The lights are on
In a particularly candid admission earlier this week – Stardock CEO and Elemental: War of Magic lead designer Brad Wardell admitted to his role in the “catastrophic” launch of the game. Pointing to his own failures, Wardell painted a gloomy forecast, stating that “there will be massive consequences for Stardock’s game studio,” and that “the issue here is far, far worse than many of you think it is.”
Those consequences have now come to light. Wardell confirmed today that there have been layoffs at the company. Developers, designers, and sales members working on Elemental have been let go, but Wardell maintains that “no one working on the core components of Elemental is affected.”
Again speaking directly to the community in the official Elemental forums, Wardell explained that they banked on the revenue from Elemental to fund a new project and an additional team. Wardell hopes to bring as many of the staffers back on possible once the studio is back on its feet.
[Via ShackNews]
never heard of company or the game... guess this is why?
What else has Stardock worked on?
That's really sad.
It's really sad to see this happening, but at the same time it's kind of refreshing. It's so common to see companies that are putting out terrible games or sub-par material, and smiling the whole time, telling us everything is okay, profits are up -- basically the company line. But, then those companies close down and people are suddenly all surprised.
At least here we have someone being honest, "Hey, we screwed up. And it's gonna hurt. So, give us a second to recover."
That sucks.
That's a real bummer. I hope they get back on their feet fast.
I always feel bad for these guys since they have, I believe, the second oldest digital storefront and they're constantly getting spanked by Steam. No one even knows these guys, let alone their games or Impulse (despite the fact that there are many more foreign games on Impulse than on Steam or Direct2Drive). So hearing this is not surprising, but it really, really sucks all the same.
Best wishes to those let go. Hope you land on your feet again soon Stardock!
Granted, I won't be helping out none since I don't care about niche PC games, but still, good luck:)
Games are taking a leap for advanced stuff like fancy UIs, graphics and online cloud servers. if you can't keep up, in this economy well; your just gonna go... :( /cry
Sad.
The lead designer should fire himself. No excuse for this poor release.
So someone tell me if I've interpreted this wrong. He's the CEO as well as the AI programmer, he goes on vacation at the very same time his company's game launches? Maybe launches aren't a big part of a game's life cycle from a CEO/programmer's point of view, I don't know.
It just seems disingenuous to not only slam your employees while on vacation but to take vacation during a game's launch in the first place.
"We'll do better." You could start by not abandoning your company during an important game launch.
Never heard of this game.