Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

gamefromscratch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 628 posts

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#81

Post by gruez »

TylerE wrote: post #66
Grombobulous wrote: post #16

It’s painful to watch this because the recipe for success at Microsoft is so obvious. They’ve just been fumbling the ball for so many years that it’s catching up to them. And the thing is they’re not unprofitable. Gutting their studios and technology development isn’t going to help growth, it’s going to contract the business.

They are unprofitable though. Profit margins of the entire Xbox division are less than just sticking the money in the bond market.

margins can't be compared to interest rates, because it's comparing revenues against costs. Comparing that with interest rates yields nonsensical results. If you want a proper comparison, you'd need return on capital, which requires you to figure out how much capital is in the gaming division.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#82

Post by colechristensen »

kreco wrote: post #25
colechristensen wrote: post #8

why wouldn't they just sell it? I'm deeply opposed to game distribution companies (console makers) being allowed to acquire game studios. In the same way that theaters and streaming services shouldn't be allowed to do acquisitions. Disney owning whatever ridiculous proportion of media by buying everything serves nobody's best interest.

> why wouldn't they just sell it? Serious question, is there any kind of entities that can be owned, but not "dismantled", if you don't want it you need to try to sell or make it independant. Would there be any chance to make it a thing when a company is bought?

You can put various kinds of "poison pill" in the shareholder rights agreements which are binding contracts on both the company and its shareholders in response to events.

You can also make all sort of post acquisition agreements.

These usually take the form of making stock available at steep discounts in response to actions e.g. in the event of a 20% layoff any employee from the time of acquisition can purchase stock at $0.10 a share, any one laid off will get a million dollars severance, if acquirer shuts down the studio the original founders have the right to re-acquire all IP and trademarks for $1 -- those sorts of things.

This isn't a specific kind of entity, any business entity can have Shareholder Rights Agreements. It's a bit of a game to get the terms right so everything is in good faith and agreeable.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#83

Post by everdrive »

ndiddy wrote: post #19

I think we'll see stuff like this continue to happen over time. As a game company, having your own engine means that you have to be able to cultivate internal expertise in your tooling. Your employees will know this and could do bad things like ask for more money because they know that replacing them would significantly hurt productivity. Meanwhile, laying off your whole engine team and switching to UE5 means that yo…

And of course, there is really no down-side to low-wage contractors wielding UE5. /s

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#85

Post by Catloafdev »

lynndotpy wrote: post #26
Catloafdev wrote: post #9

RIP to the end of an era. Was IdTech used outside of Id? Or was it just a Doom series thing as of recently?

Absolutely, the first versions until idTech 5 were open source and a number of important engines, like Source, derive from it. Wikipedia actually has a family tree that's broader than I remembered: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Quake_-_... The CoD series, Source games (Half Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead), Titanfall, etc.

[dead]

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#86

Post by vintermann »

lynndotpy wrote: post #26
Catloafdev wrote: post #9

RIP to the end of an era. Was IdTech used outside of Id? Or was it just a Doom series thing as of recently?

Absolutely, the first versions until idTech 5 were open source and a number of important engines, like Source, derive from it. Wikipedia actually has a family tree that's broader than I remembered: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Quake_-_... The CoD series, Source games (Half Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead), Titanfall, etc.

Very interesting tree. Today I learned that the engine we used in college classes, ACKNEX, actually wasn't an idtech derivative. I could have sworn.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#87

Post by londons_explore »

SteveNuts wrote: post #48
ndiddy wrote: post #19

I think we'll see stuff like this continue to happen over time. As a game company, having your own engine means that you have to be able to cultivate internal expertise in your tooling. Your employees will know this and could do bad things like ask for more money because they know that replacing them would significantly hurt productivity. Meanwhile, laying off your whole engine team and switching to UE5 means that yo…

I firmly believe if software engineering unionization ever starts to take hold, it'll begin with game developers. There's a lot of money in gaming but the workers are treated like shit, as you pointed out.

With the current trajectory of AI, I see unionisation efforts dead in the water.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#88

Post by Goronmon »

SurgeArrest wrote: post #46

Microsoft EEE at its best: gobble up all game studios and then kill them. Microsoft needs to be split, it should been split years ago, but now more than ever.

Microsoft EEE at its best: gobble up all game studios and then kill them.

"Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" isn't applicable at all in this context though?

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#89

Post by caconym_ »

branon wrote: post #77
ndiddy wrote: post #19

I think we'll see stuff like this continue to happen over time. As a game company, having your own engine means that you have to be able to cultivate internal expertise in your tooling. Your employees will know this and could do bad things like ask for more money because they know that replacing them would significantly hurt productivity. Meanwhile, laying off your whole engine team and switching to UE5 means that yo…

For me this falls apart on the consumer side of things. UE5 games are manifestly lower quality than games built on custom engines. Optimization is especially worse. UE5's performance baseline _requires_ the use of upscalers (DLSS/FSR, fake/AI frames) in order to hit basic targets like 1080p@30fps. I won't buy games built on Unreal Engine. Homogeneity of this type is horrible for customers of the gaming sector.

> I won't buy games built on Unreal Engine.

You're in an extreme minority. Also, unfortunately, Unreal is popular with indies who probably have (in general, relatively) more ethical staffing practices.

Post reply on HN