Larian publishing director on mass layoffs: 'None of these companies are at risk of going bankrupt. They were just at risk of pissing off the shareholders'
Larian publishing director on mass layoffs: 'None of these companies are at risk of going bankrupt. They were just at risk of pissing off the shareholders'
Publicly traded companies exist solely for the shareholders. If they call for some action, of course they should get it.
It sucks being a customer of such a company, because your interests are second place, even though logically the company doesn't exist without "you"
In my opinion game studios should not sell out to investors and/or have any stocks as it will lead to profit making the calls eventually. It is tempting to get a bunch of investment, I know it would make my game studio easier to run right now, but then you are constantly reminded how it all ends up. Don’t like the system, stop playing in it and build your company slowly and organically instead and retain full control.
Same goes for many businesses outside of gaming. Imagine if there was no such thing as the stock market / investors and all companies had to grow on their own merits.
In my virtual studio everyone is their own sole proprietorship contributing to the project off and on and getting compensated fairly for their contributions. They also have their own projects too and may even pay me to help them sometimes. This way everyone assumes their own risk and reaps their own benefits. If any one person on the virtual team has a hit with their project, they retain full control and owe no money back to some shareholders who did nothing but lend money to make money. It does mean I am way slower than if I could just hire everyone full time as employees, but knowing where having investors will ultimately take me, I accept. Plus going slower means more time to sit on things and polish and not feel time pressure to appease shareholders.
Shareholders are a little like getting a loan and depending on how successful you are, you have to pay back more than you borrowed and giving them control on your art. No thanks.
as it will lead to profit making the calls eventually.
Unfortunately it's not even this. A company can be perfectly profitable and still be sued by shareholders for not making them money. This is because the leeches shareholders only want to see short-term growth at any cost so they can dump the stock 2 quarters later at a profit
In my virtual studio everyone is their own sole proprietorship contributing to the project off and on and getting compensated fairly for their contributions.
This is one of the biggest roadblocks I see devs of all shapes run into: how did you bootstrap to the point of paying decent wages? I ask because I won't accept free work, I won't accept AI garbage, and I value talent and think it should be paid. But that middle part is hard, and losing 2-5 grand on failed projects hoping that they can pull their weight is literally vexing me.
That is a good question. I spent the first 18 months making an early access version of my title and then started making money from that and have been growing it since. I am hyper focused on the overall experience which has put my title in the top .01% of all titles in Meta’s early access store called App Lab. Been at the top for nearly 3 years now. It is easily a 10+ year project even though I am full time now. Yes…I continuously update to keep current with the tech. It has all come a long way since I began over 4 years ago.
I am going slow too as I cannot hire people unless I make the money first. Really trying to do it organically. About to release another big update to the park (it is a highly detailed VR Theme Park) and will raise the price again. I raise the price each time I add more content while all those who already bought get all the new content for free. No in app purchases, no add ons as I wish to reward early adopters and ensure each guest’s experience is whole.
If at all possible you should never take your company public. It's not worth the loss of control.
I am of the political persuasion that companies should be incentivized to sell to their employees first and the public only if the company cannot expand without that funding.
Depends for whom, it's probably worth for the owner who just want an exit with money and that's why it happens. Not many people have strong enough values to think about the welfare of their customers before their personal comfort.
We should make it a requirement for a majority shareholder to work the lowest tier positions of a company for five years before they can sell shares.
I was just gonna say don't let shareholders form a board. Sometimes companies need money for investment, but there's literally nothing that states they have to give investors any kind of control. Can you imagine letting some nub who inherited dad's money at 22 to come in and tell you that he doesn't give a fuck about your company, he just wants another 1% profit? Why would you let any of these toxic fucks near your brainchild?
When every company is a democracy you might have a point, but until then you're talking about eliminating the one oversight management has.
*before they can own shares
Honestly, I think trying to disable public stock trading altogether is the real solution. You can have a healthy, profitable company without constant growth, but shareholders want growth even if that means the health and profitability of the company suffers as a result
The current model is generally unsustainable unless the company ends up doing everything slightly related to its core business. Microsoft doesn't just write operating systems any more. Google is now Alphabet. Amazon sells everything, not just books. Unless the business is in natural resources (or similar), the only way to keep showing growth is to buy other companies and split out multiple "core" businesses.
