Insomniac, the dev team behind the wildly successful Spider-Man games just had a leak. In the leak, it’s discovered that they were strong-armed by Sony (who owns Insomniac) to downsize staff despite exceeding sales targets and hitting goals. They needed to downsize to help balance Sony’s books, who have acquired a slew of failing or underperforming studios.

Sony owns Studio A, and Studio B. Studio B have underperformed for the last few years, whilst Studio A has outperformed their targets. Because of the shortcomings in Studio B, Sony are now out of pocket, even accounting for the earnings of Studio A. Studio A are forced to eliminate staff roles to make up for Studio B’s mismanagement. A well oiled and well performing Studio have to butcher their teams to balance their parent entity’s books. It’s so fucking short sighted and stupid.

This isn’t just a Sony/Insomniac issue either, I guarantee this goes on throughout the industry whenever there’s a parent company. It’s just how it will always be in those circumstances.

Seems patently anti-player, but pro shareholder. It’s so clear cut.

I tend to be pretty pessimistic about these cases. Even if the UK Govt win, Google won’t change anything, or if they do the change will be subtle enough to not have any impact

I’m glad this game is still getting regular support even though I’ve stopped playing. There aren’t enough games like this that stick around

Each to their own, sometimes a cosy game scratches just the right itch

Loving it. I was a longtime user of Reddit Sync, so I’m fully on board the Sync for Lemmy train.

The only thing I’ve noticed is that after a period of non use perhaps an hour or so, when I launch, it crashes back to my home screen. The only way I can get the app to open is by Clearing all Data then restarting.

Window open, door closed; window closed, door open. I do what I can to prevent unnecessary door slamming in the night caused by a draft from the window

The major information that you can take away from this whole case, is just how much Call of Duty means to Sony, and gaming in general. Some stats came out that there were a good number of people who only play Call of Duty. I mean they own a PS5 and the only game they own and play is Call of Duty. For Sony, it’s a potential loss of a significant portion of their customer base.

Sync for Reddit was one of the best Reddit apps out there, I used it exclusively for years, I can’t wait until Sync for Lemmy releases

I shop in Lidl, and it’s full of brands that are decent in their own right but design packaging clearly meant to evoke the big name brands. Most of them taste better than the big brands too

I’m not sure but the iPhone bubble colour debate seems so US centric. In the UK, I’ve never heard of anyone bringing it up

When a creator releases something into the public, they no longer control how it’s used, they can influence, sure, but not control. It’s the wider community’s decision now