Precisely, this video’s thumbnail is stupid clickbait. If you look at other games companies they are laying off thousands. CIG’s can be counted on the hands.
The office isn’t closed in Austin, there are people there not being asked to move. Just certain positions, which is why it’s accurate to suggested that it was a layoff disguised as a move. If the office closed like other studios it might be a different story.
You are missing the entire point. CIG bought that building in Manchester years ago because they could see the handwriting on the wall. Their revenues were going to drop hard. They are consolidating in Manchester so that they can save money on American talent that costs them a 1/3rd more than in England. This is a pure cost cutting measure to lower the yearly expenditure of the company. There was no way that the Americans in the company were going to move there for a 1/3rd less pay. Would you move to another country if you had a family and life where you live for way less money? Do you get the point now?
@@Rickbearcat Money is saved on tax breaks which can be claimed back in the form of tax credits, at least if you are going to try and argue a point, get the facts straight. The devs would be paid the same, if not more for moving to another country due to CIG receiveing a 25% tax break on production costs of video games in the uk. So dont sit there shouting that they havent moved due to less pay. If you have some facts they say it was less pay offered to devs then im all for hearing it, but if anything CIG would have 25% more to potentially incentivize staff to move. Assuming CIG even wanted to renew there contracts. Some staff are on very high pay, and its common practice to offer unresonable offers to incentivse them to leave, and replace them with graduates on a lower pay scale.
And that office just happens to be in a place where they can pay their employees a ton less money to do the same work eh? I guess you see what you want to see.
Most likely the relocation is related to tax changes for businesses in the US on development reliefs are now effectively gone. So, moving headquarters or registration of the company from US to say the UK is going to save them millions of dollars, my assumption on what they are doing. With that (being in IT management myself) I've been through restructure before, and it sucks, miserable feeling for leaders in the company (at least the company I work for, we took it hard). Most likely those high level positions were asked to relocate as well and the employee turned down the relocation requirement, leaving CIG no choice. My view on quality employees is they are rare and you do everything you can to keep them and shift them around. However, if they say "no, I'm not doing that", have to respect their choice and it starts to suck for everyone. My guess is, most tech companies that have high development costs will get choked out or move to another country. That is what caused our restructure last year before the new laws took effect and we were screwed.
Maybe CIG are planning on making the ongoing support for SC to be based more around Manchester when the game come closer to being more complete - no need to have offices all around the world and save a ton of money. Big TAX relief for game development in UK.
It makes sense to have your entire team in one location. Not spread out across multiple countries. How many games studios were split out as bad as CIG has been
At a UK games company I worked at we had to negotiate between the animation output of a Chinese Studio, through the American arm of a very AAA games company. Everything was AT LEAST three days out of synch by the times 'getting good data' was needed. Obviously, international development makes it a whole lot harder to progress with the product. I wouldn't recommend it. But then why buy off-site companies like this?
They moved their main office to UK. They want people to come back in office. Those that don't want to move, can't move, or are prevented from moving in some way are getting axed. This is normal. Some people take having to actually come IN to the office to do their job "toxic". They were offered relocation stipends. Some people can't move to the UK for various reasons. Her idea of "last minute" may very well have been given 90 days. Read laws to know the minimum time. I'm in no way a CIG boot licker but people are freaking out over shit that makes good business sense. It's cheaper to be in the UK for CIG. They want people back in office. End of story. This isn't abnormal at all. Not the least bit concerned.
It might not be abnormal ... doesn't make it "right" or "correct". 90 days isn't a great deal of notice if you've also got to sort school enrolments for children and/or your spouse also has to "up sticks" and try to find a job for their profession in a new country ... not to mention finding a house.
Really not sure about this. CIG is relocating and not all of the staff hokding the moved roles can move. That could be for literally any reason. Family. Health. Money. We just dont know. On the other hand, CIG is hiring for approximately 40 positions at the moment. Im just not sure where the story is here.
the story is that the lead producer, the lead designer and the live director that were a part of the company for 9 years and were in every big SCL got fired or quit because of this shit. And this is why it happened. For 2 weeks we were just speculating.
