Another day, another round of layoffs and studio assassinations in the video games industry. This, really, really, really sucks, and I feel so incredibly bad for everyone affected. But this is also, sadly, the expected and obvious end game for the business model that has dominated the industry since the turn of the millennium. The move by publishers to bring development in house, rather than acting as a vendor to studios, was always going to end in tears. It just sucks for all of us involved that this was the moment it all hit the end of the road. Concentration like this is ultimately bad for any market. It's the the thing that makes markets, as a tool, different from communities. Markets are competitive, while communities are cooperative, and as the amount of independent players in a market shrinks and power concentrates, they become incredibly fragile. A new video games industry will arise from these ashes, but it will take years. The era of free money is gone, and investors have moved on to obsessing over the fantasy of free knowledge- and creative-labour-as-a-utility. Picking up the pieces is going to involve a lot of struggle, grit, and, hopefully, a concerted effort to not just recreate the system that just burned us all so that a lucky few with their own independent resources can become the next generation of morally hollow publishing billionaires. Either that, or we'll forever be Link fighting Ganon and his unlimited thirst for power.#VideoGames #Layoffs #Gaming
