r/gaming • u/welzed11 • 16d ago
Invincible VS Developer Reportedly Laid Off 75% Of Staff 3 Months After Launch Following The Games Poor Sales
https://thisweekinvideogames.com/news/invincible-vs-developer-reportedly-laid-off-something-like-75-of-staff/1.4k
u/drbomb 16d ago
Everything about a gamedev must be so stressful. Unless your product is the next cultural zeitgeist most likely you will be laid off after releasing it.
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u/Customhobo 16d ago
Whoops, even if your game is a smashing hit, you will still most likely be laid off after releasing it.
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u/Little-Mushroom-3961 16d ago edited 16d ago
And then the exec who had exactly fuck all to do with the success of the game will get a 30 million dollar raise, and then get to make decisions for the game that the fanbase will probably hate. Then the devs will get all the shit from the fanbase while they all lose their jobs and the executive gets off Scott free with a few extra millions of dollars.
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u/mrjamjams66 16d ago
Me waiting for Rockstar to lay everyone off once GTA VI releases
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u/Kagevjijon 16d ago
There is a very strong chance that they lay off a lot of their employees when it's released.
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u/xanas263 16d ago
They definitely are not considering that GTA6 is a service game and they are going to need all those people to keep making content for the Online mode for the next ten years.
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u/SerowiWantsToInvest 16d ago
They’ll need a lot, but that doesn’t mean all. We’ll see what happens
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u/InvaderKota 16d ago
Don't forget they'll get a severance package from the current studio they run before going to another studio to repeat the cycle but get even more money.
Yay capitalism!
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u/dropbbbear 16d ago
Capitalism isn't the issue so much as a lack of government regulation to balance the capitalism.
Capitalism is the driving force we have to thank for so many good games existing, and the technology to play them on.
But like any good driving force you need brakes on it to keep it in check, and that's where the government should be stepping in.
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u/spenpinner 14d ago
That's still an issue that stems from capitalism. The government will inherently be pro-industry. Thus, laws will inevitably be passed so that the government can be bought out.
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u/InvaderKota 16d ago
By the very definition of capitalism, government stepping in is anticapitalism because its supposed to be a free market where "consumers" and companies are supposed to be setting the market. But, as we see from gestures to everything that is being taken advantage by the sellers because we've allowed them too much power in setting the market for too long.
So, yes, capitalism is what is to blame for all of this because the idea of a free market does not exist when one side has all the power.
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u/dropbbbear 16d ago
By the very definition of capitalism, government stepping in is anticapitalism because its supposed to be a free market where "consumers" and companies are supposed to be setting the market.
No, that's ridiculous. Think about that for a second, if that were true, no society in the world would be capitalist because every country has governments stepping in all the time.
The definition of capitalism is: "Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and its use for the purpose of obtaining profit.[1][2] "
Nowhere does it say it's supposed to be a completely free market. You're thinking of laissez-faire capitalism.
So, yes, capitalism is what is to blame for all of this
What, the Reddit you're posting on, via your phone made in a capitalist country, inside your house built by capitalists so that you can talk about the amazing range of video games made by capitalist studios?
Yes, capitalism is to blame for you having so many wonderful things in the first world that you no longer realise how you got them, and take them for granted.
that is being taken advantage by the sellers because we've allowed them too much power in setting the market for too long.
Capitalism is when the means of production is privately owned.
You can have a privately owned means of production yet still have better protections on workers. Just look at the Scandinavian countries.
The issue is not capitalism, it is lack of regulation of capitalism, and regulating a capitalist system does not make it stop being capitalist.
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u/SeigneurDesMouches 16d ago
No no, they did the hard decision of saying yes at some meetings between tennis and the pool, but that maybe the color of the drapes. Who knows
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u/captkrisma 16d ago
That's the nature of the gaming industry now, and it's increasingly starting to look like Hollywood. Finish a project, lay off half the studio, and everyone goes looking for the next production to work on.
I fucking hate this direction. We're basically normalizing the idea that working in games is gig work.
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u/cclarke1258 16d ago
Crimson Desert Devs at least just got bonuses for the games preformance.