Seems to be pretty 101 to me, when they were on big expansion and hiring sprees they went with the 101 strategy of opening offices where the talent is. As the focus moved to centralization, they probably can now afford to cut and have say the UK studio absorb more work or even have already hired people there to replace the ones they now layoff. If that wasn't enough, CIG themselves admitted they been downsizing US gamedev roles for years now, evidenced by the financial data they publish, in 2022 the number of game dev positions in the US was already at its lowest point since 2015.
It's now been over a decade of development, and CIG are now funding two offices in the US and one in Canada. Cost cutting is not too surprising in this economic climate, have a look at the rest of the gaming industry.
E.g. we're losing too much money so, we're reducing the amount of (expensive) places we're renting to save money. With regards to the firing of the higherups, that's agreed. "You can saty foir 6 months to a year and then you can leave the company with X-million". The problem is the focus and priority ofn the shareholders and not the product and/or workforce and/or customers. Check what Boeing did with it's 737 MAX. If the workforce is saying: "I'm not flying in that thing unless I have a deathwish". Because how much in the red figures have these companies got into the last 5-10 years?
layoffs = end of contract period they don't need the STAFF of SQ42 at this point because they have more freedom with "how things are done" due to it being a STAGE progression game so it only has to "LOOK AND FEEL" like it functions correctly Doesn't actually have to "FUNCTION" like the PU does. the PU is slowly building out parts to a big machine the diffrence between a simulation and a game is bascially a game doesn't need to invent the process and function of a mechanic. you can skip steps it's like the moon landing then and now . you have to show the people what can be done without doing it then you eventually attract the people who see what you are tyring to do and KNOW how to do it. todd leaving he's a lead director for linier story games thats his thing Also i think we really need laws across the globe that protect us from propaganda and gas lighting by their media platforms like spectrum
The way venture businesses make an offer to a software enterprise goes along these lines: "we can pay this much but you need to increase your EBITDA by that much" (meaning profit). The quickest way to increase profit is by cutting costs. The easiest way to cut costs in a way that's hard to notice is by mass layoffs. The new owner doesn't know yet how much staff is needed to run said enterprise, therefore, it's a very popular move. My guess is they're cutting costs to sell a part of the company or just get more investors. BTW colocate usually means to share a location with someone or something.
Microsoft lays off 1,900 people. Cig lays off 6 people. No one says anything about Microsoft but everyone erupts into chaos over cig. 6 people really isn’t all that bad, it’s unfortunate, but these people that left are unwilling to leave their homes to maintain a job. It’s understandable.
It's because every other studio are laying off devs em masse, so now is a best time to do the same with minimal questions. It was mostly the higher paid devs that got laid off and CIG are going get devs that'll accept a low salary. CIG wants to maximize profits from their pyramid scheme they've been running for 10+ years.
Ok maybe Todd Papy and the rest of the devs that were "unrelocated" could hopefully come together and restart and help another guy with his space game called "Limit Theory" here in the U.S. would be epic. I think he is out of Louisiana. He had to stop because it was a solo project and he got overwhelmed but his videos of his progress were ahead of it's time.
Nope, you are right. I was waiting for somebody to see it and say it. Asian countries have been making money this whole time. But then Asian game studios didn't try to become multimedia cinema houses. Game critics and pundits bear the responsibility for these layoffs. You are supposed to become a game developer to make games. Far too many Game developers, for example, Neil Drukkman, want to be movie writers or animators. The result was obvious. Overblown game budgets for games that sell millions yet never turn a big enough profit to make up for their cost. Do you think Neil, or Kojimmies are going to fall on their swords? Nah, how about all the game critics who insulted gamers and games that didn't adhere to their "sophisticated" taste? Nope. Egos of comfortable kids who are now in charge of people's livelihoods and costing the Western AAA game industry dearly. But nobody wants to say these words out loud.
