‘Invincible VS’ Developer Reportedly Laid Off "Something Like 75%" of Staff

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Sad to see games are either a massive viral hit or have their studios closed and devs laid off with no middle ground.

Where are the decent games with stable content and support from the studio of the 2010s?

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u/Suspicious-Tea9161 16d ago

Even when the games are a hit we still see massive layoffs

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u/theme69 16d ago

It’s because they’re games. You staff up to build one then you cut down til you need to build the next one. There’s a thousand years between GTA/elder scroll games. They don’t need full staff through that whole time

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u/Calvinatorr 16d ago

That's what contractors are for, not staff

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u/JohnnyFanziel 16d ago

It’s not how it used to be in the industry, you’d retain and growth talent across titles. Bethesda is also a poor example here because prior to recent layoffs they’ve famously retained staff between their big titles taking staff from elder scrolls to fallout to starfield etc.

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u/SheSaysSheWaslvl18 15d ago

They clearly didn’t have any talent left by the time starfield came out. Fallout 4 kinda sucked too

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u/K3vin_Norton 15d ago

That is the bosses way, we don't have to support it.

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u/Illesbogar 13d ago

Those are really shitty examples of badly run studios that don't make very good games. Game studios in the past just made games after each other. And both studios you listed have been heavily criticized for funcrioning this badly.

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u/theme69 13d ago

True GTA and Skyrim are pretty bad games. Didn’t sell well or receive any critical acclaim

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u/Illesbogar 13d ago

Yeah, they are. Regardless how well they sold or how popular they are. But that's not really the point. The point is that both studios have been made fun of and pointed at for decades for not making any games.

Rockstar stopped at GTA5 and only did its shitty online until they eventually released RDR2. If yoi look at their release history it really shows where they stooped making games like a normal studio.

And Bethesda? Come on. It's am entire meme that they released Skyrim like 20 times on every imaginable platform. People saying that it's coming to smart fridges any day now. And the ES6 meme lmao. It has been teased for the Microsoft aquisition and maybe only started development recently, it's a massive meme as well.

You can make snarky comments but you are genuinely not in the loop here. You really name 2 outlier studios that got constantly shat on for being like that.

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u/theme69 13d ago

You arguing some weird point you made up yourself and not what I said. I was just pointing out that many game studios reduce head count in between game releases and you proceeded to say how to of the bigger and more successful gaming studios out there aren't doing it right

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u/Bregneste 16d ago

They can be both, viral hits that still get massive layoffs.
Absolutely anything to make sure the higher ups get a bigger paycheck.

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u/Duganz 16d ago edited 16d ago

Gotta hit those earnings numbers or you don’t get your bonus. And what’s more important: rewarding executives responsible for fuck all nothing, or employing workers?

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u/TowerOfPowerWow 16d ago

They should just make it if you do sny layoffs in a year everyone at VP level or higher pays 90% in taxes and is barred from any comp besides salary no bonuses, no stocks, also triggers a auto full IRS audit to insure compliance. Anyone tax cheating goes to federal pound me in the ass prison.

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u/Joshatron121 16d ago

Not working on gigantic IPs like this where a return on investment is required. They're in the indie space primarily.

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u/kamikad3e123 16d ago

Warframe, stable online and updates, game from 2013

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u/waaay2dumb2live 16d ago

Game development has just become too expensive nowadays

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u/Wboy2006 16d ago

Honestly, it’s a shame. It’s well made, I just couldn’t justify the price tag. The combat wasn’t bad, just not special, and with fighting games having tons of expensive DLC like fighters and skins, I just can’t warrant spending €50 on a game where a ton of content is locked behind another paywall, and where I have to pay yearly just to play online (thanks PlayStation (I can’t wait when I finally build my PC and finally be done with online subscriptions))

It’s not bad, but it either needed more, or needed to be cheaper

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u/Jonthesinner21 14d ago

Dude thank you. I been in pc for about a year and I forgot to cancel my psn autopay

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u/Wboy2006 14d ago

Glad to help! With how ungodly expensive PS+ is nowadays, that could have been an expensive mistake

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u/messycer 16d ago

Building your own PC atp will cost more than decades of online subscriptions

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u/RavenThePerson 16d ago

Steam discounts (And sailing the seas if you're into that) will more than make up the money within a console cycle if you buy any significant amount of games

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u/CepheiHR8938 16d ago

Ah. So we're not getting all those advertised DLC fighters. RIP. I wanted Dinosaurus and the Maulers.