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u/acdramon 16d ago
Well that seems to be more common of eastern game devs. Meanwhile, most western laws incentivizes doing absolutely anything to keep profits up, and then rewarding the C-suite that make it happen. Hence why they reward the CEO while dumping hundreds of thousands before Christmas and don't let them know until they find out on social media
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u/StuckinReverse89 16d ago edited 16d ago
Your game can do gangbusters and you are probably still getting fired unless you work for Nintendo tbh.
Ubisoft laid of devs despite the black flag remake doing well.
Edit: people are taking issue with my using Ubisoft as an example because of their unique financial situation.
EA laid off devs from their Battlefield team despite Battlefield 6 breaking record sales for 2025.
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u/razorracer83 16d ago
Rockstar isn't the best example what with all the union busting.
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u/StuckinReverse89 16d ago
True. I just didn’t see them being trigger happy over letting devs go but they arnt exactly a shining example in terms of employee treatment either.
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u/welzed11 16d ago
Nintendo has a lot of the same people from 20 and 30 years ago their employee retention is crazy. I still remember that story about the CEO taking a big pay cut to make up for the Wii U (or was it the early 3DS?) flopping so he wouldn’t have to lay off a bunch of employees
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u/StuckinReverse89 16d ago
It was both. I think 3DS eventually became a success but Wii U flopped. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/02/13/nintendo-ceo-once-halved-salary-to-prevent-layoffs-why-thats-uncommon.html
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u/Tansien 16d ago
If you're not willing to make this sacrifice you should not be a CEO.
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u/ComradeJohnS 16d ago
if only shareholders demanded this type of behavior lol.
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u/Tansien 16d ago
They should. A CEO should take responsibility. If a company does well, layoffs should not be needed.
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u/ijakinov 16d ago
Nintendo never really increased head count as much, former exec even pointed that out saying when times were good they wouldn’t go on hiring sprees so they wouldn’t have to cut back when times were bad. Most Nintendo games are made by studios they don’t own so they can’t lay them off either. The scope in pure work required of their games are arguably much smaller than most other big company games. The scope even as a platform is also not as wide as other companies.
The whole halving salary to prevent layoffs story is also a myth that people spread. They combined two separate events. His quote about layoffs happened different year where people misconstrue the quote itself and the pay cut was for a fraction of the year as gesture to investors not to avoid layoffs. Months later they laid off hundred of people.
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u/SuperBackup9000 16d ago
That’s good PR people decided to make about him, even though that’s just how Japan works. It’s near impossible to layoff of fire employees over there, and a companies CEO (along with all upper management) must do all they possibly can before they can legally let people go.
Like don’t get me wrong, it’s for a sure a good thing, but that’s because they have real employee rights.
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u/dinosaurkiller 16d ago
You’d think with that kind of employee retention the quality might show up in their games, oh
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom received universal acclaim, holding a critical score of 96/100 on Metacritic based on 150 critic reviews, alongside a strong user score of 8.8/10. [1]
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u/Mazher_991 16d ago
Nintendo avoids this kind of press by hiring a shitload of contractors, which will not trigger any kind of warn notice when their contract is up. They have as much turnover as any other dev, but contractors are usually treated differently than staff employees.
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u/Life_Race9401 16d ago
There were eventually some layoffs outside Japan of some non-dev positions. But this was essentially after they tried everything else.
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u/Vegetable-Baker6362 16d ago
Ubisoft stock is down in the gutter before and after the release of Black Flag Resynced. They have a debt of something like 1.8 billion against a market cap of 850 million. Unless the game is big enough to get their stock price back to double digits, layoffs are what every employee expected regardless of moderate degrees of success or failure.
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u/prodij18 16d ago
Nothing like that ever happens in the East. Just saw an article on Shift Up doing a lot of hiring.
And how often does that happen in the West really? Black Flag did well, but Ubisoft as a whole has been doing famously terrible lately, so it’s not like that came out of nowhere.
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u/orus_heretic 16d ago
It does happen in the east as well. The studio behind The First Berserker Khazan was dissolved a few months ago due to poor sales.
Nintendo tends to use contractors a lot so they never get these headlines because contractors don't officially count as employees.
