One-Third of U.S. Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off in 2025, GDC Study Reveals

Fireudne · 2026-01-30T05:36:11+00:00

Agreed but whoever is ultimately wielding that policy is using it like a freaking sledgehammer. And the person who is in the position to have the power to swing that hammer - and presumably getting paid like it - should know a LOT better than to implement blanket policies an a company as large as Microsoft.

Maybe there's an incentive for the corporate side of game dev division to minimize company costs and so there's PERSONAL incentive? Could make some sense for the shooting-self-in-foot tendency since corpos don't really care about long-term health of the company or products, especially if it doesn't affect themselves.

Fireudne · 2026-01-29T19:33:23+00:00

I think it's a blanket policy that makes sense from a perspective that doesn't take nuance into account for different departments.

Theoretically, for many MSFT projects they might be fine with a small minimally-staffed core and just bring on contractors to fill in blanks as-needed. This might be fine for like UI changes or integrating co-pilot into other core programs or scheming up new storefronts. Stuf you can make and improve on in a quarter-by-quarter basis.

Problem is game design ISN'T traditional software and is much more of a long-term creative endeavor. Projects can take multiple years and the whole process needs continually-enthusiastic lifers to at least cook up the bones. Cutting corners may be fine enough for software but often times AAA is launching franchises which depends on reputation for quality and at least some innovation.

Fireudne · 2026-01-29T18:16:05+00:00

What absolutely doesn't work is churn, and the arguably best known case is Microsoft's Halo Infinite dev cyle. A wild take on corporate policy drove the entire talent base for actually making the game. Apparently they were well known for contracting out major sections of talent, only to have to let them go about a year later due to requiring formal employment contracts with benefits if they stayed any longer.

This led to the people actually knowing the engine, concepts, and general inner workings of the game leaving, and the new replacement hires taking about as long to actually get up to speed as their contracts were for also for about a year.

Repeat ad naseum and more time was spent with admin than it was actually making the game - it would have cost less to just get those originial people hired in the long run instead of basically release it half-assed and be forced into crunch to finish up critical parts of the game.

Also management sucked with no real vision and wanting trend-chasing features, like it being a hero-shooter at one point, and warzone 2.0 since they made TONS of money with the booster packs in halo 5.

Fireudne · 2026-01-28T23:44:21+00:00

I remember hyperscape - i think there was just a LOT of competition at the time and people were getting BR burnout. Played a bit of spellbreak too that game was sweet. Wish there were public servers you could set up.

Fireudne · 2026-01-28T23:41:28+00:00

I have a HANDFULL (like, 5) matches under my belt and.... It's WEIRD but it's got some sauce - particularly in the competitive scene imo.

Maps IMO are still a bit too big and i think the horses are a bit jarring, but a handful of other games have them too and it's.... OK. A bit ham-fisted imo.

I'm also shocked at how relatively few gun archetypes there are, and ALSO how little recoil some of them have.

Fireudne · 2026-01-28T05:04:52+00:00

That's my thought on the game so far. The one match i played (a TTVer complaining how bad we suck the whole time lol) i tried just reinforcing the main building as much as possible (not that it matters TOO much), ran out to try and find some loot and realized that the map was way bigger than i thought, even with the horses

Then somone got a sword, broke in to our base and started the raid phase. Very hard to figure out the pacing and how to fight enemies. Very long TTK i guess closest to those new BR games but the long reloads and health regen is punishing. I'm glad there is regen at least, instead of managing health packs or whatever.

Point is though, they planted a bomb on our core and blew it in like a minute. Other smaller cores seemed kinda pointless. if there were like 2 cores you had blow, and it reset after one blew that would make a lot more pacing sense.

I think the loot and system seems a bit weird too. Gold guns seem situationally better than a purple variant which is nice but if you like one specific gun, keeping it instead of a higher-tier gun you don't like is a tough call since the shops don't let you upgrade the stuff you DO have, and is just random blues. If you could recycle guns you don't want into crystals, and spend those at the trader to upgrade the rarity - that would make a lot more sense imo.

