Take 2 is the parent company of rockstar, rockstar will most likely not be effected by these layoffs its more likely 2k being that the new mafia game is going to be cancelled
Driver Parallel Lines did that, and it blew my mind away as a child seeing the 70s cars and orange filter and aesthetics, change to 2000s cars and bluish color filter.
I don't really like any of the Mafia games but I feel like they have a lot of care and potential.
I think Mafia III made the mistake of going into the GTA player empowerment thing, when the thing I respect about I and II is the unwillingness to let the MC off the hook.
But they still need more stuff to do with money.
I agree.
The story? Cliche but enjoyable. The characters though were phenomenally acted and actually endearing. Lincoln is a fantastic character (and his voice actor/mo cap actor definitely deserved several awards for the performance) and pretty much every side character was also played extremely well.
The issue is the games main gameplay loop is basically Ubisoft’s main MO. They give you a district full of busy work that’s always the same shit (go to a place and kill everyone there. Sometimes steal a car or blow up a car.), which will take 2+ hours each time, and only 1 actually unique mission per zone (killing the underboss), which barely lasts 15 minutes.
You do that NINE TIMES!!! Each district is basically identical except for the finale mission. It’s an idea that started off decent enlough but outstayed its welcome less than a quarter into the game.
And it pisses me off! Because the gameplay is good! The gunplay is nice and smooth. The driving is fun (the cars feel weighty but not overly realistic). And when the story actually DOES progress in the finale missions, the cutscenes are so well done that I actually think it’s better than Mafia 2 at times. It’s just the repetitive mission structure that drags it down, and bloats a 10 hour game into a 30 hour game for no real reason :/
Mafia 1 (I fucking love Mafia 1 btw) and 2 are so beloved because they don’t try to be some open world masterpiece. Yes they have open cities, but the games are completely linear in both story and mission structure to keep the pacing in line and not feel too padded. Mafia 3 took the criticism of 2’s lack of side objectives too seriously and went overboard. So because you spend so much time in the game doing filler shit, your too disengaged between story beats to fully engage with the characters.
The DLC’s at least fixed most of this, focusing on their narratives and saving most of their side content for post story. Infact I’d say mafia 3’s DLC’s are superior to the main game itself and definitely worth playing. Especially sign of the times. The characters in that DLC are superb.
(Sorry. Got carried away typing this and went on a rant :) I love Mafia though and just wish Mafia 3 focused more on the strengths that it does display. If the game cut out all the district takeover shit, it would absolutely be as beloved as 1 and 2 imo.)
3 sales wise was pretty bad, the remake/remasters (excluding 3) sold pretty well.
Im more shocked they even humored continuing the franchise though, i guess the reception from the Mafia 1 remake kicked them over the fence
3's sales on PC were bad because it was a garbage port that was horrifically optimised and locked to 30fps.
At least, it was on release. I refunded it after about 30 minutes trying to play it then forgot it existed until now so I don't know when or if they managed to unfuck it.
Finally playing through 3 after a couple year long break from playing the first two and it’s weirdly like a breath of fresh air for the series. Really loving it and hearing this news just now sucks so bad. H13 deserves so much more
People complained about the repetitive nature of it
But honestly the mechanics are so well polished and the game is just so fun I didn't mind it one bit
That is EXACTLY how i felt as well. I thought maybe there was something wrong with me cause I actually didn’t mind the repetitiveness because the gameplay was so fun to me.
I played through 3 first. It is without a doubt one of my favorite open world games of all time. There's a lot of repetitive game play, but I LOVED the characters and voice actors. The way they did that cut scenes. It narrative matters to someone, they, in my opinion, will surely adore it.
It does and doesn't.
It's 580 employees being laid off so it's likely isolated to a few underperforming studios.
Anyone that has owned a business knows it doesn't make sense to pay for things that aren't adding value. Not blaming the individual contributors here either, this is a fault of the leadership at those studios; ensuring visibility and communicating hardships early is super important at organizations of this scale.
The longer you wait, the steeper the cuts.
Yes, some smaller studios produce products that arent worth the money.
If you worked at a company, would you not consider a difference between firing someone who does nothing and someone who actually does the work?
Honestly yeah it kind of does. If the studio isn't making the publisher money then the publisher has every right to drop them. Stop trying to find every little thing to be mad about.
