EA Shut's Down Visceral Games
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https://www.ea.com/news/an-update-on-the-visceral-star-wars-project
Our Visceral studio has been developing an action-adventure title set in the Star Wars universe. In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game. Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design. We will maintain the stunning visuals, authenticity in the Star Wars universe, and focus on bringing a Star Wars story to life. Importantly, we are shifting the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency, leaning into the capabilities of our Frostbite engine and reimagining central elements of the game to give players a Star Wars adventure of greater depth and breadth to explore.This move leads to a few other changes:
A development team from across EA Worldwide Studios will take over development of this game, led by a team from EA Vancouver that has already been working on the project. Our Visceral studio will be ramping down and closing, and we’re in the midst of shifting as many of the team as possible to other projects and teams at EA.
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Being torn from a dream title seems completely out of sorts for those interested in this sort of thing
This one seems to be a better ending than though, most of the fellows are just being shifted instead of layed off right? That doesn't seem to happen that often.
Visceral was an awesome studio I really wish the best for all the staff.
what a shame! my sincere apologies and thoughts to the people affected by this^..Its crazy to tihnk that a company a talentuous as Visc.Game, those beinhd the dead spaces series would go so soon...
May they get what they deserve.
Here is the proper Soundtrack for this thread:
It may seem less than favourable outcome from an artistic standpoint, but at the end of the day these hard nosed business decisions are made time and again in the corporate world, plus it's not as if Visceral's staff are not without backup options employment wise going forward, their expertise after all will be farmed out across EAs group of companies. So that said, what would really suck if this closure had resulted in layoff's, which no one in their right mind want's too see.
I really do just want a Star Wars adventure worthy of the quality KOTOR was able to reach.
Sadly, being bought out is the beginning of the end for the majority of studios. Publishers don't see talent they see IP that can be placed anywhere that it is cheaper.
So in the case of Visceral's Dead Space 3, they shoehorned Co-op player in the game, swamped the game with Micro-transactions and then where surprised it wasn't as successful as the other ones....
Did these Idiots ever thought about the possibility that their meddling with the game is the reason why it didn't perform so well?
Are they that dense and arrogant?
It's Star Wars.
Respawn?
Bioware?
EA is like a sociopath serial killer who kills its victims, eats them up and shits them out.
Never gonna happen. Don't you see the pattern?
How many Star Wars single player games have to be cancelled before it is obvious for everybody that the only thing they will ever do is Multiplayer games so they can nickel and dime the consumer with their shitty micro-transactions.
This is EA Redwood Shores:
Visceral Games merely occupied the top floor of the EARS building.
Last time I was there, 3rd floor was EA Sports (Tiger Woods)
2nd was Maxis (Sims)
1st was EA Play
One particular project being developed at Visceral was set to be made with 12 people onsite. The rest was outsourced (insourced?).
When that project was cancelled all 12 of those staff members were absorbed by other teams/floors.
So Bioware Montreal I guess closed its doors, but I know a lot of guys over there, and I don't think there was a single layoff. Everyone was either xferred to Edmonton, or move to EA Motive (aka the other side of the office).
But tons of gamers , me included wanted to play that single player SW adventure game written by Amy Hennig and not another boring Destiny clone.
These kind of games are empty and soulless IMHO.
Money talks. If people didn't buy them, corporations wouldn't make them. Vote with your wallet.
i've met a couple of guys from there a few years back when they were over in the UK, working on a tie-in for the DS series. do we know if anyone from polycount has been affected?
He just joined Visceral a month or so back, was really happy about it. And is now looking for places.
That reminds me of when I got my first job in the industry. From the time I interviewed and accepted to the time I was going to start, the publisher swooped in and pulled the plug on two of the studios projects. I still ended up working there but it was crazy weird interviewing and seeing the entire place up and running, then going in to start and the place had been left almost as is but no one was around. People had to schedule times to come back and pick up their personal stuff, most didn't bother. It was a really weird way to lay people off.
It's particularly sad that we won't be able to show off any of the art we had done for the Star Wars project, I believe we were really pushing the bar. The concepts, characters, creatures, ships, droids, environments, animations and tech were all coming together really well. Our group of concept artists are total badasses and it's a shame the world won't get an art book out of them.
I remember how excited I was just to show this short clip, which was actually one of the first things we worked on for the project, before we had stuff "figured out" on the art side.
I would really like to hear the factors that led to its cancellation. And with that i mean the truth not some marketing bollocks, and company double-speak.