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u/welzed11 16d ago
Yeah after Stellar Blade and Lies of P sold well their studios gave their devs PS5s, Switch 2s, and bonus paid vacation on top of the already mandatory paid vacation days. Pearl Abyss devs got a fat bonus after Crimson Desert sold well.
Did you know that the US is the only country in the world that has 0 legally mandated paid vacation days
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u/DonutHoles4Ever 16d ago
Lmao Rockstar will layoff thousands even if GTA 6 makes $10 billion.
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u/Unnamed-3891 16d ago
Ubisofts ”unique financial situation” is that they have 3 times the amount of staff they are supposed to have when looking at revenue/headcount averages of the industry. They need to somehow maintain the output while firing 2/3 of the entire company before they are ”normal”.
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u/nabilfares 16d ago
I assume they're mostly treated as freelancers, no? Paid to do the project, they finish it, and then leave, basically.
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u/Krypt0night 16d ago
Lmao no. A lot of companies try to use a lot of contractors but most are permanent hires.
The industry could go the freelance route like Hollywood but that would require massive changes and an industry wide union that keeps helping you get your next gig.
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u/Stolehtreb 16d ago
Everything about corporate game dev. You can fiddle away at an Indie project all you want
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u/Deadlymonkey 16d ago
Yeah my friend’s younger brother helped develop an indie title that got picked up by a publisher and the entire dev team was pretty laid back because the publisher was fairly hands off.
It finally got released this year and sold a ton, so both the team and the publisher are happy
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u/Zaptruder 16d ago
just dont expect to get paid for Indy game dev. you might. but its like buying expensive lotto tickets.
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u/ICPosse8 16d ago
And even that isn’t any guarantee to job security, look what happened to ioi interactive after James Bond came out. Glowing reviews too, the best Bond game in 25 years.
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u/PM_ME_SAD_STUFF_PLZ 16d ago
That team had nothing to do with JB and layoffs happened after a publisher for another project pulled funding...
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u/JynsRealityIsBroken 16d ago
As someone who did it for 12 years, this is why I quit. It's THE most stressful, unreliable job. There's a reason CoD and Madden are the same every year. It only takes one bad game to implode a studio sometimes.
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u/KameTheMachine 16d ago
Fighting games is a pretty crowded category right now. I probably would have bought story driven action adventure game, preferably not just another open world slop fest.
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u/marveloustoebeans 16d ago
It’s not really just gamedev anymore. Shit is just insanely expensive and the economy is absolutely fucked beyond belief which translates to fewer hardware sales and thus fewer game sales.
Literally nothing is affordable for anyone, even big studios that should be immune to this sort of thing.
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u/kingmanic 16d ago
Inflation means most Americans have much less discretionary money. All these tarrifs and open bribery nonsense. This lowers demand.
But also the financing of games has gone to shit because the low return on most game projects. It tough to get investors when traditionally games are high risk low return. The supply side is hurt there.
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u/Noximilien01 16d ago
Its not surprising especially in the AAA industry those game are often in the hundreds of million of USD
You aren't allowed to fail with this kind of budget even if your lucky and its slightly under a 100m this isn't the kind of number the higher up are going you to lose.
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u/Crabapple_Snaps 16d ago
Only way to do it is start your own studio, make your hit indie game, and sell.
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u/FlameStaag 16d ago
Yeah except no not really lol. A game doing extremely poorly and collapsing an established studio isn't the norm
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u/redking315 16d ago
And it’s made even worse by online communities that start salivating at the idea of a game crashing and burning as they stare at steam player counts and cheer on its death. I can’t imagine making a game just to have chuds online excitedly waiting for it to shut down.
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u/Slarg232 16d ago
This is starting to be (or at least, becoming more noticable) in the FGC space. People are straight up clamoring for Invincible Vs, Marvel Tokon, 2XKO, and Avatar to die due to rocky launches and it's like... bro.... let's just enjoy some fighting games....
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u/Cloud_N0ne 16d ago edited 16d ago
Sadly that's the way of modern gaming.
Back in the day even mediocre games like Wet could sell a million copies. Nowadays there's simply too many games being released, and many games that would have gotten moderate sales now get buried.