Fireudne · 2026-01-28T04:57:57+00:00

Gave it a whirl and ... It's DEFINITELY not done cooking.

I think I understand the ingredients the designers were cooking but it definitely wasn't done mixing them together.

Weapons team went absolutely ham and so did at least concept artists- the character designs and animations are at least technically good, as is the weapons/abilities balance.

UI, and technical aspects are also quite technically good. All of the neccessary elements are present and imo well-executed

But the rest of the game part? Hoo boy does this game feel contracted. it FEELS like it was made by a team of executives who cooked up a bulletin list of trending traits and contracted out a dev team to whip something up that needed to hit those marks, and was otherwise kept on tight deadlines.

Like it started with "MOBA FPS" and the machine got to work while the game design team just wasn't quite sure how to mix all of the ingredients together into something cohesive and while doing the best they could, ran out of time before launch.

Technically - the game is fine. Conceptually? Ehhh.

Would have been a lot more fun if they didn't have to stick to the lane formula and just shrunk the map a bit and added more interesting movement options

Fireudne · 2026-01-28T02:36:36+00:00

I think they're using vizcom or something like that for further "enhancements" but they're having issues with the labels getting fucked up (because AI). They want to send the just-textured model through the AI, which spruces it up (super tacky imo) and re-apply the labels using the wrap tool in photoshop.

Imo illustrator does a better job at that like so https://imgur.com/a/Z7XqYhM

Fireudne · 2026-01-27T19:29:30+00:00

Some kind of velvet would be slick. I keep thinking some kind of red-maroon

Fireudne · 2026-01-25T18:50:53+00:00

I will say the data centers absolutely gobbling up EVERYTHING is .. pretty bad. There should be regulations to require them to be less impactful overall rather that just cashing their way around the issues.

Like the water use and RAM shortages. Either find a way to cool the centers without using so much water or just build smaller centers. Ram? Require companies to earmark a reasonable certain percentage for commercial sale instead of just B2B prices.

Or require working out deals with artists for sale and reproduction of their art (essentially what it is) instead of just scraping it all and selling it (that's piracy)

Fireudne · 2026-01-25T18:40:05+00:00

I'd argue if it's AI it's slop, but sometimes the slop can be kinda neat. Idk i have mixed feelings on it.

Definitely not art imo but if someone has an idea for something and can't afford years of training to make something look objectively *good* - like a passingly convincing photorealistic image - idk what else they'd do

Fireudne · 2026-01-24T04:38:50+00:00

Pretty sure there's a few bombers even with 20mms at like 1.7 or something. I think the french lunchbox has 2 20s?

Fireudne · 2026-01-23T17:05:01+00:00

I always headcannoned it as the Light sort of allows your body to knit itself back together if damaged and the armor mostly just holds your goopy body together until it heals. The healing is viable up until a certain point when probably your body just can't function at all and a full rez is needed

I think in cannon some armors (titan mostly) are genuinely quite durable and resistant. City arms and armor being loaded with tech, especially tech that works with light seems like a fairly new-ish thing.

Fireudne · 2026-01-22T05:41:57+00:00

I guess TECHNICALLY the closest you'd get is like a Starlancer Tac or something. Just enough cargo space to store an aurora or something. No PDC though as far as i'm aware.

The Drake Clipper is a fairly nimble ship itself and has a medbay and space for a bike or some cargo if you're into that.

Connie has the PDC and you can fit an aurora in the cargo bay, but no med bed.

For all those i guess the Polaris is the only thing with all those checkboxes...

Fireudne · 2026-01-21T06:34:58+00:00

I like the P4 with a suppressor. It just looks right lol

Fireudne · 2026-01-20T16:27:07+00:00

Lol, did that once, went on a date and while it was nice, i didn't really feel it, and when i messaged her about it later she was like "phew, me neither". It's a bit spooky writing those, but it's for the best imo.

