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You know that personal film project they claimed one of the founders was distracted by? It was a Subnautica film they asked him to make.

  • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    One developer at a separate company who played Subnautica 2 and requested anonymity because they signed a non-disclosure agreement told Bloomberg they enjoyed the game and that it “seemed way more robust” than other titles in early access.

    Yeah, this is clearly the publisher trying to get out of paying the full bonus.

    • Goodeye8@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      When I first heard about the firings and the delay to the game I thought “This doesn’t sound plausible. Are they really going to ruin their investment and effectively kill the company to supposedly save a quarter of a billion. That would be unbelievably stupid”. But with every subsequent nugget of information it’s getting increasingly clearer that they, Krafton, actually are unbelievably stupid. They’re pretty much guaranteed that if Subnautica 2 gets released (and that’s assuming Subnautica 2 is in a good enough position to be released) the studio will shutter as all the talent will move on and all the money Krafton spent acquiring the studio is thrown in the wind. They’re not even going to save the quarter billion because the delay means they’re going to be paying at least 6 months wages for minimum effort work because I doubt anyone at that studio is willing to put in the effort after being cheated out of their bonus.

      Even if it’s all so obvious I still find it hard to believe the publisher is THAT stupid. But that’s the world we live in, where people get to make idiotic decisions because they’re greedy as fuck.

      • psx_crab@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        Yeah in the world where EA exist and Xbox close down a studio that just launched a successful game and also fire bunch of people and shutting down lot of project, this doesn’t sound far fetch at all.

        I guess the lesson the first game trying to teach is to never believe any giant corporation.

      • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        They paid for their expertise, even offering a bonus that was clearly less than whatever their projected profit would be, and then tried to squander it because they didn’t listen to their expertise.

        Publishers in all kinds of industries are risk adverse to the point of not trusting whoever they made deals with to follow through. This is totally on brand for publishers!