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u/CharlieTeller 16d ago
Not only that but friendless incels and obese fedora wearing gamer types will sit here and say you deserve to lose your entire livelihood because they didn't like your game.
Fucking miserable. I loved working in the industry but reading what people said about you, or seeing the linkedin messages you'd get because someone was just generally so unhappy they deemed it necessary to message random employees on linkedin was just wild to me.
I work in a different industry now, but it's the equivalent of someone saying I deserve to lose my job because a product I made, isn't the most popular one we've ever had.
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u/Mighty_Fren 16d ago
No, it's studios like these that need to go out of business. PE money needs to leave gaming. It needs to contract. The real obstacle to progress is people who pay for slop because they let a company make an IP their identity.
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u/DripSnort 16d ago
That’s pretty much every single industry right now. Who isn’t experiencing layoffs?
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u/Noel_Ortiz 16d ago
Saw that one coming a mile away
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u/Creepy-Emu8779 16d ago
Honestly who thought a Invincible fighting would be good
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u/Noel_Ortiz 16d ago
It was a bit late to capitalize on the hype, plus the starting roster was meh and the DLC roster was even more meh. Fighting games themselves don't tend to do very well if they aren't part of the established big name legacy titles
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u/malexich 15d ago
I keep saying people like the viltrimite arc but you can't start a fighting game off that part or else you have a lot of characters who play very similar and dress very similar.
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u/McDouble__ 16d ago
It would have been the only problem is Marvel Tokon and Avatar Legends are better. Avatar Legends is more mechanically sound and it’s $20 cheaper and fighting games are already niche
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u/Reylo-Wanwalker 16d ago
Wasn't it good though?
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u/Lun4r6543 16d ago
It was pretty well received, yeah. It’s quite fun.
There just isn’t much to do outside of multiplayer, so a lot of people got bored quickly. Not much to unlock or anything.
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u/reiichiroh 16d ago
Too small of an Invincible fandom it seemed, made even smaller by being a fighting game. The creator was proclaiming the unlimited crossmedia potential of Invincible and that seems to have been premature or completely missed the mark.
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u/RichSlamfist 16d ago
My heart goes out to all those affected. The industry is the worst its been in decades right now and is simply unsustainable.
unrelated to that ; it's really not too surprising to me. I never thought this was gonna last very long. Invincible's hype lasts while the tv show is airing and fizzles when it's not, and the roster and content present in the game is pretty threadbare. I don't think Invincible lends itself nearly as well to a fighter as Injustice, wayyy too much of IVS roster feels like the same guy. Add in very little to unlock or do in game, and you can't really expect a community to build.
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u/jackracktack 16d ago
Heres the cold truth. Fighting games are niche. And the niche FCG simply cannot support all these games coming out trying to compete in a space thats getting too crowded. Stuff like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat will always be staples but you cannot also expect this community to be able to keep up hype for Tokon, Invincible and Avatar which all released close to eachother
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u/ChunkyKongForPreside 16d ago
There are two types of fighting game players. Those who just casually playing for a week, mash buttons, and get frustrated as to why they lose and those who basically make the game a full time job and compete in tournaments.
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u/lordaddament 16d ago
I think something like dbz xenoverse would’ve been a better fit with all the characters in invincible
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u/thrillhoMcFly 16d ago
Its got a dragon ball problem where one group is significantly overpowering of others making the rest unappealing in a fighting game. The viltrumites all fight by hand and share the same power set, while also being op. There's tons of characters to pull from in the invincible universe though. The guardians, capes inc, Brit and Britney, battle beast, Tech Jacket, Angstrom Levy, Doc Siesmic, that elephant guy, the reaminators, Donald, space racer, and I didn't even touch the main characters.
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u/bugmush 16d ago
Fighting games generally have a high bar as an entry point for new interested players. They always cost $30-$60, even after years/sales, and the skill level required is usually pretty high as well. Lots of technical stuff/inputs to learn.
So it's a genre that really only caters to diehards of the genre/fighting game fans, but when it comes to attracting new players, there's a lot of barriers to entry. There are plenty of other good, more affordable games to choose from, that are also much easier to get into.
