Embracer Lays Off 97 Eidos Employees, Cancels New 'Deus Ex' Game (theverge.com) 30
Embracer Group has canceled a Deus Ex game at its Eidos studio that's been in development since 2022. The company also announced that it's letting go of 97 game developers and support staff. "The global economic context, the challenges of our industry and the comprehensive restructuring announced by Embracer have finally impacted our studio," wrote Eidos Montreal. Eidos doesn't mention the canceled game. The Verge reports: Embracer snapped up both Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics from Square Enix in May 2022, putting the studios behind Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Thief under one umbrella. That November, Schreier tweeted that a new Deus Ex was now "very very early" in development, and it appears that's the game now canceled.
It's been eight years since Deus Ex: Mankind Divided ended on a largely unsatisfying cliffhanger, and it doesn't sound like we're going to get a resolution anytime soon. Sources told Schreier in 2017 that an earlier Mankind Divided sequel had been canceled, too. What's more, Embracer decided to erase the mobile game Deus Ex Go from existence, ripping it away from people who'd already paid, though I hear it may still be playable if you have it downloaded.
It's been eight years since Deus Ex: Mankind Divided ended on a largely unsatisfying cliffhanger, and it doesn't sound like we're going to get a resolution anytime soon. Sources told Schreier in 2017 that an earlier Mankind Divided sequel had been canceled, too. What's more, Embracer decided to erase the mobile game Deus Ex Go from existence, ripping it away from people who'd already paid, though I hear it may still be playable if you have it downloaded.
C'mon guys. (Score:1)
You had "Embracer Letting Go of 97 Eidos Employees..." right there waiting for you.
Re: (Score:3)
They really adopted the "embrace, extend, extinguish" motto there :)
Inevitability of Selling (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Inevitability of Selling (Score:5, Insightful)
My general thoughts:
A small successful business can provide a living for a few people.
It gets sold for a million dollars.
The new owner needs to extract a higher recurring profit on top of recouping the million dollars.
The money amounts get higher the larger the company or more times it's sold.
While the previous owner is enjoying their million dollars... the company needs to bring in more money than before.
I know the situation is more complex, for example a large stable new owner can provide a financial safety net etc. But I think with acquisitions financed by debt... it's riskier.
I'd be happy for anyone with knowledge of this kind of thing to chime-in.
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In this case it was a multinational selling to another, Embracer bought Eidos and Crystal Dynamics from Square Enix.
This is worse (Score:5, Insightful)
They were planning on using their assets for a fat buyout but when interest rates went up that fell through [theverge.com]. It was basically a kind of pump & dump.
Now they own all these studios but they don't have the money to run them, because they never intended to run them. They were just gobbling them up to sell them. Which they can't do because with interest rates high the 1%ers that would normally blow this kind of money don't have it (unless they want to spend some of their own money, but you don't get rich spending your own money, you get rich spending other people's money).
The same thing happened on a much, much smaller scale with Anime back in the day. ADV Films bought every license to every popular show during the DVD boom planning to sell to a bigger fish. Then they could sell and went under. There were tons of popular shows that just disappeared unless you could get fan subs. The one I remember is "I Wanna Be An Angel!" which got 2 or 3 DVDs released before ADV collapsed.
These studios are all dead men walking. They won't have the resources to make games worth playing, they'll end up releasing buggy unfinished crap out of necessity and then get a bad reputation and go out of business.
Fucking MBA's ruin everything.
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So essentially greedy incompetent economics-type assholes doing a lot of damage. Great.
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Eidos had this practice long before being bought out. They'd fire entire teams merely for being late and then ship a broken product. I had thought Eidos Montreal had been shut down for good because of publicized shutdowns of studios there.
The days of (Score:1)
JC Denton says... (Score:2)
SMashThestate
Re: JC Denton says... (Score:2)
Reunds? (Score:3)
Embracer decided to erase the mobile game Deus Ex Go from existence, ripping it away from people who'd already paid, though I hear it may still be playable if you have it downloaded.
If people didn't have it downloaded, will they receive a refund of their money? They paid for something and the company took it away from them. Or is this one of those, "We don't do that here" kind of things?
At this point, anyone who buys a game or digital book, knowing the company or publisher can alter or remove what they purchased, deserves what they get. If you want this to change, stopy buying these things. Let the companies flounder. If they go under, so be it. It's about sending a message.
Re:Reunds? (Score:4, Informative)
For a couple decades I was pretty anxious about digital media distribution ala Steam.
As I got older, I realised I was worrying about a couple $30 games not being accessible in 10 years time.
In theory it has drawbacks compared to the old days of physical media.