Isn't Bouffert a radical Quebec successionist? She was pretty upset when Jared said Quebec was part of Canada. I'd take anything she says with a grain of salt.
Thx for the info Grumpy. Lets just hope things get better now. CIG stated on IGN they are improving efficiency of star citizen development now by relocating teams closer.I mean, some of those guys have been in a company for 9 years etc doesnt mean that their team was doing well. Look for past 10 years of SC. Game is 20 percent developed. 3.23 is a nice thing now, they actually did something. Lets just hope for da best in upcoming years.... or decades
CIG being condescending to their own employees? no way. you'd think the "unnecessary condescensionTM" clown masters would never step so low! i am shocked!
I think one of the issues Dan Truffin and some of the others had with this is that they would actually have to leave the EU when moving to England. Britain left the EU 4 years ago now and they still have issues with their supply chains. But yeah, basically CIG wanted to "create" jobs in Manchester, but rather than adding devs to the total, they tried to move devs over from other countries. And when they didn't comply, they were offered to leave instead. Low blow CIG, very low blow.
I agree I would say it’s a bitter sweet, why lay off game devs when we desperately need any game play in a game filled with concept art only. In the other hand, these devs didn’t get it done in ten years. Maybe new blood is what’s needed. Dan was doing engineering mode, I imagine it will get shelved now and we will get excuses like when the banu merchantmen devs did a mass exit. They blamed the work not done on the fact that devs left.
@@Eagle6Airsoft No mate, you can't blame ten years of dev time on people who came to the company only 6 or 7 years ago or something like that, and who then had to build the foundation for their respective game loops first before designing the game loops themselves.
@@animusnocturnus7131 yes you can, a: some of them where there for more than the 6 years you suggest. Some of them for 10. B: some of them were positioned at the highest possible position, ie the buck stops at the top, if you can’t blame the guy in charge who can you blame. Plenty of blame to pass around, I’m an equal opportunity blamer.
@@Eagle6AirsoftSome were there for 10 years, yes, most were not. If you want to know whom you can blame for the entire 10 years, go to the CIG homepage and look at the cast of managers. The majority of them were there for the entire time. The people who were let go now, you can maybe blame them for 5 or 6 years, edging towards the 7th year. If I got the company history right the Frankfurt studio was added in 2017 after all.
First of all. Yes it sucks for the people working at these companies. Yes, when these "transformations" happen, toxicity goes up in the studio that is about to be downsized while t's awesome for those in the growing studio. Yes, we all know. This game has been in development forever. But are these layoffs a sign of issues at the company? No. Not at all. Their funds keep going up. Job security at CIG is really good . So what is it? It's the follow the sun model at work. What companies are doing these days is keep themselves flexible from local issues. Say a political or economical issue, conflicts, inflation or deflation. Market potential. Productivity issues and so on. One team can have people working in different locations. The issue with FTS is that in many cases team members in different locations don't integrate well and require a lot of work to move a team from storming to performing state. So that's it. For whatever reason like it or not top management has decided to invest in a new studio while disinvesting in the other. As simple as that. These does result in internal conflicts and people get upset because they did a good job but due to decisions at the top they don't get a good outcome. But tomorrow, this company will have new people doing the exact same thing, with the exact same outcome and likely will save some money. Or not, and in that case another transformation happens.
Bro the entire industry is downsizing. Who the fuck cares about this microscopic situation with CIG while thousands else where are being effected. Considering the scope of whats going on CIG is doing pretty fucking good dude. They are trying to maintain jobs and this is how they make the money stretch. Is it that hard?
You do realize every multi million dollar corporation down to a mom and pop company has these same style complaints, same butthurt with employees, same drama? Show us on the bear where CIG hurt you. LOL
in 2024 we all know what "Toxic" means... Dont we? No offence to her but she sounds like a sjw karen but i have very little to go on. Cig realising having 4 studios all over the world is inefficient, some people didnt want to move to relocate to new studio. Big whoop.
Yes toxic means the cult worshipers of CIG as well 60+% of CIG employees including ALL management and their ARMY of youtubers willing to silence, shame, and gang up on anyone pointing out their failures and truths.... That is what toxic means! Are you toxic?
