Tough times for indies, as Humble Games have confirmed they've done a "restructuring" of the publisher with previous staff saying everyone has been let go. This does not affect Humble Bundle / Humble Store though, as they were separate.
Reports coming in from yesterday with various ex-staffers posting on LinkedIn, like Emilee Kieffer, who was a Senior QA at Humble Games in a post that mentioned "Today is mine and my entire team's last day at Humble Games" and they also posted on X (Twitter) that the "entirety of Humble Games was laid off this morning". Another is Nicola Kwan who was a BizDev at Humble Games, posted on LinkedIn as well noting that "At 9AM this morning, all 36 employees of Humble Games were told that we were being let go and that the company is shutting down.".
Eventually, Humble Games posted a statement on X (Twitter) that reads:
In these challenging economic times for indie game publishing, Humble Games has made the difficult but necessary decision to restructure our operations. This decision was not made lightly; it involved much deliberation and careful thought, with the goal of ensuring the stability and support of our developers and ongoing projects. Additionally, the restructuring of operations at Humble Games will have no impact on operations at Humble Bundle.
We are acutely aware of the profound impact this decision has on our team members at Humble Games and deeply empathize with everyone affected. Our team's contributions have been world-class and invaluable, supporting the launch of our games since we started publishing in 2017. We are committed to navigating this transition with as much empathy and understanding as possible.
Supporting our development partners and assisting former team members remains our top priority. We are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible for everyone involved. Thank you for your support and compassion during this challenging period. It is deeply appreciated.
The website Aftermath managed to obtain a recording of a meeting where everyone was let go, and they were told that a third-party named The Powell Group will be finishing up any remaining projects.
Chris Radley, former Creative Lead at Humble Games (but left in 2022) didn't hold back on their LinkedIn post mentioning no staff are left:
I want it to be made abundantly clear, this is NOT a restructuring of operations. This is a total shutdown of #HumbleGames. Operations have been handed off to a third party consultancy. NO staff are left.
DO NOT believe this AI message written by the parent company of Humble Games, Ziff Davis, who are trying to mitigate pushback. This was ONCE AGAIN a failure of leadership across the board, and once again hard working talented staff are paying the cost for their poor decisions. Every ex-employee is being gaslit by this narrative and its so disrespectful.
It's worth noting Humble Games (and Humble Bundle) are owned by IGN's parent company, Ziff Davis, who also recently acquired Gamer Network including RPS, Eurogamer, VG247 and more and then fired a bunch of staff too.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Games like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora have microtransactions and lots of bugs, thanks to Ubisoft.
Some of the studios eaten (bought) by Microsoft were shut down in May.
Good independent game studios like Mimimi are going to shut down in the near future.
As for other indie games.. There's quite a few of them, and many of them are good, but the reason the game industry crashed in the 80s is because the market was oversaturated with half-baked games. With so much competition in the market, it's already very difficult for an indie developer to find a significant audience and earn enough money to live.
Also, I haven't heard of any other indie studios hiring the recent layoffs. I do remember some former Ubisoft employees forming their own studio and developing the game Stray.
Quoting: Talon1024Sort of. Maybe I'm just fearmongering, but don't forget that other game industry companies have been making lots of shitty, greedy decisions lately.
--- snip ---
Good independent game studios like Mimimi are going to shut down in the near future.
As for other indie games.. There's quite a few of them, and many of them are good, but the reason the game industry crashed in the 80s is because the market was oversaturated with half-baked games. With so much competition in the market, it's already very difficult for an indie developer to find a significant audience and earn enough money to live.
Also, I haven't heard of any other indie studios hiring the recent layoffs. I do remember some former Ubisoft employees forming their own studio and developing the game Stray.
I guess you provided answer to the potential positive side of the future. AA studios can provide the more polished experience, it probably just takes time for new studios to form. Even more time is needed for actual games to come out.
Mimimi shows just the potential dangers. Their problem probably was the games didn't belong to bit more popular genre. They did improve the formula to quite good level, but that wasn't enough to save them.
Philadelphus Jul 25
Quoting: Talon1024Sort of. Maybe I'm just fearmongering, but don't forget that other game industry companies have been making lots of shitty, greedy decisions lately.It's just basic supply and demand. If the market for PC games ever becomes too saturated (and keep in mind, it's not like the population of consumers is fixed – it continues to grow year over year), then some studios will be unable to stay solvent and leave the market…leaving a larger portion of the revenue for the remaining studios, and space for new developers to join. It's not like all studios are going to simultaneously go bankrupt, and even if they somehow magically did, new ones would pop up overnight to fill the void. PC gaming's not going anywhere even if a few studios are shutting down.
Games like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora have microtransactions and lots of bugs, thanks to Ubisoft.
Some of the studios eaten (bought) by Microsoft were shut down in May.
Good independent game studios like Mimimi are going to shut down in the near future.
As for other indie games.. There's quite a few of them, and many of them are good, but the reason the game industry crashed in the 80s is because the market was oversaturated with half-baked games. With so much competition in the market, it's already very difficult for an indie developer to find a significant audience and earn enough money to live.
Also, I haven't heard of any other indie studios hiring the recent layoffs. I do remember some former Ubisoft employees forming their own studio and developing the game Stray.
It's just like any ecosystem, where individual actors are simultaneously dying and being born. It's easy to focus on a few trees in a forest felled by a passing storm and proclaim "Oh no! The whole forest is dying!" and miss the dozens of saplings growing up in the space they cleared over the coming years (plus all the mature trees doing just fine). Or notice the dead whale, and not the hundreds of small creatures its flesh nourishes. Or the dramatic supernova whose shockwave sets off a new round of star formation. It's always easier to see studios closing down (because they're established, and get reported on) than seeing new ones form (because no one knows about them yet).
Last edited by Philadelphus on 26 July 2024 at 6:27 pm UTC
Quoting: Talon1024There's quite a few of them, and many of them are good, but the reason the game industry crashed in the 80s is because the market was oversaturated with half-baked games. With so much competition in the market, it's already very difficult for an indie developer to find a significant audience and earn enough money to live.On the other hand, that market-crash only happened in the US - where I am, game-devs just kept on game-devving completely unaffected, and I'm sure the same will happen all over again when the time comes.
StoneColdSpider Jul 25
Quoting: PenglingIn Japan they called it the "Atari Shock"........ As there was no crash in Japan either...... And same here in Australia......Quoting: Talon1024There's quite a few of them, and many of them are good, but the reason the game industry crashed in the 80s is because the market was oversaturated with half-baked games. With so much competition in the market, it's already very difficult for an indie developer to find a significant audience and earn enough money to live.On the other hand, that market-crash only happened in the US - where I am, game-devs just kept on game-devving completely unaffected, and I'm sure the same will happen all over again when the time comes.
but really, it is a shame. Even though HB fell from grace, HB publishing put out a lot of awesome games and the average quality of their projects was extremely high. Frankly, I wish it was the store and humble choice that were losing money, instead of the publishing company :(
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me