Wanting a company to go under

Being System Wars, many of us pretend to dislike another company to fit our "faction". Despite this, the gaming industry is clearly better with Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft in it.

But what about EA? Activision? Konami? Prominent YouTubers like Skill Up have gone on record saying that if Activision went under it would actually benefit the industry.

Is there a company you think is actually a net-detriment to the industry, and you'd want to go under? Would it be worth all the employees losing their jobs? Is there a "greater good" then?

I don't care about companies, only about their products. I couldn't give two shits about who is behind them.

agree with gamer lover its about the games not the companies imo

bad games = bad service to us imo

I don't focus on wanting companies to go under but on companies to make more of the games I like. With that said, I do want one company to leave hardware. ;)

The idea that any of us can state a group of people that have jobs in a corporation in this industry need to go out of business is self important bullshit. Are there things we don't agree with? Sure. Does everyone at those companies deserve to be jobless because of our arm chair CEO'ing? No. Get a grip on reality and lighten the fvck up people.

@ProtossRushX: @gamer_lover: But companies are the ones that make the games in the first place. They are linked and business decisions can make or break a final product.

@XVision84: cool, but I still don't care about them per se.

I care about their products, if they're good and I like them, I'll buy them, if not, I won't buy them. I don't pay attention to what they're doing and whatnot. Companies are only interested in making money, so I don't pay attention to them.

It's as simple as that.

@cainetao11: This is why I'm always hesitant to advocate for a company to fall. There are thousands of people involved and their personal lives would be affected. An argument can be made that with one company falling, more jobs in other companies can take their place. This is especially true if it leads to industry growth or more net jobs. I ultimately agree with you that I wouldn't wish it on any company for the stated reason though.

I don’t want companies to go under, I want them to make games that I enjoy. If they don’t do that then I’ll simply look for those that do.

@gamer_lover: True, the primary goal of a company is to make money. However, how they go about achieving these goals vary tremendously. CDPR and Activision have a world of difference in their business models.

I understand your stance and I respect it, but I also disagree with it primarily because companies have patterns. The way they do things influences everything that comes out of the company and also related companies too.

This question is quite complex and it leads to a lot of other questions.

What would happen to companies like Blizzard if Activision went under? Would Blizzard try to get out like Bungie did? What about Vinvendi? They own around 5% of their company with Activision-Blizzard owning the rest.
Vinvendi owns a company called Gameloft, that company makes the Ashphalt series, which it gained when it started acquiring Ubisoft shares. If one company goes under it can lead to a domino affect. It's nice to think of a company going under but we could see entire IPs destroyed, they can be bought up by other companies such as TQH acquring a chunk of Relic's IPs and doing good by them but other companies that pick up our favorite IPs can also destroy them.

Well if people lose their jobs, then get hired elsewhere in the same industry, no jobs growth happened. The same number of people still work in the industry. Its a stupid supposition.

The bottom line is keep your emotions out of business. Stop hating/loving companies. That is an emotional relationship and makes no sense in business. Buy the games you wish to play, don't the games or DLC, add ons, etc you don't wish to. In the end, the consumer wallet speaks loudest. It doesn't scream its answer immediately and that's the complaint of some modern bitch ass people. But it always speaks.

I never ever want to see any company go under, no matter how much they are greedy, no one deserves to lose their jobs just because someone loves to see a company fall. If that company happens to be crap, I'll just go somewhere else.

And it's how I look at Nvidia, AMD, & Intel as a company from the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Or you can bitch about it everyday on the forums like some folks. :)

@zeggelaar: I'm unsure what would happen to Blizzard but they're huge so I'd imagine they could get their independence. IPs can migrate, as you stated, but there will also always be new ones in the future.

So glad to see most don't want any to go under. So many people employed and lives effected. End of the day we vote with our wallets, don't we?

There is this weird mentality that if X was not around Y would hire everyone and give me more games. Does not work that way sorry and those people would never get a chance to work and grow and go wherever their creativeness takes them. There would be even less jobs and less really talented people in the industry.

