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Games

Annapurna's Entire Gaming Team Has Resigned (ign.com) 43

Annapurna Interactive's entire gaming staff has resigned from the company following a leadership dispute, according to a Bloomberg report. From a report: The report, which IGN can confirm based on conversations with our own sources, states that Annapurna Interactive president Nathan Gary had recently been in negotiations with Annapurna founder and billionaire Megan Ellison to spin the gaming segment off as its own company. However, Ellison eventually pulled out of negotiations, at which point Gary resigned. Almost 30 other individuals, including division co-heads Deborah Mars and Nathan Vella, as well as the entire remaining staff of Annapurna Interactive, joined him.

"All 25 members of the Annapurna Interactive team collectively resigned," Gary and the resigned staff said in a joint statement to Bloomberg. "This was one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make and we did not take this action lightly." While negotiations were still ongoing, Annapurna Interactive re-hired former Epic Games executive Hector Sanchez as its president of interactive and new media, and Paul Doyle as its head of strategy. IGN understands that Sanchez was expected to head up Annapurna's gaming efforts in Gary's absence once his part of the company was spun-off. With Gary now having resigned, Sanchez has taken the lead.
Annapurna has earned success and awards for games including Cocoon, Stray, Neon White, The Artful Escape, and Sayonara Wild Hearts.
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Annapurna's Entire Gaming Team Has Resigned

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  • Wow (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Friday September 13, 2024 @01:44PM (#64785699)

    Either they're a bunch of fools or they're loyal to somebody who earned it.

    Either way a mass resignation like this is an impressive show of group unity.

    • Time for them to start their own thing.

      • It really just sounds like the President of Annapurna had the pull to continue with the proposed spinoff without the parent company's blessing by pulling away all the staff. They should call the new company TheRealAnnapurna just to get Ellison's goat.
        • Given Steam's longevity, there are dozens of first class games you could play from the back-catalog for years.

          Game publishers are fighting several fronts 1) forcing hardware upgrades and PC replacements on customers that do not want them, 2) games which are, being charitable, reskins of last year's game, 3) declining demographics - less teenager males year after year, 4) competition from free games, 5) induction of 'insult your customer base' politics in games, 6) large private equity funds bent on taking

    • by Ksevio ( 865461 )

      Or they really dislike the other leadership option. Game industry can be pretty rough so I could see things taking a turn if the upper management wanted to go a new direction

    • Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)

      by toxonix ( 1793960 ) on Friday September 13, 2024 @02:29PM (#64785801)

      It's hard to tell, not being there. But one thing is likely - a billionaire founder is not happy about the workers wanting to spin off on their own for whatever reason. Ellison's company is a publisher and a development studio. When workers at the independent studios complained to Annapurna's executives about the founders making life suck, Annapurna mostly sided with the founders, apparently/from what I've read. The people making the publishing deals are the founders and the billionaire, not the workers. My guess is that Nathan Gary wasn't getting the the workers wanted. To collectively fuck off is probably the best thing they can do, although they lose anything they're working on. I think Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth is in QA phase, but it may have a lot of work left to do. Like I was told at Midway Games back in the 90's - we own your dreams as long as you work for us. There was no way anyone in the games business would give workers a flying fart's worth of ownership or control over their destiny. Founders and billionaires will always consider workers last. After all, there are always more workers, right? They'll just hire new people for less.

      • I'm no billionaire, but I am starting a very small media company. I don't believe in not cutting in creators on ownership of their creations but... At least when you're starting you kind of have to in order to keep risk reasonable. But I'm paying industry standard rates.

        The real test will be if it is a successful venture; then we'll get to see if I keep to my principles and start cutting in the creators or if I find an endless stream of reasons not to do so.

        I understand the urge to keep as much control as

      • Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)

        by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Friday September 13, 2024 @04:19PM (#64786109) Homepage
        You're talking about an industry where there's an unbelievably long line of people who want to get into it, and will do absolutely anything to get their foot in the door, including working insane hours for low pay. It's their dream job. Honestly it's the last industry you should want to join, especially since you can make small indie games and publish them yourself if that's an itch you need to scratch. And you can have a day job to pay the bills, or use Patreon or Kickstarter to get funding. But I don't blame the owners. They're there to run a profitable business, and all those people are super-replaceable.
        • "But I don't blame the owners. They're there to run a profitable business, and all those people are super-replaceable."

          Game publishing was the only part of Annapurna that made money. You can blame the owners for driving off the parts of their business that made them a profit, including the person who would do the replacing of all of those "super-replaceable" people.

          • Yup, for an "Indie" company they have published quite a few notable and innovative games that are talked about quite a bit. With the recent Stray, it probably made a decent chunk of money too. They're also mostly a publisher and not developer (though they were currently developing one). Which leaves the questions of whether the developer studios will follow along with whatever new publishing company gets formed.

      • Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)

        by kackle ( 910159 ) on Friday September 13, 2024 @08:07PM (#64786627)

        I think Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth is in QA phase, but it may have a lot of work left to do.

        Well they've got 9 more years to complete it.

    • Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)

      by taustin ( 171655 ) on Friday September 13, 2024 @02:43PM (#64785837) Homepage Journal

      Sort of reminds me of Market Basket [wikipedia.org]. Probably less heartwarming, though.

    • Either they're a bunch of fools or they're loyal to somebody who earned it.

      Either way a mass resignation like this is an impressive show of group unity.