On second thought, "unsustainable" was a poor choice of word. The model encourages monopolies. Not only does the single employee become disposable, the customers opinion no longer matters either. The business can run on spreadsheets alone, in that case. Creativity and innovation are forgotten in order to drive volume and everything eventually turns into Soylent Green.
It seems like an oversimplified perspective. Could you elaborate on your reasoning?
It is oversimplified, so I wouldn't look too deep into it.
Shareholders in the class that I am referring to have probably never really worked a day in their life. They play with institutional cash or went straight to an office after graduating from college paid for with daddy's petty cash.
While looking at the raw numbers of profit/loss has its purpose in business, it's never the full story of what drives efficiency on the front lines. The function and importance of an individual gets lost in a spreadsheet.
My main point is that I am a believer that someone who drives decisions should understand fully what they are decisioning. A secondary point is that some people need to understand that humans aren't numbers. Hiring and firing is part of business, but both should be done with much more precision.
All jobs aren't the same, I get it. Some companies have work that ebbs and flows. In those cases, the workers should understand this. Some jobs are seasonal. There are a million types of "gig" style jobs out there, and that is also cool.
However, if a company hires people as an investment people need to be treated as such. Having a shareholder whine because he only made $1MM instead of $1.5MM and then demanding layoffs is fucking stupid. That investor needs a reality check on how hard it can be to attract and maintain real talent pools. That fuck needs to see what it is like to work around real, field experts for a day and see what it took to get his measley $1MM payoff.
There is probably no way I could call out all the conditionals or sub-points I have about this subject so I summarized it with my first comment.
For fun, we just tried to kill the guy in the image. He's supposed to be one of the most powerful wizards in the entire world or something. Surprisingly, we succeeded. It was only his simulacrum. The attention to detail in this game is amazing.
Apropos of nothing, there is research[1] showing that worker-owned coops are less likely to go bust than conventionally-managed firms, and that greater employment stability is likely one reason for their greater resilience. IE they're not as likely to use layoffs when times get tough and therefore don't pay as many of the costs associated with higher turnover and lower retention. Stronger, more invested teams = more resilient company. Or something like that.
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20240105070617/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001979391406700108
MBAs only care about the next fiscal quarter
Literally the worst decision makers. I'd trust chatgpt trained on fantasy novels (with no MBA's in them to poison the data set), a literal child, a schizophrenic monk from the 13th century who (because of the 13th century thing not the rest) cannot stop screaming, or a 12 sided dice on a table of the dumbest things youve ever done in an RPG, before I'd trust an MBA to make good decisions.
I'd trust harry dubois/tequila sunset, or the characters in IASIP to make better healthier more prosocial decisions than anyone who's ever been to business school.
Like, my confidence in someone drops straight through the earths crust when I hear 'business school'.
And I bet any nepotism at least comes with competence, unlike many stories I see about private businesses where "friend/relative of the boss" can mean a blank check for incompetence and corruption. Personal relationships don't translate to good leadership.
Oh and there's probably less of an emphasis on hiring business majors since the workers on the floor tend to have a better idea of how damaging decisions that seem to make more money on paper can be.
There’s also the idea that as employees rise through the ranks, they have a better understanding of how their old jobs are done. Let’s say you’re in a manufacturing job: Nothing is worse than being managed by a business degree who doesn’t even know how to turn on the equipment you use every day. Because that manager has no idea what is and isn’t possible to do with the machinery, what kinds of timeframes to expect from jobs, etc… So you’ll end up getting unrealistic expectations, based purely on numbers on paper.
There's also the concept of "build to sell" instead of "build to last." Longevity of a company is not a consideration when the
vultureventure capitalists see a bigger return in pawning off their investment instead of reaping dividends. Sadly, this outlook isn't always knowable by everyone in said company. In my experience, it's usually impossible to tell unless the company is already in the red or is about to be.Who would have thought?