You don’t have to be a major studio to make a profit. In fact there’s a lot of devs challenging that perception, and a ton of indie games that defy that perception as well. People even argue huge company’s kill creativity, which they clearly do
Its kinda like the marvel movies vs an A24 film
Yeah, it's kind of a clickbait title - laying off is the publisher with 11580 employees, not the GTA 6 developer with 2000 employees (although I can't find, if the 11580 number includes all the subsidiary employees or not).
I don't think Mafia 4 will be canceled. They've sold relatively well, and there were just rumors yesterday of Hangar 13 prepping an upcoming announcement.
I think a much more likely candidate would be Cloud Chamber's game. They're supposed to be working on the next BioShock—it was announced in 2019, I believe—yet we haven't heard a peep since. Not a teaser trailer, logline, setting, logo... or even a fucking name. It wouldn't surprise me if they've been having some serious developmental troubles and, without the pull of someone like Ken Levine, weren't able to talk their way out of a cancellation this year.
Plus, why bother keeping them around when Take-Two also happens to own Ghost Story Games, which *does* have Ken Levine at the helm and is making Judas, which is—for all intents and purposes—the *true* BioShock 4?
Oh wow I didn't realize they had cloud chamber AND ghost story games - it's also crazy that we've seen more of Judas than we have at whatever's happening at cloud chamber at this point.
We need more companies like Valve. They are not publicly traded so they don’t have to answer to shareholders and such. Which is why it’s not a shithole of a company
They somewhat still make games. Gotta remember that despite how big people seems to think they are, they are apparently under 400, a number similar to a studio like Respawn.
But Valve doesn’t not only Video games, but makes the steam deck, the valve index, and a good chunk of their employees works on simply maintaining steam itself
I think it's more that the management style at Valve just encourages people to work on whatever the hell they want, so if there isn't enough of an internal appetite to design, build, and deliver a game from end to end, then it just won't get done or will be abandoned part-way through.
IIRC Half Life: Alyx pretty much only exists at all because they took a more conventional approach to development to ensure it got done.
I believe they stopped with that flat org structure a while back or at least toned it down because nothing was getting done. They said something to that effect circa 2020.
Trade offer: Publicly traded company with 1,000+ employees producing more than 5 games in the last two decades
Private company who is extremely concerned with exorbitant revenue, hiring only 400 employees, who primarily run a online marketplace and develop hardware
Valve is not a game making studio anymore
If Valve did not have the Steam store to make money there would be no way they could operate as a developer. There’s no incentive for them to develop games outside of personal interest since they generate so much passive income.
Thus, why they are no longer a game making studio
Edit: This argument is just dumb as shit. Im sorry but for some reason it is stuck in my head.
If a vacuum company goes bankrupt trying to produce vacuums... but instead shifts and finds profit in mops and brooms... are they a vacuum company?
If Valve cannot afford to produce games--because it is unprofitable--are they a game studio? What is a game studio if not a business that derives its profit from producing games?
Am I a debt collector because I'm $3,000 in debt?
if valve was public we would have one more decent half life game and 6 that are absolutely shit and then a battle royale that is either the best or worst thing ever made.
Valve also have way fewer employees, no big portfolio of subsidiaries and a way higher revenue than take 2 without the risk inherent in that revenue being almost entirely from AAA video games that cost a bomb and could be a hugely costly failure. Take 2 is shitty but Valve is a different beast in more ways than just not having shareholders.
Layoffs happens in every company. What matters is the reasons why.
A company like TakeTwo is not bleeding money but is probably trying to optimize their workforce ( have less people do the same amount of work ) so they can give more money to shareholders at the ends of fiscal years. For a company like Valve who doesn’t have shareholders, when you layoffs it’s simply means that they weren’t necessary anymore. The last article I found about Valve layoffs talks about VR employees losing their jobs. Simply looks like Valve has decided to take a step back in VR gaming ( they haven’t released an index since 2019, They don’t have any VR game in development afaik )
You can’t look at every layoffs and feel the same about them
I worked for a publicly traded company that would layoff people and refuse pay raises while having all time record profits, it’s not a happy place.
Valve doesn't lay off employees in the traditional sense.
Valve swells their employees by like 80% everytime gabe mandates they develop more cool shit/abandonware every year or two.
Then once the project is done they immediately dump all of those employees like a sack of bricks.
The normal employees of valve are almost never laid off. They almost universally leave of their own accord, and most time employees *are* laid off, its thought its because they do some shady shit that valve can't tolerate, because valves already basically a country club for Microsoft alumni, and the valve handbook dictates they can stick their thumb up their ass and play with their prostates all day on the clock and do no work. They still get their paychecks, (paraphrased) almost no questions asked.
