Recent layoffs at BioWare, the creators of the upcoming game Dragon Age: The Veilguard, have sparked a broader conversation about the state of the gaming industry. The discussion intensified when Michael Daus, the publishing director at Larian Studios, took to social media to express his views on the matter. Daus emphasized the importance of valuing employees and argued that the responsibility for such decisions should not fall on regular staff but on those who make strategic decisions.
Daus highlighted that it is possible to avoid large-scale layoffs between or after projects, stressing the significance of retaining institutional knowledge for the success of future endeavors. He critiqued the common corporate practice of "trimming the fat" or reducing redundancies, especially when justified by financial difficulties. While he acknowledges the rationale behind such actions in the face of financial strain, Daus questions the necessity of the aggressive efficiency often pursued by large corporations.
He pointed out that such drastic measures might be understandable if they consistently led to successful game releases, but in his view, aggressive layoffs are not the solution and represent an extreme form of cost-cutting. Daus suggested that the real problem lies in the strategies developed by upper management, yet it is the employees at the lower levels who bear the brunt of these decisions. In a striking analogy, he proposed that companies in the video game industry should be managed more like pirate ships, where the captain—symbolizing upper management—would be held accountable for the ship's direction and fortunes.
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