Sega grabs tech layoff baton and dumps couple hundred Euro staff

Sega this week announced it was laying off 240 of its European workforce. According to the video games veteran, it had 3,459 employees as of March of last year, meaning 240 layoffs takes away roughly seven percent of that top figure, in line with recent layoffs at other studios. The ax is set to fall at the Sega Europe office …

[Anonymous Coward]

A shame but not too wide ranging

A huge number and a shame especially to lose Relic

Hyenas was a huge error. I was involved in alpha testing it and openly questioned it being a loot shooter four years too late.

My studio is not affected, but it's a shock as Sega hasn't done this in years, meanwhile even huge Sony let go of 900.

[Dan 55]

Genius

Buys Rovio then fires own staff six months later...

[Blackjack]

Re: Genius

And let's not forget Rovio only real cash cow is Angry Birds, they canceled almost everything else and focused really hard on cartoons for some reason. Even more hilariously they made a cartoon about a game they later removed from App stores for not doing well instead of using the cartoon to promote the game and keep it around.

[Cranulon]

It's "A couple OF hundred"

Double plus bad

[Martin-73]

Re: It's "A couple OF hundred"

Do you happen to have a link for the chrome extension that fixes the ridiculous spellings on this site now?

[diodesign]

Couple complaints

I don't think that extension can address stylistic choices. Sometimes (or most of the time) we skip words in headlines to keep them short and punchy to the point of being almost obnoxiously so.

We are a red-top after all.

C.

[Martin-73]

Re: Couple complaints

Oh no complaints to the actual authors of articles mostly <grin>

[Dan 55]

Re: Couple complaints

You may be able to modify the universal metric translator *monkey script to make the change for you. That script makes The Register's nonsensical units of measurement almost bearable... I don't mean the true El Reg units but the imperial units house style nonsense.

Also the article headlines of today are nothing like those of yore, but again I guess true red top headlines scared off the USAians which are prone to panicking easily. As did the .co.uk.

End of rant.

[Jumbotron64]

When I read this all I could hear was that beloved Sega jingle once you plugged in a cartridge and turned on the console….only this time in a sad minor key.

[steviebuk]

Never nice

To loose a job but Creative Assembly have never been able to do AI properly in the Total War series. Their promos before release were always misleading, then play and it was always easy to get the AI to get stuck. In one "siege" they didn't nothing. All just sat outside the walls not moving so my archers could slowly pick off their massive army.

[trevorde]

Tech layoff baton will now pass to ...

... IBM (again)

[Snowy]

Who would

Want to work in games development if it is not lay off it it long hours in crunch periods.

[Michael Strorm]

"Who would want to work in games development?"

Answer: Mainly naive young graduates- little more than kids- blinded by their love of games into assuming they'll be as much fun to work on as they are to play getting their "dream" job.

Then once they get there, they have their inexperience and youthful uncertainty and lack of assertiveness used against them, and get pushed into working excessive hours for a not-all-that-great salary. If they complain, they're told (correctly) that there are plenty of others who would take their place.

Until after a few years, the majority get burned out, have seen it all before, realise they're being screwed over and get a much better-paid (and quite likely less stressful) job elsewhere.

This attrition isn't a problem for the games industry because for every one that leaves, there are countless more newly-graduated kids eager to take their place. Lather, linse, repeat.

This is how the industrial-scale mainstream videogame development industry has worked since the 1990s. (It was already an established problem when the "EA spouse" case rose to prominence twenty years ago).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Who would want to work in games development?"

Er I'm a 40 year old man who left IT for the game industry.

Conditions are far better. There's no "users". You code based on what the game needs.

Fully WFH. Bonus twice a year. Decent sickness and holiday policies. They contribute to my pension.

The work is easy, as ex IT. I am very technical, and it isn't, oddly, always a technical role. Some roles feel closer to project management.

I really am glad I left IT.

The IT in our place is actually one of the best I've seen. They get a very decent budget.

Yep. You are at best making generalisations about the gaming industry.

Even this sad bit of news is quite rare (for Sega).

