're good at their jobs, they will probably find work pretty quick. Heck, they could even get a better paying job. Hope it all turns out alright for them.

Too soon Lz, too soon...

According to the article about this over at Digitally Downloaded, I think it mentioned that all the employees he's not retaining are being relocated to other parts of the 2K Games ecosystem.

This is the problem with a lot of modern AAA titles: their budgets are so bloated that even fantastic sales can still mean a net loss for them.

Wow this thread really took off, my post was meant to introduce some facts, but the 4 million in sales was only accurate to the middle of last year.

@Ralizah you have a point: ultimately the success of a game to its studio will come down to sales and profitability, it's a gamble even with a known demand. Maybe the founder just wanted to get out from under the pressure of bloated expectations.

That's an easy position to take.

Truly a shame, but hopefully their output, whatever games they make will be as good as the Bioshock series. Such is the nature of modern game development.

Sucks as a gamer who knows Irrational generally means a AAA title of a certain quality. But as a gamer who finds more joy in Indies these days, it'll be interesting to see what Ken Levine could do with freedom and a small team!

This just proves that some budgets are too big to compensate. The same thing happened to Tomb Raider and ZombiU.

The hypocritical part is, that people are willing to blame Wii U for poor sales, but not Xbox 360 or PS3. What a bioshock...

EDIT: Also, I heard they were laying people off on IGN, but not shutting down the company itself.

to be fair, no one was expecting abysmal post-launch sales for Wii U and Nintendo should have done better to advertise and maybe tell these companies with their Wii U launch titles "wait a month or two to release this guys, stop competing with yourselves!" Though in ZombiU's case, it is the idiotic decision to blame Nintendo because you decided you had to remake your own game 2 different times before release and ignore the fact that selling 500,000 or so out of the initial 3,000,000 Wii U install base is pretty good for a first person survival horror launch title with mixed reviews. I bet Wonderful 101 and Tearaway fans would kill to see that number for their game.

Bioshock Infinite I don't want to be harsh on because it seems likely that the issue was simply that the game was too ambitious (it was supposed to be far more open if early gameplay is anything to go by) but they didn't want to release a product they felt was unfinished either.

@kkslider5552000
I don't want to be harsh either, but it has become more and more clear that all these 3rd party developers are just spending way too damn much. It's a management issue. In this case, they were telling their workers to develop a game past a realistic budget in exchange for their jobs.

If no one expected ZombiU to sell poorly, then this would be even less likely, especially considering Xbox 360 and PS3 both have 80 million+ user base, each. Maybe less on Xbox 360, because of RROD, but the point is still stands.

These games didn't even sell all that poorly by some expectations. At this point, developers need to figure out a way to make games profitable at 5 million sales, because otherwise they're going to keep losing money. If a game needs to cost $20 million or less, they should respect that limit.

This is also all the more reason to port 8th gen games to Wii U. If they want to up their budget by a reasonable amount, they need a bigger audience, because apparently 160 million Xbox 360 and PS3 owners isn't enough, but that's beside the point that some companies just need to spend less and make new s*** instead of releasing CoD every year. Even CoD is losing sales every year, now.

EDIT: I'm not BSing about Wii U ports. If a game will struggle to meet 5 million sales on Xbox One and PS4 combined, that extra time and effort put forth to port a game to Wii U to gain another 6 million potential buyers, would essentially be a better option than not porting.

Platinum Games has offered any of those layed off a job at their studio. However 1 former dev for Irrational (although his Twitter account would say otherwise) only insults them and Wii U. Platinum however, sticks up for themselves and the work they do. Way to go, Platinum. Keep being awesome!
http://www.gonintendo.com/s/222721-rumor-platinum-games-stick...

Hopefully, some less rude "devs" will take up the offer.

@MrWalkieTalkie well Platinum games had all to be the best, after this they ARE the best.

I recently bought all of PlatinumGames titles, now I am only missing Bayo 2 and Infinite Space. They really need to be supported for their awesome work, and now for their empathy to other devs.

I think that's just a troll. No out-of-work developer would be stupid enough to go around and insult potential employers.

Sony Santa Monica is going to hire some of the Irrational guys as well.

I had heard before that Ken Levine was hard to work with, but i'm still surprised the whole studio is being dissolved with him leaving. I do remember Rod Furessogn was hired expressly for the for the purpose to push Infinite out the door and not suffer another delay.

Its kind of cool to see all these old hands leave established companies or get free regin at the places their at.

This is just stupid. He fired a ton of people just so he could have a smaller team? Why not do it as an Indie would do it, just leave and start over again? Why fire people? I love his games but honestly i think Levine seems like a bad person now...

I would kill to have a high budget game studio, and Levine just lays off several of staff so he can make lower budget games?!
Dude.. Don't be so selfish, indies struggle to make games with money from their pockets or if Iucky, kickstarter funds. Honestly, why not leave if you want make smaller games? What about all those people who lost their jobs? Do they not matter? Of course they don't, it's all about YOU now isn't it? Jerk.

The making smaller games part I can understand but what a A-hole to just lay off all those people. At least they're being scouted out by other studios already so they won't be unemployed long.

It's even more sad because his new studio is still at 2K. Dudes got hired for nothing.