@cainetao11: Actually if it ended up benefiting the industry then there would be a net growth of jobs because there would be more positions so new employees would come in to the picture. Not guaranteed, but a possibility.

Consumer wallet definitely speaks in the long run, but in some cases if sales go poorly companies employ more aggressive monetization. The influence of those strategies can last for quite a while though. I understand a free system is a good solution, especially because a regulated one would be much more corruptible.

@the-a-baum: I expected it. Although a lot of people here act crazy and talk a big game, we're all quite knowledgeable about gaming and reasonable when we want to be.

Although I don't agree with your second paragraph. Alternatives may not immediately hire them, but I don't see why a healthier job market would be impossible (if it led to a "healthier" industry).

The games and people behind them are what matter most in my opinion. I don't really care about the name of the studio for the most part; for example, I really enjoyed Westwood Studios games in the past, but because many of their key people went to form Petroglyph and also make good RTS games, I am more happy about that than I am sad about Westwood Studios going under.

I don't want studios to go under, but at the same time I understand it's the nature of the industry. I look at EA and all the studios they gobbled up--Maxis, Westwood Studios, Bullfog--and while I do lament the closure of those studios, a lot of people that worked on those great games are still working, and arguably working on some great projects.

But what determines a "bad game"? Sales? Or objective markers of quality?

I Feel a lot of people dismiss studios out of hand for ignorant or superficial reasons.

Yeah pleasantly surprised by people in this thread; the general feeling I usually get from SW is that if you're "not with us, you're against us" as far as platform and games go, but it's nice to see we can take a step back from our petty arguments (which are fun, I'm not trying to be all holier than thou) and think about the bigger picture.

Games are games, and the people that make them are often hard working, under-payed, and very talented. They work in an unforgiving industry. I hear working for EA, Ubisoft, and Activision is arguably one of the worst things you can do in the tech industry, while many programmers often work on a contract basis.

Most of the time, when I hate on a company, I hate the upper management side. Thing is, I don't want a company to close, because people lose jobs for it and more often than not, the people who run them can live off when their company dies but their employees would be on a difficult situation.

Most companies can come back from bad press, Sony spent all 2018 with bad press and sure they will turn it around once they decide to actually work on mistakes. Xbox had 3 years of mistakes changed, and while fixing those mistakes over last 3 years, they made new ones, which they are fixing now, so in 2-3 years they will have fixed everything. I can't say the same for Sony, but fanboys don't care either way, blind devotion is a hell of a drug.

As for EA, people love their shit and journalists just sensationalized the BF2 microtransactions and fucking lame ass people just made a living off pretending people hate games like BF2. Everyone will play Dragon Age 4 either way and I will pay 1,000 dollars in Micro-transactions if it meant I see Skate 4.

At this point, I'd like Konami to sell, so someone could actually bring back the classics and shit.

As far as companies no longer in business and never see again, none come to mind, I can say Konami cause that is how it already feels.

Id like EA to go under

Sony???

I think IF Microsoft tries to take another swing at DRMing second-hand sales out of consoles, then XBox should GTFO. That was utterly inexcusable the first time around and should have been a completely ban-hammer offense, but they did back-track. Try it again, though, and it will be obvious what their only intentions are in the industry.

Well, if companies stocks are falling, then it must mean that something's not working with the business practices they implement on the games they invest developing. Game companies should look at consumer demand and see that games as a service doesn't work very well with every type of games.

Sense some derailing, no surprise.

As someone who has struggled I never wish a whole company goes under. People losing their jobs is no small thing.

Activision is the one that comes to mind.

I always view the employees losing jobs as no excuse because if consumers would take into account job-loss you could never vote with your wallet. The system wouldn't work at all. To me it's akin to suggesting that companies are OK to ignore ethics because we cannot negatively affect them without hurting the employees they gathered, and it insinuates that all consumers do is lose people jobs and did not also create the jobs in the first place. I (conveniently) consider job-loss a result of the corporate mismanagement and misdirection, and not of the predictable resulting consumer retaliation. This is in part because it is an incredibly healthy industry if you look at the profits. So there is no good excuse for a company to accrue so much consumer hatred.