CIG doesn't care. I guess players assumed that CIG was somehow better than the big, bad, evil publisher. But over the past decade they have turned into something worse. A hype machine that rarely delivers on the concepts it sells to it's backers. They have zero accountability and in the end it will likely ruin the project. Developers don't respect them, a large portion of the gaming community doesn't respect them and whales of SC at some point will no longer be able to sustain their poor business practices. Hats off to those devs who got forced out of their jobs. o7
I would have defaulted to taking the lady seriously if I hadn't seen her blue hair profile picture. Sorry but not sorry... Now I take everything she says with the biggest grain of salt imaginable. She should have never been hired.
CIG doesn’t do anything normal they pull these patches out of their asses based off of marketing archetypes designed to make millions off these cutely named rationed slices. As long as the backers tolerate this the sham will continue
I never understood opening so many offices- unless they had to go to get the talent. Still, they knew they would be shrinking over the next couple yers as 42 came out. Its a major waste of money. I'd bet the farm the Roberts started a side business in real estate - buy the buildings using loans against CIG, then charge CIG rent to pay the mortage. Such a lucrative way to make a boat load of money off the back of your own company.
Grumpy... Don't take this the wrong way Bro! But we NEED you!!! Don't you EVER change! Keep that rebel spirit STRONG!!! And please, please keep on making these videos! You... Sir... Are a breath of fresh air!!! And quite frankly... We need MORE like you! Salty Mike is another one that I watch regularly... But yeah! He's a funny one! Sometimes he's hyper critical and on point... Just like yourself! But other times...??? Anyway, not sure 100% what's going down, but I hope you two are still on Good Terms! We NEED to keep CIG accountable and under the microscope! Because there are FAR too many dumb and mindless fanboys and sheep running around! Who have simply lost the art of critical thinking! Keep going Bro! You may have your detractors! But trust me!!! You STILL have plenty of support! And I'll be damned if I am going to join that Borg Collective!!!
I agree with most of what you say in the video, but your title is probably going to get you a lot of flak because your video doesn't show that it's bad, it shows that it's basically just business as normal, better than average for the industry, and probably even *good* for CIG in the long run. There's been rumours for a while now that Todd and his family weren't happy living in Germany and wanted to be back in Washington. Before we even knew he left, his LinkedIn had his updated location as being back in Washington State. Not surprising all all. When www.youtube.com/@ThePilot_ left his job in Austin last year, it was to move to take care of family and he couldn't do his job remotely so he had to leave CIG. The overwhelming majority of confirmed people who left were from either the LA office or the Austin office. The Austin office hosts CIG's physical servers, but other than that... there's not a lot going on there that couldn't be done better in Manchester, Frankfurt, or Montreal so I can really see CIG wanting to shutter both of them. LA is really expensive. And Austin is in Texas, which has trouble keeping the power on if it's too cold. Or too hot. The US is not like Germany. Since moving here, I haven't had a power outage that lasted more than a few seconds. But in the US, depending on where you are, if the power goes out, it's going to be hours before it comes back, maybe days. When you look at CIG's website, most of the 40+ positions available are in Manchester, most of the rest are Frankfurt, an a few are in Montreal. They're hiring someone for sales in Austin and *nothing* for LA. Ever since Zyloh made his post that the Austin studio wasn't going anywhere, and I started thinking about it, I suspect that as soon as they can figure out a way to transfer the physical servers for CIG from one country to another, Austin will be gone. And I'm guessing that LA is only still there because Chris and Sandy like LA and want the studio there in case they want to move back with their girls. Annie Bouffard was a bit of a surprise, but she seemed like the type of manager to be very protective of her team and take it personally if she didn't feel they were being treated well enough. I haven't seen confirmation of anyone else from the Montreal office leaving, but it is not hard to see her getting pissed off about people being given the choice to relocate with their job or find a new one, anywhere in CIG, getting into an argument with her manager, getting blown off, taking it higher, not getting any other results, and then resigning and making a public statement. To be fair to her, even if CIG wasn't doing this as a stealth layoff, it's a pretty common tactic in the US. Company wants to downsize but doesn't want the bad press from layoffs. They move as many workers as possible to Working from Home. Once the office is basically gutted, they transfer its functions to the regional headquarters. When that's done, they end WFH and tell everyone they need them working in the office now. Which could be a 2-6 hour drive, one way, for a lot of the WFH staff. They resign instead of RTO. The company gets its layoffs without the bad press. If I were a employed by a US company in another country and started seeing colleagues in other offices getting the option to either relocate or resign, I'd be concerned and probably more than a little freaked out.