In practice, I had already thrown out my previous lot of 10 year old CDROM games after they gathered dust on my shelf, and Steam is still around and pushes updates to my games.
Of course this is only my situation. And I totally understand another person would want to use their paid-for content decades in the future.
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The issue issue the more the customers let this slide, the more enticing it is to tank that reliability.
The reason digital distribution has been just so careful is to basically hold the concept of installable media under water long enough to totally drown.
Now with the concept largely dead, expect more "rot" in the digital distribution as it aligns with business goals. In fact, it's pretty common with modern online games where the company is the only one allowed to meaningfully host/arbitrate access to games
If you're a wargammer it would suck (Score:2)
There's cool coffee table book of art from old Java phone games out there, tons and tons of games just completely lost. Most are junk but there's definitely some hidden gems there. Of course if you're American odds are good you didn't have a phone that could play them as intended. Java phone's didn't care about system requirements. I had a
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But the chance of me wanting to watch a 10 yo TV show, or listen to 10yo music is alot higher. So, personally, I still use steam, but I also try to find bluerays on sale, and make sure I have the .mp3s in hand.
Sad (Score:3)
Cyberpunk has (eventually) done quite well for itself. It's sad that nobody can find a way to capitalize on Deus Ex.
Also, for anyone who feels like being a jerk to the laid off Eidos emoloyees:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
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Cyberpunk 2077 was based on Cyberpunk 2013, a pen and paper RPG published by R. Talsorian Games in 1988, so yeah it's done pretty well for itself. All the lore in the video game, Night City, Johnny Silverhand, etc. came straight of the '88 game.
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I was more referring to CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077 and it's long journey to not being a buggy failure.
Re:Sad (Score:5, Interesting)
Cyberpunk has (eventually) done quite well for itself. It's sad that nobody can find a way to capitalize on Deus Ex.
Also, for anyone who feels like being a jerk to the laid off Eidos emoloyees:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
Is that a bad thing?
Do we want endless Deus Ex: Modern Crapfare 202x editions? Yeah, it's been 8 years since a DX game and 12 since a good one (Sorry, Mankind Divided had much improved gameplay but didn't take advantage of it, it was mostly made out of the boring bits of DX:HR, like a season of The Walking Dead made entirely of talking and crying episodes).
Deus Ex was a truly great game, Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a very, very good game (not great, but by no means bad), lets stop trying to "monetise" every "property" and just let great games lie. If anything, contact some decent Sci Fi writers and have them write a new story (I'd recommend Alastair Reynolds, Neal Asher, Marko Kloos, John Scalzi, just to name a few, Richard K. Morgan, writer of Altered Carbon also did a lot on the Mass Effect series). Please, enough with the endless sequels, remakes, reimaginings, rehashes and straight up hashes, give us some new content. Cyberpunk 2077 has been mentioned on this thread and that was a tabletop game adaptation (that worked quite well, for all the faults in the earlier versions, the story wasn't one).
Hollywood has already seen fit to shit all over the classics I loved as a kid, please don't let the video game industry do the same.
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Mankind Divided had a cliffhanger ending. Fans of the series wanted a continuation. There's demand for the product. Plus Cyberpunk 2077 fans that have never tried Deus Ex might get on board with a sequel.
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Mankind Divided had a cliffhanger ending. Fans of the series wanted a continuation. There's demand for the product. Plus Cyberpunk 2077 fans that have never tried Deus Ex might get on board with a sequel.
Judging by the Steam trophy stats, most players never got that far. I understand why, the player spends most of their time walking from place to place in the city, it's basically Prague Walking Simulator 2025. The combat levels are few and far between and most of them force you into being non-lethal if you don't want to be the bad guy.
Embracer erased the mobile game Deus Ex Go (Score:3)
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This is why I don't play Fallout 76, no dedicated server. I'm not investing time and money in a game that will turn into a pumpkin
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The problem with Fallout76 is that you can "use up" the interesting content fairly quickly - and then the "keep playing" incentive is just repetitive multiplayer stuff
The story arc and quest line/side quests are interesting enough if you go through hem once, but grindy enough that unlike Fallout 3, and 4, I had no interest in replaying fully from scratch a bunch...
So, I completed all the main and side quests in the game and was basically left with just grind/repeat for their season progress which had very l
I probably would've bought a new Deus Ex (Score:2)
So long as the game looks promising and they don't do Denuvo or some other obnoxious DRM, I probably would've bought a new Deus Ex without a lot of skepticism. Unfortunate to see it put back on the shelf and them preferring some new IP that I'm less likely to be into.
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Found the fanatic.