I think the power (to retaliate and buy) as a consumer is an important one that allows for companies to exist in the first place. I think it's especially important when it comes to huge organizations that cannot be stopped by laws or other means. In the end, a company serves its audience and not the other way around and if they hurt their audience, the people should have the the right to push back. I consider that a much more vital right than people's jobs. (It's part of why I am heavily in favor of good solid social security nets so that job loss due to corporate decisions is not as impactful and the ability for corporations to keep their well-willing employees hostage becomes minimized.)

As long as there is no good alternative way for consumers to use their power but to support/hurt the company financially (and thus inevitably put jobs at risk and create jobs elsewhere) I don't see how we could consider job loss as an important factor. And I do believe that some companies have such a bad influence on the industry that it's better if they go. (Although, they don't necessarily need to go under to correct themselves.)

And I do think there is a big difference between shutting companies down because they are ethically unsound or politically in disagreement with you. The shutting down of The Last Night was imo a case of consumers abusing their power because the only thing he did wrong was present views that people disagree with and I find that a weak and a dangerous reason to shut something down in a concerted effort.

I blame gamers more than the companies, because gamers are the ones who give money to the likes of EA to continue with their bullshit, you cry about DLCs and microtransactions only to buy their games on day 1 to complain about it. In these situations I like using the game Need for Speed Edge as a reference. Need for Speed Edge (Known as Need for Speed Online) was first released in china, the game is pretty much a game anybody would hope for, its full price but you get everything with it, you know, just like in the old days, however for the US market the game will be released as Need for Speed Edge in order to "adapt to western market" and the game will include microtrasnatcions and DLC releases, and do you know why EA is doing that? its because it has been proven that time and time again that westerners are stupid and impulsive enough to bloody pay for these arbitrary gate ways and if I recall correctly in their last press EA has confirmed that the microtrasnaction model has provided them with a significant profit, which explains why they keep doing it with their games despite the backlash, look at Star Wars Battlefront II, EA got a lot of hate for it, but I bet a bunch of you bought the game at full price and dealt with the loot system it came with, and the game still has an active community (I mean they are still updating the bloody thing).

So yes as much as I hate how the gaming industry has become multiplayer focused with deceptive season passes, DLCs and microtransactions its the gamers that continue to encourage this nonsense with their money.

Wishing a company to fail, especially a large corporation wreaks of stupidity and bizarre entitlement. The odd part, is that the people who make the decisions for the company would be the least affected by a closure as executives either have huge guaranteed payouts, or are headhunted quickly by the competition. The ones who suffer the most are those on the bottom rung of the totem pole. Those working from paycheque to paycheque who have a larger pool of competition in the workforce. These are most employees within any given company.

There is no alternative. We can't just give corporations unrestricted power over us. The bottom rung will be hurt, because that is how corporations are set up by those in power. If we want that to change, the way power is structured in these companies would have to change. Because that's where the problem is. Higher ups ensuring that they get paid so much they don't need to care about the well-being of the company (and its employees) and don't carry responsibility for their actions. Like you say, they just hop on board of any other corporation because they are so desired no matter their history.

I think that through law we could change a lot about the usual pyramid-like power structure in corporations and these bad side-effects it has. (Not to mention the Zimbardo effect changing people into poor bosses when placed in such a power structure.) I think that executive pay should have a max set by law that is much more in line with what other people earn per hour, maybe be more attached to the actual health of a business and its employees, and that bonuses should be by law more restricted in size and amount because they are supposed to be bonuses and not secretly a way to get structurally higher salaries. And it would be better if people from all layers of an organization have representatives up in the tree/board of directors so that they all have a say in the decisions made (more like in Germany). Do that, and I am convinced these companies would start to care more about ethics and their employees, and make less boneheaded decisions (because something is actually on the line for those in power, and they would be in more direct relation to all their employees).