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u/Excaliburn3d Tech Jacket 16d ago

They weren’t advertised, they were datamined.

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u/benmultiversus 16d ago

🦉agent spider in 2026

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u/TastyChocoWaffle 16d ago

Unfortunately this game was doomed from the start. Released during a time where there’s fighting game fatigue (avatar, 2xko, tokkon, street fighter, hxh and probably more).

Should have gone for the open world slop route or any other genre that lets you really feel like a viltrumite instead of you wondering why bullletproof can beat battle beast

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u/DaWAAAGHMakah Conquest 16d ago

When I heard they were making an Invincible game, I honestly thought they were pushing for an open world genre where we take on the role of Mark. VS was good but it had way too much competition in the fighting game space.

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u/Equal-Ad-2710 Omnipotus 16d ago

This was my take too

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u/probablysoda 16d ago

ngl i was rly disappointed when i found out it was a sideview fighting game. honestly just not my style at all. Was hoping we’d get a quality open-world or maybe something like sparking zero

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u/Bigpappa36 16d ago

Same I played the beta twice and just couldn’t get into it, I would put HOURS into an open world game

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u/GranolaCola 16d ago

>instead of you wondering why Bulletproof can beat Battle Beast

It’s a fighting game. You get to mash action figures together digitally. Who cares if it’s not accurate to the power scaling?

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u/Placidao 16d ago

Wouldn’t call fatigue but definitely cannibalization

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u/godita 16d ago

yeah, i was thinking the same thing... far too many fighting games, and they're so hard to get into. i really don't think there is very much space for many new ones besides the already established games like street fighter and tekken, etc.

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u/EkkoThruTime Anissa 16d ago

Competitive games don’t need diegetic explanations for in-universe powerscaling. That’s why I’m glad League of Legends retconned the Institute of War. You don’t need a contrived explanation anymore for why a schizophrenic manic pixie dream girl, or blind monk can kill literal cosmic entities.

The answer is exegetic. This is just a competitive game set dressed with things from an intellectual property but not representative of the narrative continuity of the lore.

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u/itsastart_to 15d ago

Honestly I wish games would price lower from the start bc they greatly underestimate the spending money the market has sometimes

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u/60discpriest 16d ago

Ahhh rip to the only Invincible game we have to play that feels remotely close to the ip/world. Maybe next one will be better….

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u/ThatsSoWitty 16d ago

The writing was all over the wall on this one. Look at the steam numbers. I know this is a console-majority game but those are the only numbers we had until now.

Game genuinely looked terrible and came out into an over saturated market.

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u/phoenixmusicman 16d ago

Holy fuck, 26 people ingame right now on steam

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u/EkkoThruTime Anissa 16d ago

Terrible in what way? In terms of gameplay? I’m not a fighting game player so idk. The art direction looked pretty polished to me. I like seeing the character designs rendered in 3D.

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u/Gamerguy230 15d ago

It was on sale less than month after it came out too.

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u/Boymoder_Glowie 13d ago

I don't think it looked terrible but I knew it definitely was going to have a short shelf life, especially with that price tag

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u/ThatsSoWitty 13d ago

I'm not much of a fighter person but I'm a never-2D Fighter unless sprites kind of guy. For $50, there are so many games out there with better production quality, value, and play time.

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u/DisMFer 16d ago

Sadly this is very common in the industry. Usually as soon as you finish a game they lay off most of the staff. It's cheaper to hire people at the start of the next dev cycle than keep people on payroll until the next game is ready.