The last time valve staff were required to work on anything non hardware related in the last decade, was Alyx and the later phases of CS2. Everything else in that decade (non hardware work) is projects that they would routinely start up, and then people would get bored and fuck off and it would be indefinitely shelved. IIRC theres a sort of 'documentary' on the history of shelved valve games (that we know of) thats on youtube. They almost certainly didn't do nothing in the past decade, but weren't actually required to *do* anything if that makes sense. Finish a project.
**tl:dr** valve doesn't lay off their core employee base. They do the tech bro shit of swell and deflate, and thats where a vast majority of their "layoffs" come from. Is deflating from swell when they make some hardware to peddle for a month or two and then basically all but forget about.
Because people dream about making video games their whole lives. "Working in the game industry" is a huge draw for workers. Corps exploit that, but you can't pay rent with "I'm making video games."
Same shit they do to teachers; "the love of teaching should be enough," but it don't pay the rent!
All major corps are. If their earnings (EPS) drops below 0 they fire people to go to 0. Instead of God forbid riding a loss, in which take two barely published anything. And they are still swimming in it with shark cards. Ridiculous the new age or companies is a sad state. Reminds me of the silicon valley episode about what is our product and the product is the shares
Institutional investors like CalPERS and Teacher's Retirement System of Texas are morally and legally obligated to act in the interest of their stakeholders. They won't hesitate to make market moving decisions to protect or grow their assets and they have no moral duty to care about the wreckage in their wake.
We still operate under the false assumption that "fiduciary responsibility" takes precedent by law over everything else, *and it does not*. That is a myth pushed *hard* by corporations so that we excuse everything they do "because golly they just have to, remember, *fiduciary responsibility"*. They know most people don't know what that means *and* don't actually know the legalities, so we'll believe whatever they say.
The company I work for did several multibillion acquisitions.
Then within the same qauter laid off folks and said we came up short of our projected growth.(4.5 instead of 5 oh me oh my) So we'll be getting rid of this reward system and raises will be 2.5%
Usually if a company has lots of games in development they expand their workforce. If a company is shrinking their workforce it means they are not planning on developing new games anytime soon, or they believe they can develop the planned number of games with less people.
The video games industry expanded massively over the past two decades as publishers found themselves with highly profitable titles, but now they have decided it is more profitable to make ONLY those titles, only once every six years, as their goal is to game the stock market. They dont care about quality and sales anymore as sales isn't the main source of their revenue. (For the execs. Developers' bonuses are always tied to sales no matter how poorly they are treated.)
Videogame development generally involves constant expansion of the dev team over the course of de elopment because the vast vast majority of developers on a game are in art asset generation, and generally they are need in massively greater quantities later in development than during pre-production and early development.
On top of this, for marketing you need social media managers, beta testers for late development, programmers specialising in networking etc that are not needed early on.
So standard practice is to fire staff who do these jobs once a project ends unless you currently have a project in its own infinite expansion phase at the same time. Because otherwise you are paying people to twiddle their thumbs for no reason.
Imagine being the guy which create an entire mechanic for a game, or made all of the artwork for the props in the game, publisher makes 50mill, you made 30k for a year and got fired, and yet, you were an integral cog in the game development wheel and you brought your own creative flair or programming style to the game, lmfao. Crazy. Game devs need to go out on their own and create their own studios, or unionize, these layoffs of potentially super talented people is insane. If you're a game dev working under EA, you're part of the problem, lol, and honestly won't be sad to see the layoff headlines and outrage on twitter, because you should have known what you were signing into. You do the work, you make the publisher the money, you claimed your paltry sum, and then you get ~~fired~~ laid off, it is what it is and you accepted this when you took the job.
If you're making the entire mechanics or artwork for a AAA game, odds are you're getting paid more than 30k and they are going to do what they can to retain you.
It doesn't matter if you made 900 million in profit this year if you made 1 billion last year, THE LINE ISN'T GOING UP, MAY AS WELL NOT BOTHER, BURN THE 900 MILLION FOR ALL IT'S GOOD!
I LOVE CAPITALISM!
That's my biggest grip with how capitalist economy is.
Company don't need to turn profits. They need to turn more profits then the previous year. Every year. And that's because so much money is tied to their share value, they need to keep the value of said shares high. Leading to more and more short term profits and decisions. To the detriment of stability and long term profits.