Of course I wouldn't want people to lose their jobs. But... If you have a job at EA, there shouldn't be a problem finding another job. Without EA, my gaming hobby would most likely be better. For me and my hobby, it would be better if EA closed down. Just sayin.. Might sound selfish, but the people working on EA has a better job with a higher salary than I do. I wouldn't really feel sorry for EA staff if they lost their jobs.

There are other companies outside gaming which sole reason is to squeeze money out of people in shitty ways without doing anything good. I really don't give a shit if those working there lose their jobs. Their jobs are shit and they're helping the company staying shit, and the company should go under since it would make the world a better place.

I don't want companies to go under for the sake of going under, it just shouldn't be on us to support companies who are desperate to fleece us on bad business practices. We don't owe them that. The market should react accordingly when publishers do something distasteful that fans don't like. You wanna make your game a grindfest for the sake of MTX? You choose to make the next entry of a beloved IP a mobile game? You want to make gamers do a 24 hr online check-in in order to play their games? These publishers can't be this tone deaf to the market when people react badly. Learn to read your audience better.

@Litchie: What a dumb comment. How does EA make your hobby worse? I was unaware you were forced to buy their product(s), ever.

@KungfuKitten: Sorry, I disagree. I’m pro capitalism and I don’t support government interference in a socialist manner - in any way.

With the business practices they're pushing. And since they're having success with them, it makes other companies look at the same business practices and will make them want to try out the same thing EA does. Thus shitty practices spreads like a cancer throughout the gaming industry.

To me, EA fucks up gaming way more than they add to it. Wouldn't cry if they went under.

@Litchie: Here’s the fun part. If you don’t like their practices, don’t buy them. With game development on the rise, microtransactions (which are always optional) were necessary to offset that. Do you know how much N64 carts cost back in the 90s? About the price of modern games. You also got a hell of a lot less content and technology. If anything, you should be thanking EA for keeping prices down. BTW, EA didn’t invent the microtransaction. You have PC gaming and smaller developers who started that trend.

1. Yeah, I'm not mentally handicapped. I don't buy products I don't want.

2. Um, yeah. N64 games cost like new games cost now basically. Because they were new games. You didn't get "hell of a lot less content and technology". You got the latest for its' time. And no, I don't want to thank EA (LOL) when they are the very thing I hate most about gaming, wtf dude? Keeping prices down? The hell you talking about? They keep the prices sky high.

3. Doesn't change the fact that EA does it the worst and is still pushing for it.

Fact is that EA is pushing shitty business practices which is also currently spreading to other companies. If you disagree about that, I don't think we can get any further with this discussion.

@Litchie: I don’t know why you’re copying my reply when I know what I said, but I digress.

There are far worse culprits who fleece their user bases more. Nintendo (Amiibos / WiiU ports on Switch), mobile (FTP), and about every MMO out there should be brought before EA who are pretty much following gaming trends - not setting them. Simple folk bring up EA because it’s easy to remember their name, they use less letters in their name so it’s easier and lazier to type, and supposed gaming experts don’t know the industry enough to properly criticize.

@Sevenizz: Copying? You mean quoting? I usually do that when I answer people on forums, so that I and everyone else can see the dicussion going on easily. I thought it didn't really matter for shits, but I can stop if you want.

I disagree completely with your "worse culprits". I also don't care about your "simple folk", since I can't relate.

As a consumer, all you should care about is your product. They aren't a charity, they do not view themselves as such, they do not have any intention of giving you leeway, in fact there job is to actively take you for a ride until that wallet is empty. Be it an adult or a little child exposed to gambling behaviours, they don't care.

So, why exactly should we be viewed as a charity or a fountain of good will against such fucknuggery? Labelled with nonsense like "entitled"?

You're the consumer, you should demand everything and anything.

EA, similar to the Nazi's, don't view you as a living being worthy of respect. Just a resource to be depleted. You're literally sub-human to them.

I'm sure some nice folk work there, like how many nice people joined the Nazi party, but you're still objectively supporting evil. Be it a janitor or Heinrich Himmler.

