Stainless Steel Studios is no more

poopinmymouth

http://raf.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=9,132,,10

Things like this really piss me off. That is, if the studio was as cool as the poster towards the bottom of this thread say they were. Anyone from here work there, that can chime in? I think I remember a user from either here, cgchat, or cgtalk that posted shots from R&F right after E3.

Josh_Singh

Messed up stuff like this always makes me scared to be in this buisness. Publisher/developer relationships are so wierd. I hope the story of what went down comes to light. So it doesn't happen again.

Dravalen

We had a guy come to Amaze from there a couple months ago, he didn't say too much about it other than some of the crunch times were really insane.

j_bradford

I remember them by their signature art test. Sad to hear; two weeks from gold? Certainly it would be released by another publisher.

Paul Jaquays

Ghost_rider said: [ QUOTE ]
Messed up stuff like this always makes me scared to be in this buisness.

[/ QUOTE ]

Stuff like that happens all the time and it is nothing new. Anyone who has worked in the industry five years or longer has likely worked for at least two employers in that time period. At ten years, 3 or or 4 and a good chance that one or more of them no longer exist -- either out of business or acquired by another company (if they are lucky, their company name remains as a product-line brand).

How many name developers or publishers in the USA from the early years of 8 bit video game development are still in business? Only two come to mind: EA and Activision. The others have gone away or been merged over and over until they exist only as memories.

One of the things I tell students wanting to be in the game industry is to be prepared to both change jobs and move often.

Toomas

Why is that US scene seems so unstable compared to Japan, Nintendo, Konami, Namco etc. are still kicking around...
Is it because it is more stable or because i am not well informed enough?

BTW poop, why the smily infront of the topic name?

Erol

I don't know if it's really that stable. The publisher/developer's are still around (Konami/Namco/etc), but the independants could be something else altogether.

Has anyone ever kept a list of studios and their life spans? It'd be interesting to see.

PaK

Of the studios i have worked for:

-2 have closed shop, laid off everyone.
-1 has been absorbed by EA
-1 Couldn't afford to pay me on a regular basis, but still holds a staff of about 8 contract employees.

Only Ubisoft still stands on 2 their own 2 feet....well, them and my current employer

Nothing is sacred, and there are no rules. Good studios can be purchased for their IP's and dissolved; like westwood. 1st part developers like MS can lay off an entire division; like they did with the Millieium campus Sports teams. Studios like ION Austin can be packed full of talented game developers and have a world class game designer yet still struggle to make a hit...doomed for liquidated by the parent company. 1st party, 2nd party, 3rd party...there is no sure thing, there is no security. It's hard to tell what will happen, and when. I wonder if I will be able to stay at this comnpany long enough to get my green card...so far it looks very promising

So yeah, like Paul said...get used to it.

-R