Vivendi Games Lays Off 350, To Close Sierra Offices

An anonymous reader writes "Vivendi Universal Games has laid off 350 people and closed its Bellevue, Wa. office (formerly Sierra), according to a report on CNN/Money. In addition to the shuttering of Sierra, say goodbye to the Hoyle card games, which may not have been popular with hardcore gamers, but were beloved by mothers and other casual players." The article also notes: "The job cuts follow the May shutdown of a pair of longtime [Vivendi-owned] development studios... Papyrus Studios (makers of the company's 'NASCAR' games for years) and Impressions Games (makers of strategy titles, such as 'Zeus', 'Cleopatra' and 'Lords of the Realm III'.)", However: "Blizzard Entertainment, VU Games' top earning developer, was not affected by the restructuring."

Byebye, Sierra

Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. Those were the days. Sierra didnt really make anything worth anybody's attention the past few years tho, I guess it's understandable.

Re:Byebye, Sierra

I'm still mourning Papyrus...It's looking more and more like we'll end up with Electronic Arts and the big Japanese publishers when all of the dust settles. I can't help but wonder what would have happened if VU had decided to innovate and improve the quality of their game development houses rather than closing it all down. There are plenty of "me too" games out there already. I think most gamers are really hungry for something new.

Finally.

The beginning of the end for the DMCA-wielding jackbooted scum that persecuted bnetd.

Woo hoo!!!

This is AWESOME! Now I get to compete with 350 MORE people for that ONE 25,000 yr entry level position!

Fucking a, alright!

Re:Woo hoo!!!

Since when do they pay 25,000/yr in India?

INR

He must mean 25,000 rupees a year.


(Thats about $545US for all you curious types :P)

Re:INR

Hmmmm... developing games in Hyrule doesn't seem so bad.

Re:Woo hoo!!!

Now I get to compete with 350 MORE people for that ONE 25,000 yr entry level position!

Wow! They make you sign a 25,000 year contract? I've heard of long hours in the game industry, but that's getting ridiculous!

Blizzard

They had better not have been affected. They're a cornerstore of the gaming world.

But then again, so was Sierra and look where that got them. I guess, in the end, the quality of game you make really doesn't make too much of a difference. I'm just glad they're finally laying the burnt-out shell that was Sierra to rest.

Bnetd scandal=bad but Diablo 2 (3?)= Good

As a longtime D2 fanatic, I must admit that when the subject for this article popped up on my nifty little Trillian RSS feed reader, I was feeling some trepidation.

Fortunately my concerns seem somewhat mollified. I gotta admit, I am one of those that still holds a grudge against Blizz for killing off (for the most part) BnetD.. Such a useful program, and one that is still used today by a few here and there to host servers to run some of the excellent mod options that are available for this game. OTOH, D2 remains a great game, one that some would argue revived the whole RPG genre, and I definately give blizz props for pioneering the first and still to this day pretty much only free service for playing online. I only wish more companies had followed thier lead, because no matter how much I yearn to play many of the available MMORPGs out there, I'll never commit myself to paying a monthly fee to play one.

Taps

And off in Daventry a slow taps plays out without the formerly perky ending.

--
Evan "They may have stopped being who they were, but damn, they were good for a long time"

When Blizzard *does* go under

When Blizzard *does* go under and Battle.net service stops being offered, I'm sure that everyone will appreciate the presence of bnetd, despite Blizzard's attempts to squash it.

Re:When Blizzard *does* go under

Don't worry. I'm sure Vivendi's management can kill off Blizard before too long, just like EA has managed to kill off all their decent developers so they can put out Madden 2009, now with freshly cut grass!!!

Have games really become so complex that independent dev houses no longer work, or is it that publishers have this idea in their head that they'll make more profits by gobbling up independant game houses? This consolidating of the game biz is destroying it, IMO.

With change comes

...opportunity. Vivendi seems dedicated to making no new games, but simply sequels and copycat games. The good part of this is that the market for new ideas is that much more open. I hope that some the poor souls in Bellevue can get together and make VU regret their decisions.

VALVe is published by Sierra

I wonder how this will affect Half-Life 2. Oh well, at least VALVe still has STEAM to release HL2.

Former Vivendi CEO Messier in prison

Here's an interesting coda to this story from news.com: Former chief of Vivendi in French custody [com.com]

Jean-Marie Messier, the former chief of Vivendi Universal, the French telecommunication and media conglomerate, was questioned by authorities on Monday and then held in custody overnight by the French financial police as part of an investigation into stock price manipulation.
Messier, who appeared for questioning early Monday morning, can be held for up to 48 hours before prosecutors decide whether to place him under formal investigation, the last step before being charged. Messier had requested that he be placed under investigation in March to be granted access to the evidence against him and others in the case, his lawyer said.

Also, this source [sfgate.com] for the layoff story says that 110 jobs were cut from Sierra, while 180 were lost in the Los Angeles area. Those were almost certainly from the Davidson/Knowledge Adventure group.

Papyrus and Impressions Games

"Papyrus Studios (makers of the company's 'NASCAR' games for years)"

and

"Impressions Games (makers of strategy titles, such as 'Zeus', 'Cleopatra' and 'Lords of the Realm III'.)"

I think I see part of the problem right there -- branding!

Seriously though, it's sad to see these companies go. Perhaps if the entire entertainment market wasn't in the hands of a few conglomerates [unto.net] we'd fare better?

Whew!

Ken Williams got out just in time!

