Bethesda confirms redundancies at id Software

It's a sad day when redundancies become "standard practice"...

Posted:A year ago

Agreed Valery

Posted:A year ago

I think it has been standard practice for quite some time in North America... well at least that is how I experienced it (not that I was one of the unfortunates). A six monthly cleansing to keep the team at peak performance :)

Posted:A year ago

I think the studio means it's "standard practice" in that they have to lay off staff that they don't have any work for. You hire a lot of people for a project, you complete the project, and then if there's no other projects for them to move on to, you have to let them go.

I agree it's shitty, though.

Posted:A year ago

Such a shame. I really didn't care for RAGE pre-release, but I picked it up cheap a few weeks ago and thought it was excellent; to the point where I'd be there day 1 for a sequel.

Bethesda probably should have learned from the commercial failure/disappointment of Enslaved, Vanquish and others that releasing a new IP in October/November is akin to commercial suicide.

Posted:A year ago

I think Bethesda were really really confident that they had a good IP to wow the audience (until one zooms out and views the whole forest of killer exciting games being released, it was especially so a mass suicide - imagine if they released in May 2011....

Posted:A year ago

@Adam, if a company is in the habbit of rapidly scaling their team for development and then shrinking once that game is complete, they should be hiring on a contract basis with a core team of permanent staff. This way there are no redundencies, there are only contracts which aren't renewed, working this way means the staff always fully understand the situation in the company. If the game is successful the company (and employee) always have the option of rolling the contract onwards.

Posted:A year ago

Maybe by standard practice they meant they evaluate people's skills and lay off some so they can hire better on those positions?

Posted:A year ago

When dealing with redundencies whatever the real situation is, the use of the words "standard practice" is a poor choice.

Posted:A year ago

Standard practice...when the last release failed to deliver...nothing to see here.

Posted:A year ago

Also the words "standard practice" in combination with the phrase "employees were let go" are dangerously close to the assumption of using methods to lay off staff that avoid the labour law. I really hope that their human resources department is better than their public relations department.

Posted:A year ago

Translation = their game didn't do as well as expected and thus we're slashing their budget. #notmyfirstrodeo

Posted:A year ago

This is really too bad, as RAGE was great for what it was (but I wish it was more open world than it turned out to be). I'd imagine if the game had done better at retail, we'd see some of those "redundancies" still employed and making new content for the game.

Posted:A year ago

id's tech is amazing, however they kind of stopped improving in terms of game design. I think it all started with Doom 3, which was hyped but then from a gameplay perspective it failed to fulfill expectations. Then came Quake 4 which was not even made by them, also a poor product. Rage is better than the previous two, but then not as good as other modern games of the same genre.

Posted:A year ago