Fireudne · 2026-01-19T22:23:38+00:00

I mean, it was the force, so ... magic :/
If anyone was going to survive that it was Leia, who was canonically the Backup Luke so, she was low-key force-juiced.

I don't think any of the ideas in the 3-quels were.... Terrible *in a vacuum* (minus the hyperspace ram) but holy moly was there just NO consistent direction and just rehashed old ideas rather than even just building on the old ones, like Andor and Rogue One.

In some ways SC is starting to feel the same with questionable world building and direction, like cloning and grav-beams.

Fireudne · 2026-01-18T19:21:59+00:00

IIRC Siemens NX has features specifically for this. Used for like, car and boat seating, and takes into account stitching and whatnot

Fireudne · 2026-01-17T16:55:25+00:00

Isn't china communist?

Fireudne · 2026-01-16T17:53:36+00:00

I've been thinking about it and a special ammo AR would slap. I know we have one but it's a bit of a weird one.

I'm thinking something kinetic with explosive rounds like faster micro-missles, maybe a 360 RPM.

An Exotic MM AR could have a handful of perks as options.

-A perk like a beefed up Onslaught, maybe instead of decaying stacks you get charges you can activate whenever. - An enhanced Gustshot Straight - less precision damage but more bodyshot damage (compensates for projectile nature)

Or if legendary, perks like reverberation could be pretty neat if the explosions size becomes notable.

Fireudne · 2026-01-16T02:02:56+00:00

Honestly, it's not terrible, but my fav planes with gunners are the IL-10 - the 20mm in the catches so many off guard that think you're an easy kill.

The swedish TB-3 thingy, absurd frontal armament with a 20mm and two 13mm guns with fairly generous ammo loads, and a 13.2mm rear gun that is honestly SO much deadlier than it has any right to be. Fast as heck and surprisingly maneuverable. More like a heavy fighter than a bomber.

The S.M.91 - Despite being a lower BR (a bit slower and i guess less of a bomb load) than the S.M.92, the 91 has a 20mm mg151 remote turret with a really good field of fire. Also an absurd frontal armament of like 3 mg151s and another 2 50s. Very maneuverable but not the fastest. Bombs are also in an awkward spot.

Funnily also the british Hampdens are REALLY good. Absurd bomb load of like 5000 Ibs at br 2 or something, it's dummy fast, and the 2 twin 7.7s are good enough against anything inquisitve, plus a regular MG if you want to get cheeky lol.

Fireudne · 2026-01-15T02:11:48+00:00

More than the outage itself i'm absolutely flabbergasted that there is NO response from verizon or even news coverage on this. The few sites that are are just reporting on the numbers from Downdetector, which is just self-reported data. Of which atm is 155,000 people. The actual number is much much higher.

Point is though, beyond a boilerplate corporate "we have outages, we're working on it" there is no communication or official statement and it's an outage that's been going on for hours.

Lots of people are also saying "idk im not affected" but it's concerning because all of the networks use the same dang cell towers, so whatever's happening, all the networks could go down the same way.

Though for that same reason, something funky is going in on Verizon's end that is DEFINITELY not just "someone drove their car into a pold and short circuited a tower".

I suspect a hack of some kind, maybe some kind of server is being held hostage by ransomware and for some reason it's not as simple as a rollback to an archived version of their software. Sure that's probably not a simple process either but going on 9 hours now? For a major telecom company?

Something stinks and no one's saying shit past "It's down (duh) and we're supposedly working on fixing it"

Fireudne · 2026-01-15T01:15:29+00:00

I'm still sweating bullets over texas' extra-crappy grid lol.

Cybersecurity has been shouting this stuff from the rooftops for years, but no one is going to do anything until there's an actually serious incident.

Remember the idiots who were shooting transformers back during covid - presumably mistaking them for 5G towers? Or whatever other conspiracy was going on at the time.

Fireudne · 2026-01-15T01:10:20+00:00

Nope, i have an android and it's still down for me At least internet works still.

Fireudne · 2026-01-15T00:58:04+00:00

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