Boston Studios

Papyrus Studios and Impressions Games are both Boston-area studios... While their closures come amidst the opening (at least publically) of Tilted Mill and Turbine's major expansion push, you just can't help but feel that this developer's region is again being pinched out by the larger west-coast developers. When Looking Glass closed, it was a blow felt across the region, one that was delt not because Looking Glass was unworthy, but because the publisher felt the region was unworthy. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as every team out here benefits in some way or another from a lot of experienced Looking Glass people, but why was that studio closed? Why did one of the most successful game developers get canned? Why did no white knight show up?

This isn't such a clear-cut case of the expendability of your north-west studios. Papayrus has been frozen with Nascar for years, and losing that license meant losing their company. Impression games was stuck too, stuck making Caeser and other historical strategy games in a saturated market. I don't think the closure of either of these studios comes as a surprise to anybody. But one can't shake the feeling that we're in for another round of publisher abuse, looking at their North East studios as if they were expendable, despite having produced Asheron's Call, Karaoke Revolution, System Shock II, Empire Earth, Neverwinter Nights, Thief 1 and 2, The great Mind Rover [mindrover.com], etc, etc.

Sierra in Bellevue Washington?

I thought their home base was always in Northern California?

Still... you gotta wonder... How can there be articles one month proclaiming how the video game industry takes in more money than Hollywood and is stealing viewers from TELEVISION, but yet everybody is "losing" money and firing people left and right.

Almost like the publishers are churning the staff so they don't have to pay real salaries and can keep hiring kids outta school at basement prices to work on the revitalization of Leisure Suit Larry...

Well I won't miss them

I swore off Sierra games after far too many bad experiences.

I don't think I've ever bought one that actually worked without hundreds of mb of patch downloads.

To me the "Sierra" logo on a game box is a clear sign that it will give me hours of trouble just to get it to run. Then it'll probably crash part way through and lose my save file. Doesn't even seem to matter if they wrote it themselves or not.

And of course you can't return them because somehow computer software isn't covered by consumer guarantees type acts seemingly.

Give me Id or LucarArts any day. Those just work.

- MugginsM

Off to India?

No basis for this thought, but I've heard reports of game designer work being outsourced. For something as simple and plain as card games, it'd be easy enough to do. Even if the card games get dropped, they're not gonna drop the NASCAR franchise. I'd be funny if something as "American" as NASCAR games got made in a foreign country. Kinda like how the Republicans outsourced their call centers :).

Sierra

It's sad to see such an icon go, but it has been a while since Sierra released anything really good. I think they peaked about ten years ago, with Quest for Glory 4 and King's Quest 6. It was all downhill from there.

Still, I doubt many young gamers realize the influence that Sierra had on the industry. These are the people who developed the very first graphical adventures when everyone else was just using text. They might have been one of the first to use motion capture to animate a game (King's Quest 5). They were innovative, and they created what are certainly some of the best computer games ever made. I realize the lack of flashy 3D graphics is a turn-off these days, but I played through the QFG series again about a year ago and loved it. No one else has done anything that rivals QFG and KQ5+6. The adventure genre has simply been dead for ten years.

Opensourcing?

So now, how about opensourcing (GPLing) those evergreens to be played on Linux? Do it like Blender 3D... ask us to donate 10.000 US$ for the source and I will chip in my 5$!!!

Will Leisure Suit Larry 8 see the light of day?

There is no mention of whether or not they plan to cancel Leisure Suit Larry 8. I hope that they don't considering how far along the project is already. It even has a ps2 and XBox port, which may be important for Linux/Mac people like me since they don't seem to be planning on releasing any other ports of the games.

Sierra has been dead for a long long time

While its sad that the last remnants of Sierra have died, its really been dead for a long time before that. Pretty much since the buyout - ever since then its just been another soulless EA clone. Back in the 80's, it really stood out for making you feel like you knew the developers - they used to have photos of their offices and their developers in all the catalogs that would come with their games.

Yeah, its hard to believe that just 10 years ago, Sierra used to be one of the most powerful, and prolific companies in the computer game industry - they co-owned the adventure genre with LucasArts, and with the buyout of Dynamix they also had a lot of Sim and Sports titles also...

Ah... for the days of Al Lowe and Roberta Williams. When instead of Sim, every game seemed to have the word Quest in the title. sniff.

Maybe someone else can resurrect Sierra.

Vivendi has closed the doors on Sierra, but Sierra ran itself into the ground years ago. I'd like to see a company acquire the Sierra line and make Sierra adventure games again. It's obvious that Vivendi had no intentions of doing that sort of thing anyways. I hope they let someone else give it a go. Maybe we could eventually see Space Quest 7. I've always wondered how they would work that considering a Space Quest 7 was already established in Space Quest 4.

Metal Arms: Glitch in the System

When I first started this game up and saw the Sierra logo, I thought: "Wow, they're still in business?!" Guess I spoke too soon. Pretty good little 3rd person shooter, BTW.

Hoyle

Hoyle games aren't restricted just to casual players. I have Hoyle Casino 2004 (Costco, $15 or so) and love it. While it is unlikely I will have to personally hunt terrorists (or become one myself - CS), re-fight WWII (Day of Defeat), or take on other colorful tanks (bzflag) I do gamble in casinos. Hoyle Casino helps me improve my play though its tutorial mode, where a player is warned before making an incorrect play. It also allowed me to bypass the most boring table game known to man, Let It Ride [mohegansun.com] (Shockwave version here [shockwave.com]). Once I played that in software I knew there was no way I'd play it at a table, where the action is even slower.

Re:Vivendi

Yeah, that silly "Blizzard" thing with their uber-addictive games. Do you even KNOW what story you're replying to?