Developers at Google’s recent game studios were shocked on February 1 when they were informed that the studios would be closed, according to four sources with knowledge of what happened. Just a week ago, Phil Harrison, vice president and general manager of Google Stadiums, sent an email to staff praising the “great progress” his studios have made so far.
A few days later, mass layoffs were announced, part of an apparent pattern that Stadia leadership was not being honest and honest with the company’s developers, many of whom attributed their lives and careers to the team.
‘[Stadia Games and Entertainment] has made great strides in building a diverse and talented team and establishing a strong range of exclusive Stadia games, ”sources said according to Harrison’s January 27 email. ‘We will soon confirm the investment envelope of SG&E, which will again inform the SG&E strategy and 2021 [objectives and key results]. ”
Google declined to comment.
Five days later, it appears that Harrison is completely reversing the course, announcement in a public blog post that Stadia Games and Entertainment CEO Jade Raymond has left the company, and Google would “not invest further in bringing exclusive content to our in-house SG&E development team.”
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Stage developers learned the news, first reported by Kotaku, at almost the same time as everyone else via an internal email and a conference call with Harrison. The messy rollout took place after an already grueling year through the pandemic. It reminded me of Stages’ own launch, which appeared hectic and omitted many features promoted during the unveiling of the service, but added months later. In this case, however, Stadia’s own developers are the ones affected by the deviant planning.
Stadia, which was released in November 2019, initially struggled due to its monetization model and a lack of games. The technology was sound, but as a content platform it was lacking. Maybe strong first party games could change that. Google announced in 2019 the establishment of game studios in Montreal and Los Angeles, as well as the rental of famous Assassin’s Creed producer and eventual general manager of EA Motive Studios, Jade Raymond, to oversee their development. It seemed like Google was it from a long distance, until it was not.
“I’m proud of the team we built at Stadia Games and Entertainment and the groundbreaking work on exclusive games for the platform,” Raymond said. Kotaku in a statement shortly after the closures were announced. “It was a difficult decision to take on a new opportunity, and I will be forever grateful to this team for everything we have learned and achieved together.”
Developers had to wait three days after receiving the news to share their confusion and frustration directly with Harrison in a second conference call on February 4th. This call was followed by a controversial V&A where the Stadia boss was confronted with his email from just the week before that suggested everything except that the studios be shut down in wholesale. According to four sources with knowledge of the call, Harrison expressed his regret over the misleading statements in his previous email. When asked what had changed from the previous week, Harrison admitted that there was nothing and said to the call, “We knew.”
One source described the questions and answers as a ultimately unsuccessful attempt to extract some sort of liability from Stadia management.
“I think people really just wanted the truth of what happened,” the source said. “They just want an explanation of leadership. If you started this studio and employed a hundred or so people, no one would just start it in a year or so, right? You can not make a match in that time … We had multi-year insurance, and now not. “
The source added that the questions and answers “were not pretty.”
It is still not clear exactly why Google decided to abandon the first party studios that started building less than two years earlier. In his blog post, Harrison cites the rising cost of game development as a factor.
“Creating the best in-class games from the start takes many years and significant investment, and the cost increases exponentially,” he wrote.
In his Thursday question and staff questions, he specifically pointed to the acquisition of Microsoft and the planned acquisition of Bethesda Software later this year as one of the factors that led Google to decide to close the book on original game development. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is a nearly trillion dollar company and about equal to Microsoft in terms of revenue and profit, according to a 2020 survey by Forbes.
Elsewhere during the Q&A, Harrison apparently indicated that the ongoing pandemic was partly to blame, according to one source. The effects of Covid-19 were devastating, including nearly half a million deaths in the U.S. alone. But it has also led to many people finding relief in the game as their social distance and given a boost to the core of many large gaming companies as a result.
For some, the closure of the studio and its communication to staff was a sign of the way game development at Stadia was mismanaged, three sources said. Kotaku. These include a severe lack of resources, difficulties in securing the necessary hardware and software, and a frozen number of people during 2020 after the onset of the pandemic, despite the goal of eventually eliminating several original exclusives in the coming years. send.
From now on, according to sources, Google wants to find jobs for displaced employees elsewhere in the company. However, this is a problem because Google traditionally hires generalists, and game development requires a very specialized set of skills.
Developers had hoped that Stadia’s game studios would survive its expenses, although Google, in theory at least, could afford to burn hundreds of millions by launching a new exclusive gaming platform. Instead, the confidence of some of the approximately 150 developers affected by the sudden change of direction burned. Now the remaining Stadia employees have to pick up the pieces while asking how they can trust leadership and how anyone can trust Stadia.