Confused Supermassive with Supergiant for a moment, phew
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
106 points (99.1% liked)
Games
50323 readers
2585 users here now
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
Authorized Regular Threads
Related communities
PM a mod to add your own
Video games
Generic
- !gaming@Lemmy.world: Our sister community, focused on PC and console gaming. Meme are allowed.
- !photomode@feddit.uk: For all your screenshots needs, to share your love for games graphics.
- !vgmusic@lemmy.world: A community to share your love for video games music
- !freegames@feddit.uk: A community sharing free games giveaways.
Help and suggestions
By platform
By type
- !AutomationGames@lemmy.zip
- !Incremental_Games@incremental.social
- !LifeSimulation@lemmy.world
- !CityBuilders@sh.itjust.works
- !CozyGames@Lemmy.world
- !CRPG@lemmy.world
- !horror_games@piefed.world
- !OtomeGames@ani.social
- !Shmups@lemmus.org
- !space_games@piefed.world
- !strategy_games@piefed.world
- !turnbasedstrategy@piefed.world
- !tycoon@lemmy.world
- !VisualNovels@ani.social
By games
- !Baldurs_Gate_3@lemmy.world
- !Cities_Skylines@lemmy.world
- !CassetteBeasts@Lemmy.world
- !Fallout@lemmy.world
- !FinalFantasyXIV@lemmy.world
- !Minecraft@Lemmy.world
- !NoMansSky@lemmy.world
- !Palia@Lemmy.world
- !Pokemon@lemm.ee
- !Silksong@indie-ver.se
- !Skyrim@lemmy.world
- !StardewValley@lemm.ee
- !Subnautica2@Lemmy.world
- !WorkersAndResources@lemmy.world
Language specific
- !JeuxVideo@jlai.lu: French
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
until this comment, so did i.
Same! Then I remembered Supergiant has under thirty employees and that number made no sense.
I'm surprised these two never got into a trademark dispute...
I am pretty sure you cannot trademark "super" + some other word. You have to be more specific. Well, at least in the USA.
It boils down to likelihood of confusion. I think there would be a legitimate concern here, tbh. But they could have come to an agreement when one registered their mark after the other one had already.
I was talking about being able to get a trademark for anything that is "superX" where X could be literally any word in the dictionary. Its too vague and generic and such an application would almost certainly be rejected.
Supercell, Supergiant, and Supermassive are all trademarkable, and while "super" could cause some confusion, the USPTO doesn't care so much about that particular point because the wordmarks are all different and the logos are all different.
There is technically nothing stopping a computer software company trademark for "Microstar." Unless it already exists obviously, but for the sake of argument let's imagine it doesn't. Even though the name could cause some confusion with Microsoft, as long as the wordmark and logo design are different they USPTO won't care.
There is the case of MikeRoweSoft
I mean, mikerowesoft might have a visibly different spelling and logo, but it is audibly pronounced the same. There is a legitimate argument to be made there, no matter how stupid it is. But none of that matters because it was settled out of court. And Microsoft admitted afterward they were too heavy handed in their approach.
I have prosecuted plenty of trademarks. The logos and words are separate trademarks. For the word mark alone, Supergiant and Supermassive absolutely are likely to raise an initial LOC rejection in the same exact class of goods and services. It boils down to whether the similar words are likely to leave a confusingly similar market impression upon consumers. I legit think here it would be hard to argue around with a typical examining attorney--but the trademark office has a ton more lattitude in grants than the patent office, so it isn't out of the question it could've been successfully argued or even granted initially.
Yeah me too and then I realized I have no idea who supermassive are.
LittleBigPlanet and Until Dawn are their big ones
Omg yeah, came here to comment this. I was super sad for those 3 seconds
I keep getting them mixed up with Supercell, too
Their name has now been changed to Stellar Mass Games.
How big was the ceos bonus last fy?
Their CEO quit end of June without any reason stated. Sounds like he was the first one to get laid off.
Well that's good.
Most of these layoffs are VC groups pulling funding from gaming companies to shift to AI investments
Yeah because they think that AI will make the games in the future.
Have you seen AI make games they're terrible. They objectively work but they're not good games because AI has no creativity.
I doubt they even care, VCs are there for investment returns, they don’t give a shit about anything else
Most of these VCs are funded by old boomers who will fall for any tech hype. LLMs are the most successful grift of all time.
the best I've seen are shitty clones of simple games like frogger or flappy bird - anything else is about as interactive as a slideshow or vaporware.
"redundancy consultation process" I hate newspeak
Its a british thing. If a company wants to lay off a large amount of employees, they have to go through a process called consultation. This obliges them to sit down with your trade union rep (if you have one) and tell them why your job is being cut.
Not sure how much difference it makes in practice, but at the very least it guarantees a 40 day period between announcing redundancies and actually firing people.
Individuals get fired when they fuck up, companies layoff workers when they fuck up. Large scale layoffs are the outcome of poor planning and organization. You can't predict markets completely, suppliers charge, etc which accounts for small # layoffs, but large, mass layoffs should be accompanied by replacing executives and leadership roles like board members first to prevent such poor management.
it's cheaper to hire in bulk and fire "low performers" or whatever than it is to put more effortinto hiring.
and even then, tmk, it's really only so common in amerikka because worker protections are practically non-existent. if it were more expensive to fire people...then maybe the corpos would plan/hire better
Would that be good though? How is a small company realistically going to test if someone is worth hiring or not.
Oh yeah, have you got 10 years experience in the same role?
How is a small company realistically going to test if someone is worth hiring or not.
we got into this stupid market because we spent decades neglecting training. When you don't train for what you need, you don't get good at identifying what skills you really need in order to succeed.
So this question is already too far gone. If someone has most skills but is missing one: train them for it. Even if the training is as informal as "give them a few weeks in a low stakes environment to work on less valuable (but less risky) work.
You can't train someone who can't be brothered
well that makes the hiring or trial process much easier, no? I don't think the problem here is "I can't tell if my employee gives a fuck".
And I can tell you that passion is not something lacking in the games industry.
For a second, I thought this was supergiant games, and had a heart attack
Who?
They'll soon have to rebrand to "fairly large games".
Ah man, the layoffs are hitting the developers of hit 2013 game "Walking with Dinosaurs?" What is the world coming to??
Layoffs are hitting the developers of hit titles such as the Dark Pictures Anthology and Until Dawn.
Their games are probably not easy to make and definitely not cheap if you hire these famous actors. Sure they are not s-tier level of actors but they are definitely not cheap. I bet many of those actors can ask a higher pay than the games industry’s favorite called Troy Baker.
Also the market for interactive movies probably isn’t mega huge either. Every interactive movie series they released was published by a different publisher. Doubt they were massive hits.
Based on what I've seen Directive 80211 didn't seem to sell as well as their previous games, probably because they dropped the "Dark Pictures" stuff from it (or kept it hidden, as it were)... Hard to believe a single mis-step caused this but I'm not in the industry so take that with a pinch of salt.
Once again, this demonstrates just how volatile and uncertain it is to be having game development as a career path.