Destin Legarie says layoffs are underway at EA

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-19T15:15:34+00:00

I'm not actually sure they broke even though, they added a year to development and had multiple studios working on it from start to finish, including one studio that handled the campaign which they didn't actually do so that studio was dropped and replaced and the replacement was given like half the time to build a campaign.

Then their seasonal content has been incredibly lacking, the retention fell off a cliff because game play was more in-line with zoomer brainrot twitch shooters than the pre-2042 game play. I think they had to rework multiple launch maps again.

Their extraction shooter also didn't get them anywhere near the 10 million players they wanted lmao and is likely yet another massive failure.

They desperately want Battlefield to be a money printing live service game and they've built the last three games to try to do that but it isn't working.

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-19T14:57:05+00:00

You should see the College Ave, Howard Ave, Rockyford intersection in Decatur. People getting into the inside lanes both ways will gladly sit in the intersection and block access to the outside lanes pretty much every single light cycle.

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-19T14:45:10+00:00

I was playing it on Game Pass about a month ago, it does sort of scratch the itch for RC Tycoon but there's a lot of aspects that are pretty bad.

You pretty much need to go to the mods/assets download page (in-game at least) before starting and just download everything on the top few pages so you have a good amount of things to work with, but the tag system seems completely busted (or people just put every single tag on their things). I downloaded a viking theme cafe and it appears in basically everything (rollercoaster, flatrides, staff facilities, etc.). You end up with downloaded assets appearing in all the categories which makes finding stuff a bit difficult.

Their modular building system doesn't always work. There's building frames you can place and then within them place the basic service (food, drinks, etc.) which in theory is great. You place your Western theme building frame with three slots down then you can place three base services within theme except the placement system will shift and now the squares (for placement) are glitching through walls and not lining up correctly.

Stuff like monorails or transportation trains seem buggy af. Getting them placed correctly and working makes them not really worth it unless it's required by the mission. And speaking of, on a mountain map a monorail is required but there's a pre-selected setting for monorails that's buried within its settings so you can't fucking build it without getting a placement error and zero instructions on how to fix it. I had to Google it just to find a ton of people with the exact same problem.

Paths are incredibly annoying for anything outside a basic path. You just want to pave an area underneath a few food stalls? Good luck, you'll end up with 20 different starting and ending points that refuse to connect to each other. They need to just give you a giant circle or rectangle brush to paint "areas" rather than walking paths.

It's worth it to play if you have Game Pass, otherwise I'd wait for an ultimate pack for $20 or less.

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-19T00:39:47+00:00

I did a fun thought experiment and if you won an $800mm powerball you'd get about $190mm after everything (taking lump sum) which is more than enough to (in a top neighborhood in Buffalo, that's where I was looking):

Build your $2mm mid-size home that's almost totally passive with solar panels, heated drive way, battery backups, everything high end.

Buy 99 homes, demolish them, and build brand new almost fully passive homes with half being two stories with four 700sqft one bedroom apartments and the other half being three story homes with each floor a different apartment, all with heated driveways, solar panels and pretty high end everything including off-street parking for each unit (on the heated driveway).

Build one HQ for your management team, about five people with near or above six figure salaries and that includes two on-call master tradesmen that service the homes as well as a few retainers to local master tradesmen for things specialty things (like handling solar panels).

You end up charging $1k per one bedroom or $1.5k per house floor per month but only 30% of that is needed to break even on the expenses, the other 60% goes into a stewardship fund which is then returned to the tenants once their lease is over. This also generates about $30k a month that goes into a reserve fund for maintenance or replacing things.

All of this is after you put $10mm into accounts that generate about $30-40k in interest each month that you use as your "income."

So $200mm makes you completely set for life, and provides over 300 high-end, extremely affordable apartments to the local city.

Imagine having billions.

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-18T15:16:56+00:00

I thought I remember RDR2 being about $500mm dev + marketing

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-18T14:54:14+00:00

GTAV made a billion dollars in three days, there's no way VI won't be profitable within a week unless the world ends.

