Krome australia layoffs.
polycounter lvl 10
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/08/krome-lays-off-100-employees-shuts-adelaide-studio/
And yet more bad news to come out of australia. I dont think there is anyone here from krome but i wish them luck to land on their feet.
Makes me feel even more lucky to be in one of the few companies that is growing... seems to be the minority here in aus.
And yet more bad news to come out of australia. I dont think there is anyone here from krome but i wish them luck to land on their feet.
Makes me feel even more lucky to be in one of the few companies that is growing... seems to be the minority here in aus.
Replies
It seems that all the smaller games companies in this country are doing good though. Halfbrick and Soap spring to mind. I guess that's where the Australian games industry is headed.. and it's not neccessarily a bad thing.
They started to work on their own ip, but im pretty sure it doesnt really appeal to anyone, and even though they will be released i have a hard time beleiving that they will have mass appeal.
And yeah we at halfbrick are doing great
It really seems like the downloadable market is the way to go. Maybe I should be focusing less on next-gen stuff in my portfolio, and doing alot more low poly work. There are very few companies left developing next-gen games in Australia anymore. I think 2k, Team Bondi and The Creative Assembly are the only ones left. Everyone else is developing for iphone, DS, wii, or XBLA/PSN.
Bad luck guys, should come party with us Realtime boys for a bit! Seems when game devs go down pub trade goes up.
Good luck to all those who were affected.
Well that would just screw things to buggery. I mean, "lets just all have whether or not contracts are honored and people paid by whether or not public opinion is good."
That's just stupid, whether a game is good/bad and the public does/doesn't like it has very little to do with the the majority of people that work on a game. Even if it's only confined to management their are many things that can prevent them from achieving what they want to with a game as well.
I thought this was common practice with publishers? I know a lot of people get bonuses from how well the game did not only at retail but with its metacritic score as well.
Usually this only applies to the top dogs at the company.
I'd certainly expect it for certain types of bonuses, but the idea of the publishing being based on an expected metacritic score and having not met those expectations causing the contract to become void and therefore affecting payments and turnover (regardless of how well it did financially) is atrocious.
Not to mention that I've seen plenty of games/movies/books with low metacritic scores that also managed to be best sellers. Unfortunately that would be me admitting that this industry is about money, which is naturally true, but never feels good to say it.
Krome seems like it might be completly gone.
http://www.tsumea.com/australasia/australia/news/151010/serious-trouble-at-krome-studios
Real damn shame.
But i honestly believe that this is the worst of it and it can only get better from here, i personally cant think of any more devs that are at risk. The team bondi guys and 2k seems happy as larry and it was inspiring meeting so many startups.
This isn't what the rumour on Tsumea was about, is it? Laying people off and then re-hiring people back as a contractor with shittier pay.
Yeah I heard rumblings from friends yesterday...just concerns really. They heard there was a crisis meeting and that there would be the possibility of layoffs come monday. Then this happened. Not surprising, most guys didn't think that Krome would make it to Christmas. I was let go four weeks ago, and witnessed 4 rounds of redundancies in just over 12 months, things definitely weren't getting any better.
The last few months I was there, we were pitching like mad, jumping from project to project like crazy monkeys, because 'oh, the publisher said they like this but they only have $xxxxxx in their budget' or 'they like these ideas, but they need motion control support'
Yeah, I guess what really hurt was that Krome made some bad games and after a while publishers could see the stink lines. Krome used to pride itself on always delivering on time, and when the GFC hit and times got hard, delivering on time wasn't enough...the games had to be good too.
I have to admit, this being my first job in the industry, it ended up being nothing like I imagined. On my first game, I was basically an optimisation monkey, stripping polys out of meshes so a 360 game would run on the wii. Did that for the last 7 or 8 months of Clonewars Republic Heroes. Funny thing is that there were some poor bastards in new zealand (sidhe) who then had to take the stuff we'd optimized and strip that down for psp! LOL
On our last project I was a concept/3d enviro artist...creating content which was great. In June the publisher decided to switch production from Adelaide to the Brisbane office, which was the death nail for us. There were probably more people outside of our office working on the game anyway...we had guys in all three studios doing bits and pieces.
Krome did have some great games...but they were either not picked up or the design changed (hello publishers) so dramatically that the game wasn't anywhere near as awesome as it could have been.
I sure hope someone out there has video of the Yoda demo we made last year...high speed sidescrolling platformer with exploding droids! Exploding I tell you!
I dunno mate. This super high Australian dollar is poison for our industry that has it's bread and butter line doing cheap licensed titles and the like for US publishers. If we're no longer cheap they'll go elsewhere. I predict a boom in New Zealand games development shortly, along with a lot of the work that the Aussies might have done going to studios in Asia. It'll be interesting to see how the local studios are affected, but I'd say it'll be a while before we see any genuine improvement.
Anyway, best of luck to you folks who've lost your jobs. Probably wouldn't hurt to throw Sidhe a portfolio. I think we're still after an IPhone artist with some 2d and 3d skills.
I personally dodged a bullet, it was my last day anyway as I had already resigned....
However my heart goes out to all those awesome peeps I worked with who are sadly now looking for work.
Too all the Leads out there in the community, if a Krome portfolio lands on your desk sometime in the near future, give it a good look.
They were some of the best and most talented people I have know.
-Dean
After GCAP though it really seems like Aus is looking like it's going down those lines, so i need to start drawing again to get my skills back
I can't imagine this changing anytime soon. So it looks like alot of us will be rethinking our portfolio's direction in order to better fall in line with our changing industry.. Or just jump ship to film. :P
Beyond that there are a few smaller startups who're still managing to ride out the storm.
Uh 2k in canbera is mostly an art house from talking to the 2k dudes at gcap. They did alot of work on bioshock 1 and 2 and are working xcom.
Thq is still surviving, luckily they are a publishers house so it means that landing contracts isnt as big as a roblem as the other outsourcing houses.
Also at halfbrick only half of our efforts are on mobile development, we do actually have a team working on larger console games.
Auran still lives, but they make train simulators nowadays.
That's interesting. I know a few people who've worked there, and I was under the impression that they mostly did level design, QA and engine programming.
Now that I'm living in Canberra, I might have to pop in my resume. :P
and yeah Jackablade, Micro Forte do still exist. I don't know to what extent though. lol
btw muzz, were you one of the speakers at gcap? I would of really liked to have gone, but the gold coast is a bit of a trek. If it's in Melbourne next year, I'm there.
Also relevant:
http://www.tsumea.com/australasia/australia/news/171010/pandemic-studios-brisbane-building-is-being-demolished
Saw them pulling it down today while taking my dog to the park... yikes.
Though i met chai and flying monk there. That was cool
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/30973/GCAP_EEDARs_Short_Gives_Games_a_Silver_Lining.php