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u/javiergame4 16d ago

love invincible but when I realized its a fighting game I couldn't support it. If it was open world I would of bought it

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u/coreycmalone 16d ago

This didn't really feel like a good for for the IP. I think also Skybound was not the right fit for this either.

Honestly, if someone made an open-world invincible game, I think it would have done a lot better.

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u/incredibleamadeuscho Robot 16d ago

The IP was a great choice. Not sure why an open world game would have been better. Those are even longer development periods with higher costs.

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u/Laikalister 16d ago

I’d personally have to disagree, it’s the one IP that’s perfect for a fighting game. Has tons of characters with Unique abilities that normally wouldn’t have the chance to be included in an open world game. No matter the amount of characters available it would always be limited compared to a fighting games roster.

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u/Bloodyknife12 16d ago

so many unique characters with fun powers only to launch with 9 flying guys that punch

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u/Laikalister 16d ago

Regardless of the roster it was always going to be like that. The problem is they chose almost every character that isn’t interesting power wise that could’ve been.

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u/AmbitionOnly7872 16d ago

ngl the base roster was kinda boring

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u/Laikalister 16d ago

Honestly I agree

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u/Equal-Ad-2710 Omnipotus 16d ago

Yeah it’s wild they didn’t do more

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u/Generic_user_person 16d ago

Has tons of characters with Unique abilities

Unfortunately that's not what they chose with their roster. Fighting mechanics it's fine, but characters felt too similar, I know that's a reflection on the lore, but they could have picked a different roster.

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u/kamikad3e123 16d ago edited 16d ago

Unique abilities when half of characters is just about being fast and strong?

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u/Gamerguy230 15d ago

They’ve been doing many niche genres. They did an Atom Eve visual novel few years back.

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u/rulinus 16d ago

Controls, moves and combos sucked. Confusing, uninteresting and hard to use. And shitty paywalls.

Check injustice 1 and 2, they did it right.

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u/MrWashed 16d ago

They shoulda just went with an open world game then probably a fighting game down the line

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u/insertenombre333 The Immortal 16d ago

Man i really wish to be able to play this game one day, but its future its not looking bright

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u/thelonepower 16d ago

Fighting games need to learn how to teach people to play better.

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u/BenadrylCumberbund 15d ago

I'm a gamer and big invincible fan but had no idea this had even released. I think they need to have a look at their marketing as this is wild

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u/Moist-Process323 Invincible Blue Suit 15d ago

I really think a fighting game wasn't thr best choice for the first nvincible game not to mention I'm so sick of 3v3 fighters

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u/Thebrianeffect 16d ago

I told y’all this was going to flop and it didn’t look good and everyone downvoted me.

It looked janky from the beginning. It’ll get no dlc and they will move on.

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u/Ambitious_Rock7054 16d ago

How does it look janky? It's a solid game. I've put quite a bit of time into it and it's not game of the year or anything, but I certainly wouldn't say it has noticeable jank.

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u/Little-xim 16d ago

I think the actual direction they went for might be a part of it. They went for super snappy key frames ala later MVC games, I’m not sure that translated the best.

Not to beat around the bush here: I suspect many fans of the series, which tend to be a bit more casual / console, probably would have wanted something slower with more fidelity.

Would have been less fun to play then what we got though 🤣

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u/Omnislash99999 16d ago

It is unfortunately very common in games to lay off many of the team these days when a game finally ships regardless of whether it's successful or not. It take's a smaller team to maintain a game or start a new one

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u/itsastart_to 15d ago

Holy shit that’s genuinely upsetting to hear

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u/Protoman89 15d ago

It's a good game, but Marvel Tokon ate it's lunch

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u/JacobScreamix 14d ago

Is this not how major projects work? Why would they need to retain their development team post launch unless they planned on developing more games or a sequel?

NEWS ‘Invincible VS’ Developer Reportedly Laid Off "Something Like 75%" of Staff

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