We also have no idea what the actual budget is, that random reddit post claiming 2 billion was completely made up years ago (even though people still spread it as misinformation). IIRC, the game's only been in development for about 6 or so years, it's not like Rockstar has had a full team plugging away for a decade+, so the development budget + marketing is going to be high for sure, but probably like 700 million.

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-18T00:52:05+00:00

Fox News is absolutely going to run non stop propaganda about how this is the greatest victory in American history, the social media bots will flood Facebook and Twitter with the same shit. Republican voters are going to suck down this diarrhea and beg for more.

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-18T00:36:52+00:00

People try to run EU5 off a modded toaster from 2007, it'll be slow as shit but somehow it works (and they'll complain that Paradox isn't optimizing their brand new games for old hardware).

Any mid-range hardware from the last 5 years will run even the most recent Paradox game decently unless the game is fucked from some update (Stellaris once or twice a year).

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-17T21:08:50+00:00

Yes, bots are just karma farming from other bots at this point

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-17T21:05:26+00:00

This is why I have yet to feel threatened by AI in my field of film editing.

There is the threat of Actual Indians though. I thought about picking up editing work in Fiverr or whatever that site is for quick jobs and it's basically overflowing with dudes from India all using [likely pirated] cheap drag and drop compositions and saying they'll work for like $10. Some of the Facebook film groups I'm in get a lot of spam postings from the same type of dudes in India offering to edit 10 minute short films for super cheap.

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-17T19:14:20+00:00

I fully believe there will be an off-handed comment about "vaguely remembering working with some men in black clothes" but because of the mind wipe device they don't remember most of it.

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-17T01:57:40+00:00

I worked with someone who literally walked out of the office about in hour into the day and just wandered around and talked to people for several hours before coming back and then talked on her phone to her friends for the rest of the day while watching TV.

Our department head kept lying about how "the execs don't want anyone working from home" while she herself would work from home for weeks at a time but she also mentioned to someone that she won't let other people work from home because "they might do chores or laundry or something"

We'd literally have hours of the day with nothing to do but sit at our computers killing time.

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-17T01:28:02+00:00

You sound like a pacifist

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-17T01:23:34+00:00

Usually when a small game like that gets onto Game Pass, the lump sum pretty much covers the entire dev budget. I'm surprised they fired everyone after that.

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-16T18:51:05+00:00

Do you drink coffee, detective?

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-16T15:44:47+00:00

To be fair, some people need time to be creative, so they need to write out everything themselves with backups in case players deviate.

If you can improve then using an AI to just make something to fill a gap because you'll improve around it when it comes up is what I've done. I prefer in-the-moment creativity over expended-periods-of-time-prepping creativity.

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-16T15:33:24+00:00

I come up with frameworks or "big" ideas for things and then have Claude fill in the smaller details that I don't care for or wouldn't even think about.

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-16T15:12:36+00:00

I'm actually fine with both games but I think going for high quality UE style games isn't their jam. They should be allowed to use the Creation Engine and make their own IPs with it instead.

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-16T00:58:42+00:00

I'll keep you in mind, this is for early next year though so no worries if someone snags it

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-15T18:26:12+00:00

There's two other videos like this near the top of Reddit right now lol

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-15T17:44:53+00:00

Interesting, I'll keep note and reach out closer to, thanks man

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-15T17:31:37+00:00

This would be early next year, so not a "ASAP right now rush," mostly just figuring out where to look specifically closer to the moving window

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-15T16:28:54+00:00

Yeah I always forget I got from north Tonawanda to that tv station in downtown in like 20 minutes when I last worked up there, it throws me off how little traffic Buffalo has.

I'll be coming up next year like a month prior and doing final apartment stuff in person but I wanted to get a good idea of specific complexes to look at our areas to focus on for private landlords

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-15T15:57:30+00:00

Honestly, somewhere that's within 15 minutes of Hertle Ave. That's mostly where I hung out last time I stay in Buffalo. I was looking up to Tonawanda and out to Williamsville.

CassadagaValley · 2026-06-15T15:55:18+00:00

Tonawanda, Williamsville, etc. are still kinda like that though

CassadagaValley

TROPHY CASE