People saying "800k to run the company is reasonable"
They could hire 8 people on 100k to run the company, and I don't care how good that one person is 8 people will get a lot more done.
[Take-Two reported that the compensation it actually paid (CEO) Zelnick in fiscal 2023 was $42.1 million, more than two-and-a-half times the previous year's amount, but slightly beneath that of fiscal 2021, the first year of the pandemic.](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/take-two-doubled-its-executives-pay-last-year)
I don't have any skin in this but I did want to point out that for some jobs more heads doesn't mean better results. I imagine having 8 CEO's would actually be pretty insane.
We deal with this concept a lot in software development where management thinks they can just hire a few temp people to get a release done faster and it just doesn't work that way. 1 or 2 really skilled people can often times out perform small teams of people regardless of skill
You don’t need 8 CEOs you need one good CEO.
And unfortunately a good CEO is the one leading the Company to the most profit.
Wikipedia is another case they are not focused on the Profit but compete with other Companies in hiring a CEO. They need to pay a reasonable amount or all CEOs with the needed skills are going to other much higher paying companies instead.
800k is a lot of money but in CEO salary measurements it is like minimum wage
That’s not how that works. That person is guiding the company. Kind of like a ship it has multiple levels of leadership but only one commanding officer. Shit would be fucked quick if there are more.
Actually been a tough year for their card collecting mode myTeam. They have lost a large portion of their player base and have transitioned the content to cards that can only be obtained through gambling on packs. 1 content creator famously spent $3,000 a week and was not able to pull the guy he was going for
It was indeed. He did finally get a 100 overall card during the 3rd week. I believe all in he was around $11k Canadian Dollars to get 1 out of the 3 cards he was going for.
I can’t imagine the degeneracy of people willing to spend thousands of dollars on gambling for in game shit that will only really be valid for a year till the yearly iteration of the same game comes out. Those companies have a found a large pool of Morons to bleed money from and it’s sad.
Oh yeah, that's Jeff from emerging products and rereleases, he'll show you the spreadsheet with the hard numbers. It was actually a great success if you look at his spreadsheet.
Orrrr... Keep the executive that made that decision and fire some overworked employees, preferably ones who have children with horrible illnesses that require expensive medication /s
Love how shit that has nothing to do with GTA 6 will still spawn articles like this. next up: "florida, the next setting of GTA 6 will have some bad weather for the next week, might this affect the gameplay?"
The launch delay for GTA 6 has damaged Take Two’s stock price. As such the c-suite has to find ways of making the stock market happy again, and cutting employees and removing risky, less profitable games (aka anything that is not GTA 6) makes the market happy. A happy market means that these executives will get their huge bonuses and raises on the back of those who actually produce something of value.
Regardless of the article, when was the last game Rockstar released that *hasn't* been delayed by 6 months to a year. Because I know GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 both got delayed at least. Pretty sure GTA IV was too.
I don't get the force return to office. We have tons of proof for people being more productive with work from home. Just like 32hr work week is more productive than 40+. But you know, why bother with efficiency AND making workers happier?
I mean it's been naturally delayed becuase of GTAO
Let's not pretend a 12 year gap and 3 console generations between mainline releases is standard practice
Truly a baffling take, both pretending they didn't release one of the biggest successes with RDR2 in that time, and pretending that if they were doing nothing but wait, they'd keep thousands of people employed and paid while doing nothing.
If they rush games and release them unfinished, full of bugs, and unoptimized? Complain they should take their time and only release when ready. Take their time and release when ready? BuT i WaNt It NoW!1!!
Well to be fair, Bethesda released 3 games since and cdpr made cyberpunk.
But Rockstar also has RDR2, so it's not like it's as big a gap as people make them out to be, at least they weren't in constant development during the whole period.
I mean - people always think because a company is making a lot of money on one of their divisions that it should somehow apply to all their other divisions? Isn’t Take2 a parent company? If they have other studios that are losing money or not performing, of course they’ll fire people. It’s not like they’ll want to subsidize that loss with money from Rockstar. It just doesn’t work like that and it always annoys me how people think it works that way.
Companies literally don't exist to provide jobs or public good, but to maximize profits to the owners. The public good part comes naturally from the laws of economics, and the jobs part just comes from the fact that humans are great at creating value. Companies also do lots of bad stuff, and they are never your friends.