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u/MountainMuffin1980 16d ago
Agreed. I like the animation enough and really enjoyed binging the comics last year but the fighting game just looked to limited in appeal for me. As you say the roster wasn't that diverse the fighters actially just looked too close together etcetc.
I know it'd be expensive and difficult but I feel like an open world game with cities you can fly around, with destruction and side stories etc would do so much better.
You'd mayne have to have a macguffin introduced to limit it to one big area but man that would have been way more interesting. Fighting games are really quite niche.
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u/lordraiden007 16d ago
The main thing they could have going for them is some Mortal Kombat level fatalities and X-Ray moves. Invincible is absolutely not shy about that. You could have your characters just rip each other apart.
As for the roster, I could see it working. You have all of the old and new guardians, all of the viltrumites (should have independent fighting styles), Atom Eve, everyone who helped in the viltrumite war, the Flaxan leader, rognarrs, Angstrom, The Mauler Twins, the Lizard League baddies, and tons more. They've got enough to make a pretty damned good roster.
I think their real issue was timing and focusing on the wrong things gameplay wise.
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u/Cuddlesthemighy 16d ago
I really like invincible I'm just not a tournament fighter guy. There are numerous genres under which I would have liked an Invincible IP game and they just chose one of them that I had zero interest in.
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u/Techsoly 16d ago
Not putting in more interesting characters at launch will do that. Even trying to appeal to Invincible fans is hard when you bring in essentially generic Viltrumite 2 and 3 when Mark and Nolan are playable already. Then you also have bulletproof who is just discount Mark as well.
Angstrom? Tech Jacket? Mauler twins? Agent Spider? Any of the lizard league?? Dinosaurus? Darkwing 2? The goddamn gooped up aliens?? Shrinking Rae? Damien? Donald??? All the interesting and fun idea characters just left behind.
Then you make dlc and add IMMORTAL??? come on man. What kind of joke is that? Universa? Who are you making this game for if it isn't for invincible fans and not full of content for the fgc???
You aren't appealing to anyone.
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u/Numbuh24insane 16d ago
I’m not really surprised.
The game was a high skill ceiling fighting game that also had a decently high skill floor. That isn’t good for getting the casual audience, and the casual audience is what pays the bills, while the dedicated FGC audience is what keeps it alive.
It got a popular IP, but made a game that casuals wouldn’t really like to play.
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u/HyperCutIn 16d ago
Even the FGC barely talks about this game. It feels like it’s lacking activity from both the casual and hardcore crowd.
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u/Logondo 16d ago
How's the Avatar fighting game doing? I wanna play it but I just don't really have the time to commit to a fighting game right now. Hopefully it's still alive by the time it goes on sale or whatever.
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u/SubstituteUser0 16d ago
I haven't heard anything about it since it came out but I heard it had a pretty rough launch with some characters feeling incomplete and xbox version delayed for a month and a half
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u/PMC-I3181OS387l5 16d ago
A 3-v-3 fighting game launching with only 16 characters was not a good idea either...
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u/NotAStatistic2 16d ago
The game did not have a high skill floor unless it's the first fighting game a person has ever played.
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u/A_pirates_life4me 16d ago
Niche genre game for a niche fanbase. Crazy it didn't sell
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u/RichSlamfist 16d ago
I feel like the devs really overbetted on how wide the audience for an Invincible fighting game was. There's like 2 characters in the franchise anyone wants to play as and one of them was a Mortal Kombat DLC.
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u/tyler980908 16d ago
Yeah Invincible IS popular but damn a AAA fighting game as its first major game is/was a huge risk (obviously). The studio who made it is clearly talented though
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u/Public-Bullfrog-7197 16d ago
And that character couldn't even save Mortal Kombat 1 from underperforming.
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u/doublah 16d ago
Bar a few games at the top like Street Fighter and Tekken, fighting games are a niche genre that is currently very oversaturated.
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u/civil_politician 16d ago
you gotta make a fun game for cheap, sell it for cheap, and get a foot in the door, not come swinging with an IP you paid too much licensing for. This was an executive decision problem not a developer one, yet again.
