Mildly Infuriating

Surprised game devs aren't going all office space at this point.

And yet, people bought it. I may sound like an old fart, but Battlefield hasn't been good since BF2/2142. BF3 was a bait and switch where they said it was a return to PC focused gaming and not just a console port (was a console port), and they've been doing it ever since.

Even if you disagree with me and enjoyed the midlife BF, you have to admit the last few have been dumpsters. EA is a dumpster company, we all know this. Why ever give them the benifit of the doubt?

The reason is people are stupid (on average) and the concept of an informed consumer base (or electorate) is a fallacy. For every 1 person who says fuck EA there are 3 people that don't care and 6 that aren't paying enough attention for an opinion on the subject to even cross their mind. Advertising is the only thing that matters in this reality and they know it.

The only bit that matters is the first sentence. Games are here to make money now, same as everything else.

Boycotts don't stop EA money. They have superbowl ad money. The market of consumers that really just don't give a shit about this is way too large, and they will go with what's advertised to them constantly.

I'm not saying don't boycott them. I have for decades. I've preached that for decades. It doesn't work, the AAA dev is going to still have the main stage during every gaming convention and there will still be some weird ass overnight line to be the first one to buy corporate slop game 2026.

indies should be able to create much more advanced games now. indies might just replace those aaa titles

Yeah... game development layoffs are highly visible to us because game development is a high visibility, closely watched industry to obsessive nerds, but this is happening all the time in all kinds of industries.

Kind of. The folks at Blair Mountain stopped playing along and the cops went to war

They're publically traded - they now only exist to generate profit, and that's the only metric that matters to them. It's the same in any industry, unfortunately.

I don't think any company should be able to buy another company. The same way people can't buy other people

And it would stop immediately if those workers had solidarity and refused to work on the project without the full team.

I think the mustache twirl ceo of the year is Ammon McNeff of bricks and mini figs, no doubt some gaming CEO will adopt the look at some point, but few of the big ones really adopt more than a milquetoast fit so as to not fully give themselves away.

Because you have it backwards. Movie villains look like these guys.

Dr John Evil only changed his surname from Balatro because he flirts with Evil

A great deal of the industry is powered by debt financing. And the CEO typically holds the job by gatekeeping access to that borrowed money.

Labor solidarity is predicated on being able to participate in the market. It isn't as if people don't try to Unionize. But if your office or your business or your entire industry can be casually strangled to death by the financial sector when a plurality demand a raise, there's quickly nothing left to unionize.

Retire?