Posted by bauc 3 hours ago
I feel that this is an incredibly unfair and demeaning take both towards Microsoft and towards the people being fired. As I see it, getting fired is just like being dumped by a romantic partner. It typically says very little about your value as an individual, and almost everything about their current situation and how the relationship with you fits into their future plans and the other opportunities available to them.
Corporate culture spent the last fifty years convincing the working public that it was important to identify with your job, career, and most importantly, your employer. That's how you get the most out of a worker. If they identify themselves as - just as examples - "parent" or "spouse" first, those priorities can get in the way of their value creation for you.
The employer can, of course, drop you as an employee pretty much at-will. You'll be left with shame, disillusionment, and potential financial setbacks, but they'll have accumulated the value from your best efforts.
But that is basically the minimum set of consequences for any homemaker or non-breadwinner when a marriage fails.
Think about women through the centuries, who’ve been faced with basically homelessness and poverty, and the full responsibility to all their children, if they divorced or separated.
And then it becomes crystal clear why many people cling to suboptimal and abusive relationships, because really, we need one another.
There's also an increase in the number of women who are able to independently support themselves.
People are also less likely to get married now for that exact reason.
If there were some sort of alimony for employment, even if just for a year, and a public health insurance option to fall back on, you probably don't see that much outrage from the people who have lost their jobs. But then, you'd also, at least in the minds of certain employers, see less willingness on the behalf of employees to throw their whole lives into the production of value for the business, and I think that's part of why you don't see guaranteed severance and public health insurance in the US.
Much of the gaming industry outside the indie space has stagnated, making sequels that don't offer much outside of slight increases to graphical fidelity and the odd thematic switch.
- Every studio uses their own custom set of tools and development practices. The economies of scale of merging studios together just doesn't really exist.
- The functional difference between most engines for consumers at this point is largely meaningless. There are no order of magnitude gains like there used to be. Most of the engineering is on the cloud services architecture or anti-cheat.
- The median "developer" at a game studio is not actually a very technical person. They mostly just spend their days inputting content and assets with the available tools.
- The value of a AAA game is not how innovative the gameplay is but how much content they were able to stuff into the game.
- Nobody cares about "exclusives" anymore when 90% of AAAs have interchangeable gameplay with other AAAs.
- The cost to start a new studio is negligible compared to the cost of acquiring existing IP.
They can stick to desktops 10 years ago, make smaller teams, and either build their own engine or use something that is not UE5.
Sure the Xbox division wasn't doing amazing but still had $24B of revenue in 2025. For reference PlayStation made $30B that same year.
Can't wait for more terrible UE5 games.
"In France, Arkane's management is beginning required consultation with its Works Council to review potential strategic options."
Fuck Microsoft.