[Snowy]

Re: "Who would want to work in games development?"

I am glad it is working out great for you, but sadly I do not think everywhere is the same.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Who would want to work in games development?"

>>Answer: Mainly naive young graduates- little more than kids- blinded by their love of games into assuming they'll be as much fun to work on as they are to play getting their "dream" job.

Half truth. You cannot run a successful company with kids. Many businesses try, but in my experience not the gaming industry. You need experience and we attract from many walks of life.

>>Then once they get there, they have their inexperience and youthful uncertainty and lack of assertiveness used against them, and get pushed into working excessive hours for a not-all-that-great salary. If they complain, they're told (correctly) that there are plenty of others who would take their place.

I've never seen this happen in the gaming industry. I've seen it happen in the NHS and other places though. I'm afraid unless you have a specific example I'm giving this one nul points.

>>Until after a few years, the majority get burned out, have seen it all before, realise they're being screwed over and get a much better-paid (and quite likely less stressful) job elsewhere.

Maybe. That's exactly my experience of IT though heh. Half a point

>>This attrition isn't a problem for the games industry because for every one that leaves, there are countless more newly-graduated kids eager to take their place. Lather, linse, repeat.

The industry is now bigger than the film industry. There's a lack of nuance here. We couldn't for example replace the senior designer who left with a graduate. Degrees are actually not all that important versus a portfolio and experience.

Half a point. You seem to be talking about one specific example but on my decade in the industry I have to say it has been proven false.

>>This is how the industrial-scale mainstream videogame development industry has worked since the 1990s. (It was already an established problem when the "EA spouse" case rose to prominence twenty years ago).

Ah, I see - you're trading on nostalgia.

It is different now. Not wholly different. Lots different.

[MrMerrymaker]

Re: Who would

We have banned crunch. Yes, it gets difficult arguing with the suits how we therefore must move deadlines.

Layoffs happen in every industry.

I've been laid off by IBM twice. More fool me.

Also an NHS trust. They wanted contractors in.

Lay offs are happening now due to amortisation of COVID era finances and have you not noticed the economy has gone to absolute shit?

So your post is another example of those from outside looking in.

If I said "IT is populated by fat sarcastic Star Trek fans" I expect some would rightly bristle. (I myself didn't meet this criteria in my IT era.)

You're just seeing news and making your mind up.

Meanwhile I have a plaque on my wall for millions of copies sold, and I'm going the BAFTAS.

[SuperGeek]

Not surprising...

The games industry of late seems to be all about remasters and remakes. It's boring, it has lost its imagination, catering to the people that just can't let go of retro stuff.

[Shalghar]

Re: Not surprising...

"catering to the people that just can't let go of retro stuff."

They dont cater to anyone except a spitting image of what management believes is "the gamers/consumers".

I also dont let go of "retro stuff". (Including new games that are "retro" when it comes to fun, originality and quality).

Maybe because "retro stuff" had no chance to hide utter boredom and game design failures behind astounding gfx ?

Wizball, Paradroid, Elite, Nebulus, The Last Ninja, Maniac Mansion and others back when Lucasarts did good, Defenders of Oasis (GameGear), Phantasy star 1 (Master system), Ultima series, Decathlon (the joystick killing game), Phantasy 1-3.....

Thats only 8 bit titles, spontaneously remembered and sometimes indeed replayed.

Maybe that the olden days also had a different approach on general quality, apart from deviants like R.I.S.K. or Phobia (the second disc side of the C64 version was never finished, still sold), you could be sure that what you buy is the full version instead of a basic 2 hour demo with expensive "DLC" to come later on and that the stuff you buy actually works.

But maybe also because the current "gaming industry" is just that, a beancounter controlled "nothing creative, only things that have proven to make profits" copy and paste boredom generator (as you correctly assumed), a misguided melange of ever the same elements with too few and fewer new concepts.

To add financial injury to insult of unfinished trash for full price, the abusive online DRM and faster hardware cycles devalue whatever you buy faster and faster.