Being that im primarily a PC gamer and I like many other PC gamers have realised that major pubs are a detriment to gamers and more apt to adopt anti consumer practices, i couldnt give 2 shits if a major pub like Activision or EA go under.

I respect that, I'm glad you're not just nodding your head. These are just ideas in my head and I have been wrong before.

I just feel like, as consumers we are facing companies that grow ever more powerful over time and have ever more control over our ability to speak to one another, over the information we absorb, over government and the law (since there is no ceiling in place). So I think we will need every inch we can take to be able to protect ourselves from professional corporate manipulation. Even if it's just about $60 a person due to them advertising gambling to kids v.s. people losing their jobs. Or getting our right to get a refund back v.s. people losing their jobs. Or them selling our information without us getting a cut.

It's why I am heavily in favor of being able to review-bomb as a consumer. I think we are forced to increasingly rely on these shady methods to stay in control or even to stay informed as consumers, when corporations start using more advanced and sneakier tactics like adding loot boxes after all critics have uploaded their reviews, silencing criticism in chat by linking your game library to your commentary, abusing DMCA copyright takedown notices to silence people, TOU's barring people from making use of the legal system, making up information to appease online extremist harassment groups (character x is suddenly gay) to gain free media support, hiring Reddit accounts to combat complaints, etc. They are encroaching on our ability to vote with our wallets and to be informed correctly and to complain together and to use the law, so I do think we should be excused if we bite back in the few ways that we can.

I'll never cheer for anyone to be made redundant. It's a horrible position to be in.

I may not like the CEO's or the Board monetisation decisions and their complete disrespect for their customers, who they see as nothing more than milking cows but I'll never advocate the loss of jobs.

Bitching doesn't help. Sometimes you gotta send the message and that message is, don't buy it from that company, go somewhere else. And trust me, that'll change a company real quick lol.

Don't really care about companies going under, sucks for the people work there, though. That said, I would love to see some of these people eat some humble pie. Pay-to-win microtransactions and selling a red dot for a dollar are signs of pure hubris.

Actually it sort of does work that way, since the # of jobs is driven in large part (or entirely) by the consumer demand for games. That's the most basic fundamental thing in a free market society. I don't see the demand for games going away, do you? It might be a different arrangement, such as smaller indie studios, but the demand for games isn't going away - thus there will always be opportunities available. It's not like working for a large major studio is a "cushy" job anyway. Alot of them are gruelling, and then they will lay people off between projects when they dont' need them.

That being said, ATVI and EA are sort of entering this zone where they could go away and I wouldn't care. Though I've played a few EA games this gen it is much less than prior gens, literally the only ATVI game I've played this gen was CoD WWI. 1 game. CoD itself is a huge franchise, and if ATVI somehow collapsed, that franchise would probably be in better hands with someone else (if we are just talking about quality of experience). So yeah... it would be a "good thing" for gamers and the industry if ATVI went under.

But in reality, they are not going anywhere. They've made some really odd decisions (consolidated around too few franchises IMO), and their financials are strained a bit because of it. That being said, they have plenty of time and resources to rebound and CoD and Blizzard are what props them up. So it really isn't anything but crazy speculation that the hated major publishers would collapse. I'd certainly hope nobody wishes individual studios would collapse.

This is true and why I'm against Day 1 Down Loadable Content. If its ready day 1 it should come with the Original Package on Day 1. Holding back Day 1 Content is a Greedy Move.

Calling Westerners "Stupid" is ignorant on your part and says a Lot about the type of Person you are.

Not every Westerner falls for this. For instance I rarely pay Full Price for a game and very Rarely have ever paid for DLC for a game. In fact This Gen I have Bought a Total of 0 DLC packs and only bought 4 games at full price.

People also value things differently. Some may think that a particular DLC is worth the money while someone else might not.

Does it make them stupid if they enjoy their purchase for hours and hours?

Just because you don't like what someone else likes doesn't mean they are Stupid.

@EG101: "Just because you don't like what someone else likes doesn't mean they are Stupid."

People have a really hard time understanding this