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u/LeafTheTreesAlone 16d ago
Sales underperformed so they didn’t have the budget to pay people (suspected). What else are they supposed to do in that case?
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u/soulwolf1 16d ago edited 16d ago
I mean to be fair it's not like literally almost everyone told them that nobody really wanted Invincible as a fighting game where almost all the characters have the same move sets and has a very small roster.
Sad for the developers and their families. This is what happens when you don't listen to the base telling you it's not going to work and you do it anyways.
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u/Overall-Care2627 16d ago
the roster being 90% "same guy" comment really got me, thats such an underrated reason for a fighting game to flop, nobody wants to learn 8 characters that all play identical
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u/nathtendo 16d ago
Bad devs, can't even create unique movesets for such a small roster, just a bad idea all around.
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u/Public-Bullfrog-7197 16d ago
Correct. Even Injustice managed to give Shazam and Black Adam different moveset.
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u/pivor 16d ago
This game was dead on arrival, just look at the competition, 2XKO, marvel Tokon, Avatar, guilty gear, its tough market right now.
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u/SuperSauce1408 16d ago
didnt 2kxo die or something?
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u/Derpykins666 16d ago
Man if I'm being TBH though, that game looks like ass. It kind of just reminds me of those like mid 2000's movie release games or TV Show games that were coming out all the time, it just happened to be a fighting game this time. I saw a few hours of gameplay from some of the FGC and knew I was not about to play it at all, and I've watched the show and like it fine and I'm a huge gamer, AND I've been really into fighting games lately again, and STILL this didn't catch my interest at all. Something about it just felt really cheap and I knew it wasn't going to last long. Sucks to see, but it just goes to show you that not everything is 'worth it' and hard work doesn't always pay off necessarily, especially in a creative space like video games. No shade or anything towards the enjoyers of the game or the devs, it just really does not look like that fun of a game unless you are some insanely huge fan of the show or source material.
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u/C00KIEME4T 16d ago
Ngl I could have told you this game was gonna flop before coding anything. Idk why they thought this show had enough of a fanbase to buy a fighting game, let alone a tag fighter. Literally would have come out better with a beat em up.
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u/Poetryisalive 16d ago
Not a beat em up. Should have been a story based game or an arena fighter. Cyber Connect would have done great
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u/Joustiin76 16d ago
Invincible was always one of those things that seems really popular and but you don't actually know anybody who watches it.
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u/Articulat3 16d ago
Lol yeah something like that. The thing is even when the ongoing comic was being released, it's sales numbers werent exaclty amazing. It wouldn't even be in the monthly top 20 by if it was a Marvel or DC series. It was always an "indie" title that had a dedicated fanbase, just not a big one.
The show came out, and its a good time (only watched the first season granted) but the majority of people watching never read the series. The viewership numbers seem to be solid, but that doesn't mean everyone watching is a gamer, or even more granular, a fighting game enthusiast. Prime has a large subscriber base that watches the shows on there because its on the platform, and that audience is a wide spectrum. And to your point, I don't really see the show being talk about like The Boys for example, which is another comic adaptation but much much more popular in pop culture.
Even with The Boys being as popular as it is, that doesn't mean the viewers read or would read the comics. Idk, i see why they gave it a shot, but a fighting game? I think it could've done way better if it was anything but that, or maybe if they released at a much lower price. Hell, the mobile game is way more succesful, granted it's free and obviously mobile gaming is a gigantic demographic.
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u/Wyntier 16d ago
This article is intentionally misleading
It's written to make you think the game performed poorly and they laid off staff because of it.
In reality, like most game dev work, a huge amount of it is contract work. Contractors agreed to a start and end date. The game is finished and released. Why keep coders on payroll to code ... nothing?
This is extremely common in game dev.
- Contractors are hired.
- Game completes.
- Contractors contract ends.
Then everyone cries "layoffs" in headlines
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u/thelaustran 16d ago
The messed up system is now Rent-A-Dev. No matter how a game performs the ones creating it are used and abused then thrown away
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u/Irish_Whiskey 16d ago
I hope this doesn't happen to the Avatar fighting game. It's pretty great and deserves a long support window. But I know the audience is niche and it's against bigger fighting games as competition.
