Industry's so fucked, man. Doesn't matter how well you do critically or commercially. What scale you're working at. There's a rot in the business.
I once worked on a doomed project at a satellite studio of a free-to-play games company. When the project was inevitably canceled, the CTO came to visit our neck of the woods. He pulled six of us into a meeting room and opened with a story. He said, when I joined this company seven years ago, I had to make some tough decisions. Spending was out of control, and revenue was lagging behind, so the only thing left was to let some of our staff go. But I didn't want to be callous about it. So I organized a boat trip. And everyone not on the boat was made redundant.
The six of us were sitting in that small meeting room, staring in disbelief at this story. We were left wondering: Are we on the boat?
Reader, nobody was let go that day, and the studio limped along for many months more. But everyone who's been in the industry for a few years has a story like this. Every shipped game is a goddamn miracle, and the workers who make the magic happen deserve to be treated like people, for fuck's sake.