Until then I'll go with my gut instinct which tells me the EA overlords found no method of shoehorning microtransactions and lootboxes into the game, which equals to greed.
If EA thinks that following the "trend" is the right way to go i would like to remark that if you follow, you do not lead and make trends.
Trying to make it right for anybody only leads to pissing off everybody.
I'm sure people who worked on this will have no trouble to find a job outside of EA if necessary, still it must be a shitty feeling when a project is cancelled.
The project itself has been moved to a different studio, so let's see what they will do with it in the end.
WAR was awesome, still my fondest gaming memories. I even play on the emulated server that's out there from time to time still
EA Is Buying Titanfall Developer Respawn For Over $400 Million:
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/11/ea-is-buyingtitanfalldeveloper-respawn-for-over-400-million/
Mega-publisher EA has purchased a new studio -- Respawn, the developer of Titanfall. The news comes just weeks after the publisher shuttered Visceral Games.
EA said in a press release that the deal is worth $US455 ($592) million, a number that includes cash, equity, and performance milestone payments.
Respawn staff have spent the past few weeks exchanging whispers about a potential sale, two sources said, although there was no concrete news until the studio informed employees about the deal in a meeting today.
Earlier this week, one source with access to some of Respawn's forthcoming plans sent us what they said was a version of the acquisition contract, which reveals that EA is paying over $US400 ($521) million for the Los Angeles-based studio.
According to various documents sent by that source, EA outbid the South Korean publisher Nexon, which publishes the Titanfall mobile game and had also made an offer to buy Respawn. EA had 30 days to match that offer, which they chose to do.
Respawn will also receive bonuses tied to Metacritic scores for both its upcoming Star Wars game and the unannounced Titanfall 3, according to that documentation.
Founded in 2010 by Call of Duty designers Jason Ward and Vince Zampella, Respawn won hearts with its first game, Titanfall, released in 2014 as an Xbox exclusive.
The second entry in the futuristic first-person shooter series, Titanfall 2, came out last fall for multiple platforms but didn't quite make sales waves, perhaps because EA released it smack in the middle of Call of Duty and the publisher's other big shooter, Battlefield.
Early last year, EA announced that it had contracted Respawn to make a Star Wars action game, in addition to the Battlefront series and what was then planned as a Star Wars action-adventure from Visceral, which has since been cancelled.
Respawn, based in Los Angeles, has been independent until now.
Hmm...in my opinion the acquisition price seems a tad on the light side considering the studio's expertise was largely drawn from the original CoD devs - Infinity Ward. Anyway bears keeping a close eye on this new development given recent events.
I know that if these new IP bough by EA will have at least one small failure (probably caused by EA themselves - like usual), then it's over for them.
I have never worked in game industry, so I don't know. I'm wrong probably. But how it feels being bought by EA just to being shut down?
Workers being given crazy hours and no overtime pay, bonuses being withheld, and studios being shut down even after successful products are shipped. The entire industry seems highly Unethical. If ONLY there existed a group whose main focus was Ethics within the Games Industry that might step up and champion the plight of these people...
And I know that this is not only EA, but they are primal example of these tactics to eliminate rival products.
Of course for the passionate developer it will be not so easy to separate/handover there "baby".
Think of it on a long term, if they can sell their business for a good amount of money, it enables them to create new things in the future much easier.
It blows my mind when people bash studios for getting acquired, it shows they have zero awareness of how business works.
Just a thought.
Large publishers have a tendency to purchase studios with successful IP's, milk those IP's, and then close the studio when the IP is dry. They are all about short term profit, plain and simple. How can we make the next quarter look better than the last. They legitimately don't care about 2, 3, or 5 years time.
The only difference here, is that Visceral was already an EA studio (Redwood Shores, i believe?).
As already pointed out, EA are a business, they want to make money. Star Wars games outside of the ability to play as a Jedi are always seen as a risk, unfortunately. And Visceral at this point were just burning cash on developing something that may not have recouped those losses. Personally, i love Visceral's games. But EA made it no secret that just about all of their titles after Dead Space hadn't met expectations in terms of sales.
Don't get me wrong here, the entire thing is just a massive dick move. EA keep doing this and people keep being surprised when it happens. But those are the facts.
And this happens in every industry. When Starbucks buys out a local Mom and Pops coffee joint, do people really think it's because they wanted to integrate their frappuccino recipe on the menu?