Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are still a few studios fighting the good fight Rockstar, CDPR (they at least made up for their big mistake), Larian, FromSoft, Naughty Dog, Valve
Does Valve even still make games?
I live in eternal hope.
Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios
61–70 of 118 posts
Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios
#62This is a 23-year-old game we're talking about here. The design work was complete long before anyone working on this project was hired by Ubisoft, and proven in the form of a game that shipped several console generations ago. Ubisoft presumably still has all of the original art assets for reference. All that had to be done was to study the original game code, port it for modern systems, and then polish up the visuals…
It depends what you mean by "original". The very first Prince of Persia game came out in the early 90s. It's at least 35 years old. It was noteworthy as being one of the first games (if not the first) to have ragdoll physics for the movement of the player. It was a game of playing through 12 levels (IIRC) and if you died, you started over completely. I played it for 20 hours straight at one point and ended up beating…
> being one of the first games (if not the first)
Karateka. From same Jordan Mechner.
> I think it takes like 30-45 minutes for a full run through normally?
You had 60 minutes max to beat the game - that was the catch.
Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios
#63Beyond Good and Evil 2 is dead ?.
When has it been truly alive, is it 10 or 15 years of development hell now?
Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios
#64>Ubisoft will now focus on developing open world adventure games - which let players freely navigate vast environments - and live service games which seek regular payments from players. Isn’t that what they’ve been doing for a decade that got them to today?
My number 1 complaint with Ubi games is that they all feel the same. Sure, in this one you stab, and in that one you shoot, and in that one over there you stab AND shoot, but it's all fundamentally the same. You've got a drone or a bird or a droid to tag enemies for you, and there's a straightforward shopping-list style crafting mechanic. There's also some vehicle combat, but its very limited, and its pretty rare that you're part of a larger group of vehicles attacking together - at best its a group of enemy vehicles coming after you (and the comedy of errors of those enemy vehicles crashing into each other trying to get to you, because apparently they didn't turn on pathfinding while in "alert" mode...). The whole thing looks like its chasing the annual-release pattern of Call of Duty, and the major sports franchises.
Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios
#65Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Finding a job is hard and I'm picky about the technology I work in.
Thanks for the reply. Wishing you luck, in either your company turning around or a new opportunity finding you.
Thanks :) I've been applying but it feels like yeeting my resume into the void. I'm also staff level and those roles are fewer to come by. I suspect that I will have to settle for a higher paying senior role, which may not be that bad.
Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios
#67I dislike that an executive is quoted as blaming "rising development costs", essentially blaming the workers/salaries, with no rebuttal. This is especially suspect with the timing of closing an office that just unionized. It might be frequency-bias, but of the companies downsizing/closing in my area I see almost all of the published explanations are blaming wages. And there can't be a really fair counter-view by the…
> It might be frequency-bias, but of the companies downsizing/closing in my area I see almost all of the published explanations are blaming wages. And lest we leave it merely implied, the problematic wages for the company are the workers, who make the products being sold. The wages of middle management + executives who allegedly steer the ship are magnitudes larger, but those are completely fine.
> The wages of middle management + executives who allegedly steer the ship are magnitudes larger, but those are completely fine.
As is any money delivered to shareholders, for literally doing no work at all.
But it's morally repugnant to pay a worker one penny more than necessary.
Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios
#68I loved Prince of Persia, bummed to hear the re-launch has been shelved.
Just last week it was revealed that it had gotten an ESRB rating (now removed). So it must have been pretty far along in development. https://web.archive.org/web/20260114063329/https://www.esrb....
What happens to all that content/work when this sort of thing happens? Just gone gone or?
Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios
#69I dislike that an executive is quoted as blaming "rising development costs", essentially blaming the workers/salaries, with no rebuttal. This is especially suspect with the timing of closing an office that just unionized. It might be frequency-bias, but of the companies downsizing/closing in my area I see almost all of the published explanations are blaming wages. And there can't be a really fair counter-view by the…
> And there can't be a really fair counter-view by the journalist because what are they to do, interview a laid-off worker at the business? Umm, yes? Thats called journalism They don't have to name people if they can get independent verification from multiple sources (standard was 3, sometimes 2)
Many times your severance comes along with a non-disparagement agreement. And typically the people being laid off don't really have the insight into the operational costs to serve as a counter-point to that argument.
That's not to say the journalists shouldn't try. Having execs pushing their probably false or at least misdirecting narrative in order to control the optics without question or consequence means that they'll continue to operate dishonestly.
Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios
#70It looks like their business model is mostly just remakes and remasters now with these closures. Does the C suite really believe that they can just milk those IPs forever and never create anything new?
> It looks like their business model is mostly just remakes and remasters now with these closures. Does the C suite really believe that they can just milk those IPs forever and never create anything new?
It only needs to work until they're on to their next job.