Viviendi Lays Off 350

[Keith]

I know the guys from the old Impressions parted ways with VU/Sierra a couple years back so it may prove of some interest to them.

http://www.vugames.com/news_story.do?storyId=1377

[Kazem]

Man 350 jobs :\ Hope they can all find another.

[Cironir]

Deja vu. A few weeks ago, EA closed down Origin. I had a friend working there in Austin, and she didn't find a new job after she was laid off -- went back to her old profession and is still upset at how that was handled. I don't know, as a gamer, this trend worries me; I doubt the result will be higher quality games.

[EmperorJay]

I think that in 5 years time things will be back to normal. Companies like Tilted Mill, independent and talented, will be more common and the big companies will have learned by then that buying all those developers only to lay them off and continue their franchises, is not the way to go. I hope.. :)

[Cironir]

I don't know about the industry "reverting back" in five years, but I do think that Vivendi is overdoing it. Clinging to Valve/Steam is a darn dangerous thing, and I believe it's a mistake, especially since Vivendi isn't doing all that wonderfully (financially). Regardless, I think there's plenty of room for independent game developers, depite of EA, Vivendi and Infrogrames, er, Atari, er, whatever. ;) I'm also glad that there are brave distributors such as Ubisoft, Take2/Gathering and Eidos who take the risk of publishing games that may not necessarily be "mainstream". There's a lot of "crap" also, but at least we are given a wide selection of games to choose from. By the way, who is going to distribute CotN?