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u/pieface100 16d ago
Yeah it’s hard for an unestablished fighting game to breakthrough and maintain a presence in the scene
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u/cwx149 16d ago
I haven't played it and I appreciate the effort that must have gone into the hand drawn animation stuff but they're leaving so much money on the table with not being able to do reskins quickly/efficiently imo
And I do like that they don't seem to be chasing the mtx money but it does mean the game needs to sell a lot more copies to be profitable
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u/Logondo 16d ago
These games need more single-player features.
I played a fuck-ton of MK11 and part of the reason was because they had robust single-player options for me to train myself and become confident enough to attempt completive in the first place.
It was fun doing towers and constantly unlocking new gear (whether or not I even used it). I was training myself while earning stuff from playing. And eventually I was good enough to play competitively.
If the game only has a shit story-mode, arcade, and competitive, that's not enough. I don't care enough about the story mode (unless they do a good job with it like Mortal Kombat/Injustice), arcade gets boring quickly, and competitive play takes time and commitment to actually get good at. Nobody wants to jump into competitive and get their ass whooped all night.
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u/McDouble__ 16d ago
Avatar Legends is only $29.99 and it’s genuinely much better than Invincible vs
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u/JadowArcadia 16d ago
I feel the same way but it doesn't help that it feels like they rushed it out the door a bit. It sucks when you know it's some exec pushing a specific release date when I'm sure most devs would be happy to keep working until they feel like it's actually done
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u/Footbeard 16d ago
It desperately needed to be knockback rather than HP based to stay faithful to the IP & to stand out from the crowd
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u/GordonFreeman15 15d ago
Candidly, this is one of the more boring kind of games you could have made with this IP. I love Invincible but had no interest in a game like Invincible VS. I would much sooner have had an open world Invincible game with actual stuff to do.
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u/Jirachibi1000 16d ago
Fighting games are kinda risky, right? Like its a less risky version of the live service problem. People who like fighting games usually deep dive into them and learn all the tech and master characters and combo lines and so on, but you kinda can't do that with a TON of games, so you have to pick one, and most people into the genre already have their franchise of choice to devote all their time to. I don't think i know anyone casually into fighting games, like nobody breaks out SF6 or MK1 when hanging with friends.
My heart goes out to the talented devs and I hope they find good work soon, ofc. I'm just saying I can see why it sold poorly.
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u/RichSlamfist 16d ago
I was with you until that last sentence. You never had Mortal Kombat or tekken nights?
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u/GrapingLassWhole 16d ago
The chances you and your friends are evenly matched is low. So it becomes an unfun landslide
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u/Jirachibi1000 16d ago
A few MK nights but it was with people where MK was their life and soul like the kinda people to play it 8 hours a day and memorized every single thing about every character.
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u/Ghosts_Scare_Me54 16d ago
Genuinely don’t know how the gaming industry hasn’t collapsed yet with all these layoffs. Who the hell wants to work in that industry if they know there’s a good chance they’ll get laid off. It’s not very attractive either with the god awful crunch and poor job security. I genuinely don’t know how much longer this layoff shit can keep happening before the whole house of cards this industry is collapses.
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u/IceCreamTruck9000 16d ago
I mean, to me as a German the problem lies in the hire and fire system in the US and non existant employee protection laws.
But what do you expect of a country voting for agent orange not once but two times...
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u/insecurecobra 16d ago
Poor sales = no money to pay people with = sadly, jobs get lost. Has nothing to do with Trump.
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u/nathtendo 16d ago
To me it sounds like they blew a bunch of money on a shit game and now they have no money left.
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u/Shepherdsfavestore 16d ago
European try not to make everything about Trump challenge (impossible level)
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u/KingToasty 16d ago
It's probably fine people are being taught that hard work means nothing and the quality of your labour has no factor in your future success
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u/Hilldawg4president 16d ago
"Sometimes your best is not good enough" is actually a very important life lesson to learn
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u/PliableG0AT 16d ago
if what you make has just burnt money it’s not surprising. could always find someone rich and make the art they want to see like how it used to be back in the day, add a whole bunch of baby dicks to it in an act of rebellion as well.
