PlayStation's live service gaffe
Plus the unholy collusion behind Black Myth: Wukong
Welcome back, everyone! It’s almost fall, so I thought I’d resurrect Updater and keep you all in the loop. I’ve spent the weekend combatting trolls over Black Myth: Wukong weirdly enough, but I’ll also be heading to Twitchcon in San Diego in September and getting back to in-person reporting.
Since the last update, several gaming outlets have shut down, many have been laid off, some people did manage to find employment, and some companies found new buyers. It’s been a turbulent time in games media and in gaming. Game Informer’s closure also took down the stories those journalists put together. I’m heartened to see some of them continue their work with the Indie Informer.
Concord shuts down
PlayStation’s live service, hero shooter, Concord, will be taken down, only two weeks after the game was released. The developer said in a blog post, “we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended.”
The game is set to shut down on September 6, and gamers who bought a PS5 or PC copy will be offered refunds. Those who bought the game via Steam or Epic Games store will have to go through those companies for a refund.
While many live service games eventually shut down, the news of Concord collapsing seems have unfolded in a particularly fast manner.
Asking a veteran game developer when he thinks layoffs will end
Earlier this year, I sat down with Obsidian studio design director Josh Sawyer to chat about the former Xbox exclusive Pentiment coming to the Nintendo Switch and the industry’s general state of malaise. Sawyer was able to share his thoughts on how well the game has been received so far.
“As long as the people paying the bills are happy with what we’re doing, I’m happy about it,” he added. “The metrics for success are different. We do have sales figures for people who have bought the game, and I have numbers on Game Pass of people who have played the game. There it becomes more complicated because then it’s about retention, because a lot of people will play a game for five minutes, but will they play it for two hours? Will they play the full game? We’re still figuring out what success looks like.”
Sawyer adds that for him, it’s simply about the game finding its audience, as niche as it is. He was also glad that his employees did not have to work too much overtime, saying, “We didn’t cause undue damage along the way, which is very important.”
Sawyer says that he’s currently helping out on Avowed, Outer Worlds, and that his next studio project is a while off. Meanwhile, he’s bracing for more layoffs, given the current state of the industry.
“We will recover from this. But if you had to ask me for a prediction, it’s going to happen again. I’ve seen people say, this can’t keep going on. It can. What’s going to stop it? I know that’s a grim way to look at it. But the things that led to this can certainly happen again,” Sawyer says.1 “I do think we will recover. But it’s a very rough time for a lot of people. I’m afraid that it will probably happen again and it will probably take 10 to 15 years.”
Across the internet:
Raven, which helps make Call of Duty, filed an unfair labor complaint against Microsoft, which Stephen Totilo broke in his Game File newsletter.
On Thursday, Inverse launched its Game Changers series, where we’ll profile the technicians and tastemakers behind your favorite games. Hayes Madsen kicked us off with a profile of the creator of Final Fantasy, which you can read here. We’ll aim to publish these every month and feature a wide range of folks.
Earlier in August, Game Informer announced it was shutting down after 33 years. It’s a bleak outcome in the worst timeline. I managed to write two articles for Game Informer before it shut down. One on Dungeons and Dragons’ influence in nearly every video game and one on how generative AI was already affecting the industry.
This summer, I also wrote a feature on the ex-Riot Games, ex-Bungie shooter-mobile online battle arena hybrid, Supervive, where I likened video game criticism to eating a burger.
Disney will go to court over a wrongful death case in October, after a doctor ate at a resort restaurant and died from nut and dairy allergies. The suit, filed by her spouse, alleges the restaurant staff assured the doctor her meal would be allergen-free. Now the twist, and the reason this is a tech story, is that Disney asked the Florida court to send the case to arbitration, saying that the plaintiff waived his rights to sue when he signed up for a Disney+ free trial in 2019. If this sort of argument held water in court, you can imagine the precedent it would set, especially considering how Disney+ has more than 150 million subscribers who have likewise waived their rights to suing Disney. After a public outcry, Disney filed a notice on August 20 to withdraw its request for arbitration. Regardless of the outcome, this case highlights an intriguing and dystopian question: Can terms such as the Disney+ free trial ones prevent people from suing for matters unrelated to the streaming service, like wrongful death cases?
The New York Times has been delivering lots of stunning gaming stories lately, including this profile of indie developer Xalavier Nelson Jr. who’s had a really great year, and this look into the Harvard-trained psychiatrist and Twitch streamer Dr. Alok Kanojia and his involvement with Reckful, who committed suicide months after the two streamed together about depression and mental health. The Times spoke to Reckful’s brother, who described the stream as “sort of dangerous stuff.”
In other news, this Black Myth: Wukong hot take by me has ruffled plenty of feathers. But I stand by what I said. Gamergaters and Chinese nationalists are some of what’s behind the game’s recent success.
And with that, we’re in September, aka feast season for video games. I’ll see you back here again with much more to come. Thank you for all the support!
Sawyer spoke to me in February and since we last chatted, the industry saw many major players shut down studios and lay off employees.