Bought a multiplayer game with gamespy arcade ? Well in a few years the gamespy licence will run out and suddenly your multiplayer game has no multiplayer part anymore.

Bought anything on Steam ? Too bad, Steam does not support your OS anymore, so you lose access to everything you theoretically pseudo-own until you force "upgrade" to the next OS - which may lead to the games not working properly anymore.

And in the bigger picture, with all the politically ignited, worsened and prolongued crisis, inflation and insecurity, quite a few people have other issues than another ever the same with better gfx half completed game. Things like energy bills, food, shelter, all those useless little things nobody really needs seem to eat up more and more of the gaming funds of consumer livestock.

.

As hard as it may be to accept for some individuals, games are not necessary to survive. Everything that affects peoples amount of spare change/fun funds will affect every industry that thrives on "nice but not necessary".

[Grunchy]

I got GTA5 for free from Epic game store, oh must have been more than 1 year ago? Still never bothered to install it or try it out. I saw the GTA6 trailer, but it doesn’t interest me at all. The last game that interested me enough to actually spend full price on it? Flight Sim 2020.

(I have no interest in PS5 or Xbox, but I find myself tempted by Gamestation Pro…)

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you telling us this? Who could possibly care?

[Shalghar]

Quite frankly my first GTA was 3, my last GTA was 4/vice city. Both bought in a noname sale as i have been learning from the unfinished bug ridden mess that nearly every newly published game has become.So i tend to wait at least a year or longer until i may or may not buy a game, no matter the hype. Saves money and hassle.

The apparent design fails already visible in the step down from GTA 3 to 4 prevented me from even being a bit curious about 5, as i expected that the next iteration would be even worse. I dont even care if my suspicion is right or not. I also dont care about hypocrite advertisement where pixel sex moves are considered worse than a game full of theft and murder.

(After all, as that funny song suggested, "the internet is for porn" so i assume there is "rule 34" higher quality smut than pixel people in any game could simulate.)

The unskippable remote controlled bomb plane sub games with an absolutely unplayable fixed key control scheme was quite unpleasant, useless additions like the ice cream truck sub game and other seemingly incomplete, unfitting and not well thought out game parts and forced, misdesigned capers like the bank robbery added to my aversion.

[MrMerrymaker]

What has this got to do with the article?

There are tens of millions of GTA opinions out there. I was rather hoping El Reg wouldn't be swamped with them too

[Shalghar]

It can be used as an analogy for almost every sequel, be it game or movie.

Take a look at the abandonement of the shining in the darkness / shining force series by sega, take another look what mutated from sonic, either original or sonic adventure on dreamcast. It comes down to abuse a good product name to market mediocre follow ups - that much too often have nothing to do with the pre product. (Same with dungeon siege in the step from 2 to 3).

Phantasy star is a double edged coin. Abandoning the original storyline and keeping the planet and magic names reminds a bit of the star trek demise or the insufferable trash that disney made from starwars. Still, phantasy star online was a product refresh after the mediocre parts 2 and 3 on genesis/megadrive. Then this resurrection was effectively trashed with PS Universe for PC (where an invasive and permanently malfunctioning online copy protection and the overpriced subscription model felt even worse than the shallow single player campaign) and now we have another kind of resurrection on playstation 4.

Sega has had periods of really good games followed by periods of trashing their own product line or simply selling out. Their resurrection after giving up the hardware fights also was more than a really wobbly up/down line than a constant development. And now its down again.

And heres the rebound to the article. Ignore the fans and customers, concentrate on products that everyone and his dog has copypasted ad nauseam, mutate once acceptable assets to mainstream manure thats nothing special anymore and you´re going down. Marketing drivel like those outright primitive and ugly sonic animes didnt help.

The downfall is even accelerated when fewer and fewer people have any money left to buy games and games hardware.

[Roj Blake]

Pharaoh

Last year's Total War: Pharoah was so lacking in content that they were forced to give away the first DLC for free. The last couple of DLCs for Total War: Warhammer III were also somewhat lacklustre.

I suspect that may have some bearing on this.