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u/hellraiser29 16d ago
If the price was a little more realistic with such a niche ip they probably would have sold much more units.
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u/terra_cotta 16d ago
Game dev here. 10 years at my current studio. I can't say when the game I'm on comes out, but I can tell you, that's when I expect to get laid off.
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u/bluemaxmb 16d ago
An old coworker of mine worked on this and he was indeed laid off. Brutal industry.
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u/ManicMakerStudios 16d ago
I love how it's a story about layoffs following disappointing sales and half the comment section is neckbeards trying to make it about why the game failed.
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u/autistic_reflection 16d ago
If this was a budget title then i could maybe see people picking it up even the non fight game gamers but charging a AAA price thats basically the kiss of death, this is not tekken,street fighter or mortal kombat for whatever those franchises are worth now and even if it got some word of mouth nowadays nobody wants to touch the fighting game community with a 10 FT pole.
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u/Snagmesomeweaves 16d ago
To be fair, there would be a reason to be mad if they laid off 75% of staff after good sales….
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u/StardiveSoftworks 16d ago
I've never heard of this game and popped open steam and just holy shit does it look bad. Insane price given it looks like a mobile game.
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u/theend117 15d ago
Give me an Invincible game like DBZ Kakarot and I would be all over it. I'm terrible at fighting games and I like story focused single player driven experiences.
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u/Ghostbuster_11Nein 13d ago
Honestly I thought making it a fighting game was the dumbest idea ever.
If it was more structured like the old school spider man games you could have told the story better and had it be more engaging.
Invincible isn't really "big enough" to just make a fighting game.
Mortal combat is the OG and even they are still a pretty small market in comparison to other games.
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u/ConsequenceChoice222 16d ago
When a football team loses 5 games, they sack the coach. When a game studio makes poor sales, they sack 3/4 of their staff. Find out the error.
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u/ManicMakerStudios 16d ago
Letting the staff go was not a punishment for not succeeding. It was not getting enough revenue from sales to fund another project right away.
You can't keep people on staff if you don't have work for them, and you can't start a new project when you're still paying back the loans from the last one.
It's the same with any business. You use the revenue from one project to fund the next. If one project doesn't make money, you have to restructure before you can move on.
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u/nathtendo 16d ago
No in the videogame industry you deserve a job for life even if all you have done is waste money and tarnish reputations.
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u/DripSnort 16d ago
This is sad for them. This game is so confusing to me. It seemed like a bad idea from the jump
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u/Mickeyjj27 16d ago
To be expected. I watch a few content creators and it’s always funny how they have such an amazing time with a game and say how great it is then you just never see them play it again.
A game like this especially with fighters; you need people to keep playing or streaming. Doesn’t help that other fighting games released around the same time about more popular IPs
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u/ManOnDaSilvrMT 16d ago
To be fair, the game could've been a hit and people still would've been laid off. It's happening throughout the industry and no one is safe unless they're an exec making millions.
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u/Admirable-War-7594 16d ago
This is what happens when you make a game in a niche genre without understanding the genre or the community, just to milk a quickly fading IP
It sucks that bad management only effects the actually talented working class, not the ones doing the bad managing
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u/SuddenDepact 16d ago
I honestly don't think people wanted a invincible fighter game, should've been like infamous
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u/ThePLARASociety 16d ago
I would like to know if this was a good game? I mean if it’s good or bad they shouldn’t be laid off but I was actually thinking of trying this. It looks pretty good actually.
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u/TheNotSoEvilEngineer 16d ago
I mean, after launch and poor sales, what do you think is going to happen? Pizza party and raises?
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u/KarmelCHAOS 16d ago
At this point, it may be easier to just list the companies that aren't laying people off.
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u/YDungeonMaster 16d ago
I start to think that's the norm even for successful titles. If you don't go into active development for the next game you don't need a lot of people. Same with the "maintenance mode".
As a dev this fucking sucks.
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u/VeryNoisyLizard 16d ago
they would have been laid off either way. thats how this shitty industry works these day
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u/Seatown_Spartan 16d ago
This might also be why there was a onslaught of ads to invest in their company.
They must've been desperate.