"Squadron 42, that game you all paid for but we decided to make seperately so we could sell it to you again after you already paid us to make it, well that game is finished now, so all the developers are going to come over to Star Citizen, which we've basically been leaving to rot for about a decade as we can only monetize whales so much in one product! So expect big things, all the devs are going to be working on it full time!" "Awesome!" "Sadly we've fired all the devs!" "???" "Buy another Jpeg of a spaceship please"
I think most of this comes from the UK government gives big tax breaks to games and film companys that work in the UK. So proberly just a move to save money
What's funny is for so long they had touted how having offices across the world was what allowed them to get so much done, how they could go to bed and hand their work off to someone and then wake up and find stuff done.
then why didn't they do that in the first place? You still need real estate no matter where the people are. They're still running the same number of servers. The cost of telecommunication is tiny in comparison to a single person's wage. Are you arguing that they are now knowingly reducing productivity for the sake of cost efficiency?@astrodoge6152
Fan of the channel mate. I'd just like to give feedback on something. I don't know if you've got a light too close to the camera or something, but you're looking a little washed out and your lighting could do with some adjusting. Have a good one man.
Sorry, GrumpyEye. Was awake into the wee hours of the morning and this video showed up with comments enabled before it went live. So it felt very Star Citizeny; a glitch in the Matrix.
Megacorps leaning on AI now. Production prices are about to drop through the floor, marketing will EXPLODE, most coders are about to need to find new jobs.
Mark my words, CIG will find themselves in a class action lawsuit for improper use of funds. I'm willing to bet Chris Roberts also went to Epstien's island a time or two.
The game should have been finished five years ago. It's incredible that the project has managed to shuffle along this far. Have they finished the fighter weapon "rebalance" yet? No? Theatres of War? Where was that? If the game wasn't a massive failure - why does it look *exactly* like a complete failure? Still just two maps for AC? It was beyond a joke in 2020. It's 2024.
I like to check the game state from time to time. So what happened that forced these layoffs? SC was in development way before covid hiring spree all studios had, so why all of a sudden veteran crew leaving the team in, I have no idea, stage of development? I know that sc fans are rabid when it comes to criticism, but 12 years without any finished product makes you twist your finger at your temple.
im waiting for them (cig) to fire the racetrack devs and hire server devs, law & order system devs, sandworm devs...something that actually matters, who gaf about racetracks, the community racers can build those!
"... it's not the type of stuff that I want to talk about anymore." How's that stuff you don't want to talk about and games you'd rather play thing going?
Once again keep saying FIRING, when a company relocates positions and said employees can't or do not want to relocate. That is called a voluntary Lay-off and NOT FIRING. We also know that Todd Papy was having some serious family issues which prevented him from relocating for his position. So, at no time for these positions were FIRED or Lay-ed off due to financial issue.....So try again I guess
@@GrumpyEyeGaming I Baffled how you wake up in the morning and spout this crap...OH wait did you get FIRED? That must be the reason why always talking about companies FIRING people. Are you projecting? No wait just talking out of butt.
Look who the employees are. Twitter had people on payroll quite LITERALLY not doing anything. Making 6 figures for literally nothing. That's the expectation with a lot of people that are fresh in the tech industry. Toxic cause they expect people to do their jobs? I highly HIGHLY doubt it's a toxic work environment.