Plays out in small tech companies too, albeit in a slightly different way.

Got that carrot dangled in front of me at a past job. Company was past start-up phase; self-supporting and doing ok, but not outrageously well. Promises of riches should the company be "noticed" and bought for an outrageous amount.

Of course none of that accounted for the CEO (founder and 85% shareholder) being an absolute crazy person, who would change the development roadmap into making a vastly different product than the one we (the techies) believed in, TURN DOWN THE OUTRAGEOUS SUM BECAUSE HE THOUGHT HE COULD GET A BETTER OFFER, basically run the company into the ground, and wind up selling it for a pittance (which would have made the employees' share a pittance of a pittance).

I mean most of us had already left by that point, but finding out around 4 years after that he'd turned down about $150M and wound up selling out for $3M, that stung a little.

Sounds like just another way to avoid paying people. A share that’s never paid out might as well just be Monopoly money.

That seems insane to agree to, like it incentivizes the company to fire people the day before their stock is fully vested.

Except these were never meant to be paid out. Bungee isn’t about to give away their company to their employees.

It’s a plastic carrot.

RSUs can be a great bonus, but agreed, you definitely shouldn't consider RSUs part of your total compensation unless they vest quarterly to yearly. If they take a full four years to start vesting you definitely shouldn't count on that income.

Honestly, consider banning any reward besides cold hard cash. Pay people up-front and in full. If there's residuals then they're a percent gross and don't say shit about employment.

If somebody did the work - give them the fucking money.

Complicated forms of theft should put white-collar scumbags in prison.

It's a dick move for sure, but the clawback of unvested shares is vicious. Not possible to know the total worth without being privy to the employment contracts of those let go, but for a single senior employee of long tenure it might constitute a 6- or 7-figure rip-off. Depending on the number of staff let go, the amount of options each held and what their strike prices were, this layoff could potentially constitute a clawback of options that would have been worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars of Sony shares.

“Though not health insurance”

Healthcare wasn't affected, thankfully.

I really don't understand in what universe this is not considered theft?

Wage theft is #1 in terms of total $ amount stolen out of all forms of theft, but business owners own government so.... 🤷

fired the entire Lego Island team

So they would've just fired the union, no? Do unionise, but at a certain point you can't protect yourself without socialism.

We are going to be seeing a lot of this over the next few years. And it is mostly the same as "EA bought and killed all these studios" back in the day.

The live game market is more and more crowded every year and Destiny 2 is winding up the same arc it has been in since Destiny 1 (I think?). It is hard to tell what the reality of "45% below the full-year outlook" means, but player retention HAS been falling and that is a good indicator.

If Bungie had stayed independent or stayed at MS they would likely be in the same place. Well, at MS they would have gotten gutted with 343 last year.

Its similar to HBS getting gutted under Paradox. I still think it is bullshit that, of all studios, HBS was not given the chance to "fix" Lamplighters considering their amazing track record in that genre. But also? I don't know a single person who was excited for Lamplighters League. We all heard "Harebrained Schemes is making a new game" and immediately got our hopes up for something like Shadowrun or Battletech. And then we got LPL which... is fine. But, regardless of whether they were at Paradox or independent, that would have likely led to massive layoffs because of the flop.

And we are going to see a lot more of this, same as we did in the 90s and 00s. Between economic uncertainty, increasing interest rates, and just general "flops". Because EVERYONE thinks "extraction shooters" are the next big thing. But... we are increasingly seeing questions of whether Tarkov is even particularly successful. Same with lots of other games. And publishers are less likely to say "Well, you'll get it right next time. here is another couple million bucks" in the current climate.

God, if only

Are you threatening me?!