      It might be simpler than that. The plan was to spin off the gaming division as it's own company. Well they're in California which doesn't have non-competes and the entire staff just quit. So from what I can tell all they need is an investor and they can be their own company.

    • Gaming joke (Score:4, Funny)

      by kackle ( 910159 ) on Friday September 13, 2024 @08:05PM (#64786623)

      Either way a mass resignation like this is an impressive show of group unity.

      You might even say it was Unreal.

  • So? (Score:2, Insightful)

    I care so little about this that I can't even finish this senten

    • And yet you cared so much that you wasted time to post. If you *actually* didn't care about it, you just would have skipped over it after reading the headline like I've done for several stories about this one.

      Clearly you do care, or have an obsessive compulsive desire to tell the world everything you don't like, I'm sure this has a name in the DSM.

  • Yes, that Ellison (Score:5, Informative)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Friday September 13, 2024 @02:13PM (#64785775)
    I'd never heard of "billionaire Megan Ellison," but yes, she is the daughter of Larry Ellison, who "famously gave her $200 million as a 25th birthday present. He has continued to give her similarly-large gifts at various milestones." Presumably inheriting hundreds of millions makes billionaire status quite a bit more attainable.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 )

      Presumably inheriting hundreds of millions makes billionaire status quite a bit more attainable.

      Yeah, I think there's another guy in the same circumstance who seems to constantly be in the news lately. I can't quite recall his name, though.

    • I heard about her first when Filmento (Movie Critique YouTuber) was mentioning how every company that made a Terminator movie went bankrupt, with the exception of one that was saved by a bailout by the owner's billionaire father.
  • They wanted to spin-off their segment and instead are resigning to probably start their own spin off. Seems like a big bet for those employees on themselves so good on them. None of the games themselves have huge brand name recognition so they should be alright without keeping the IP. Having owned Cocoon and Stray, they are both unique and great ideas in their own way but never finished either game because the uniqueness of playing as a cat or having pushing ball puzzles that cross worlds/dimensions wore of
    • by flink ( 18449 )

      They wanted to spin-off their segment and instead are resigning to probably start their own spin off. Seems like a big bet for those employees on themselves so good on them. None of the games themselves have huge brand name recognition so they should be alright without keeping the IP.

      Annapurna is pretty well regarded in the indie space and have published some real critical darlings in that sector including Journey, What Remains of Edith Finch, Gone Home, Kentucky Route Zero, and Neon White, among others. Like Devolver, the Annapurna publisher name is a recognizable sign of quality for people into indie games.

      So they are losing quite a bit of cachet by going out on their own. But yeah, best of luck to them. I've heard Annapurna is basically a vanity project for the owner, so it was ne

      • Gorogoa I loved, very simple and relatively short, but innovative. I also loved Donut County, also short but very fun. Stray was pretty much a mainstream game as well.

  • Instead of whining to the Press they took decisive action.

    I am not sure if they will be successful or if it was a good idea, but their courage and solidarity is remarkable for this industry.

    Probably a solid leader there we don't know about. He's likely investable.

  • They wanted to spin off as a different company, were told no, and all collectively quit? I really hope that is them giving the middle finger to ORACLEd (One Rich Arsehole Called Larry Ellison's daughter) and that they do startup another company. I've quite enjoyed both Stray and Cocoon, the former which was a fun concept game where you play as a cat, the latter of which one of the most interesting puzzle games I've ever played.

  • Is one of the greatest video games every created. Annapurna is the publisher, and they deserve huge credit for it. If you sci-fi, spaceships, rocketry, aliens, time loops, exploration, mystery, killer music, and a fantastic story, you can't do better.
  • by engineer37 ( 6205042 ) on Friday September 13, 2024 @05:21PM (#64786261)
    Companies sometimes forget that you can't just replace top talent. These are not minimum wage jobs where you can just hire anyone and they'll do about as well as anyone else. Software engineering is a highly skilled specialized job that relatively few people have the skills for to begin with. The difference between top talent, or even middle talent, and bad talent is huge. You can't just hire anyone. It's insanely hard to find, hire, and retain good software engineers. Most people who are good at software engineering are not available, they already have jobs and don't plan on leaving. Companies for decades have been trying to make software engineering more replaceable, but those efforts have largely failed just because at the end of the day this is an insanely technical and difficult field.

    There is this myth among people who are not software engineers that software engineering is easy. You can't just "learn to code" and then get a job in the field any more than you could "learn to weld" and then design engines for fighter jets. This is a real field of engineering that is insanely technical and very complex, and if you don't believe me, pick up a copy of "Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen et al, and just try to read it... and that book is an introduction! It's intro level! The people who are good at this job have dedicated their entire lives to it. They have lived, eaten and breathed this stuff since they were old enough to use a computer, and it took all of that time and effort just to get "good enough" at it. You can't just find talent anywhere, it is a serious engineering discipline. You're not dealing with McDonalds employees here.

    Even if you find someone new, it's pretty well known that it can take 6 months to a year to get new hires up to speed.

    In the 70s, 80s, and 90s, talented groups of engineers used to leave big companies to found their own companies, often competing with their former employers, sometimes with enormous success. This trend was so common that companies started to require employees to sign "do not compete" clauses. If an entire talented team like this leaves a company all at once, they can very easily found their own company, and put their former employer out of business. All the money in the world isn't going to help you if your team sucks, and all your best talent just left to compete with you. I think companies have forgotten just how much power groups of top talent have.

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