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Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

gamefromscratch.com

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Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#91

Post by CuriouslyC »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #63

Microsoft, one the world's greatest monopolists, bequeaths a game engine monopoly unto Epic Games, in one the biggest corporate blunders of all time. If they were smarter about this, they would commoditize their compliment and open source the Doom The Dark Ages engine just like John Carmack did with the Quake 3 engine.

The industry is skewing heavily indie now, and there's no money in the indie game engine segment. Maybe a few AAA titles will be unhappy that Epic can negotiate more aggressively, but mostly this is a nothingburger, particularly given idTech's rep for batteries not included.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#92

Post by hadlock »

gruez wrote: post #72
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…

>It lets you treat your employees as a replaceable commodity that can be scaled up and down as it makes monetary sense rather than a cohesive team of skilled artisans. Can we extend this elsewhere? Are tech companies' decision to use popular programming languages (eg. python) or software (eg. postgres) part of some dastardly ploy to make programmers "a replaceable commodity ... rather than a cohesive team of skilled…

>so they can be "skilled artisans"

Having had to work with these guys, and then maintain their software when they inevitably get bored and/or leave for more money elsewhere, no. Usually when these guys leave, their stacks/projects are the first to get rolled into the monolith and/or rewritten in the company's lingua franca (python)

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#93

Post by N19PEDL2 »

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…

It looks exactly like what Microsoft already did to its browser engine Trident, which was replaced by Google’s Blink on Edge.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#94

Post by Alex-C137 »

londons_explore wrote: post #87
SteveNuts wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which current trajectory are you referring to?

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#95

Post by MisterTea »

falcor84 wrote: post #40

> Yet today, Microsoft/XBOX decided half the team was deemed USELESS and needed to be let go I feel that this is an incredibly unfair and demeaning take both towards Microsoft and towards the people being fired. As I see it, getting fired is just like being dumped by a romantic partner. It typically says very little about your value as an individual, and almost everything about their current situation and how the rel…

Nice downplay. This is getting dumped by a romantic partner who supported you by paying for your rent, food and other needs/wants.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#96

Post by genxy »

feelamee wrote: post #22

I don't really understand. Id Software is owned by Microsoft? Why Microsoft can laying off employees of Id Software?

If that isn't a perfect piece of antitrust evidence, how crazy is it that MS can reach across a whole industry and buy the company that bought the company that defined the games industry, with Carmack playing revenge of the nerds boy genius. Everything about it is perfect for a locally produced drama somewhere in eastern europe.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#97

Post by noisy_boy »

wnevets wrote: post #67
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…

> It lets you treat your employees as a replaceable commodity This has been the objective of the tech industry for years

Employee as Kubernetes pod.
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