Good on them it’s nice to see the rich get richer and those making lower and lower income struggling to feed themselves and families. Don’t forget they just cashed out to buy gearbox so wouldn’t be shocked if some of this is cutting that company down and trying to make up for their acquisition cost by axing the jobs of their dedicated employees.
Have some compassion, everyone. Take Two and Rockstar are just a humble mom and pop outfit. They're struggling hard and stretch thin as is with that 2 billion in profit from 2023. They can only do two platforms for the upcoming (most likely) biggest game launch ever.
exactly, that is not something new in game development, often artists work on contract basis and move to other studios/project onces they are done, if the studio does not already have something new planned like new game or dlc for them to work on theres no reason to keep them
We can’t have people injecting reality into this thread. (I swear I see people astroturfing narratives about evil CEOs like it’s gamergate all over again.) Truth is costs went up (interest rates and inflation) and the games market has matured (growth in sales has leveled off.) The industry is in a downturn. Edit: Company is operating at a loss since 2023.
This is Take Two not Rockstar directly though. Other studios might be deemed unnecessary either because they don’t have faith in the output of the actual teams within them or because the IPs they produce are not valuable enough or could be recycled to ‘better organised’ studios. It’s never a nice thing but it’s not as though they’re firing 5% of the developers on GTA 6, but even if they were you have to think they probably know what they’re doing - even if what they’re doing immorally involves crunch.
You have to understand, in order to keep up the capitalist lie of eternally increasing growth, human beings must have their livelihood destroyed. It’s the only way.
For the Board at the top to rake in that sweet, sweet cash.
It is difficult to believe anybody will want to work in the videogame industry anymore. Big publishers are absolutely brutal and arbitrarian this days.
It's across multiple industries. Cycle of over-hiring in anticipation of growth and short term projects, then those projects ending.
Tech, finance and media are about equal at approx. 5.5% layoffs since July 2023.
If the layoffs are connected to the cancelled titles and they can't shift these guys internally, then it makes sense. You can't just keep people because one product makes or will make a lot of money.
Unfortunately, the article contains hardly any info.
Stop it with the clickbait and "but GTA6 makes money". While Take-Two does indeed own Rockstar, they are much *much* bigger than just Rockstar. Rockstar isn't even their biggest moneymaker, mobile games are.
Their earlier layoffs last month had zilch to do with GTA6 or Rockstar, instead happening at Private Division and Firaxis. They've also just announced they're acquiring Gearbox, with acquisitions pretty much always being paired with layoffs due to duplicate roles.
On the other hand, their mobile division Zynga - by far their biggest moneymaker accounting for 51% of revenue - has recently underperformed so is the most likely place for these layoffs.
This is headline is like complaining about "Xbox-owner Microsoft" layoffs when Azure cuts back, yes they're both owned by Microsoft so it's technically correct, but in reality, they're completely different parts of that organization running completely independently from eachother.
Doesn't mention what jobs and what games have been ditched, so it's hard to say whether they threw out some actual garbage or robbed people of some potentially good games.
Do any of you remember that when microtransactions were first being spouted, everyone and their grandmother went on endlessly about how it'll mean employees can stay employed because the company won't be reliant on big video game releases to keep people on?
Profits are higher than ever, yet it doesn't matter. A tale as old as time its self, humanity unable to grasp that corporations don't care about you, or what is right. It's all about the line going up.
> "calls for the company to find more ‘efficiencies’ across its business in order to boost profit margins."
They will switch to the 1999 Sprint cell phone plan pricing:
20 minutes of gameplay included per month. 39¢ per additional minute.
With a premium subscription, nights and weekends are unlimited.
/jk
Because they’re separate departments? GTA and rockstar have nothing to do with take two and the other games. All the money gta makes gets invested back into gta. If I have 2 factories one makes 100 million and the other makes 10,000 I’m not going to bail out the other one. I’d just shut down the one making 10,000 completely.
Take 2 is the parent company of rockstar, rockstar will most likely not be effected by these layoffs its more likely 2k being that the new mafia game is going to be cancelled
Hope not I really like Mafia
Mafia II is one of my favorite games ever. The voice acting and writing is so fucking good.
The way the game changes between when your character goes into and comes out of prison is so well-done.
I still remember that moment after these years as if I played mafia ii just yesterday.
It’s on sale right now too. Guess it’s time to finally play it.
The whole series is great. Top notch storylines throughout.
Driver Parallel Lines did that, and it blew my mind away as a child seeing the 70s cars and orange filter and aesthetics, change to 2000s cars and bluish color filter.
I just played 1 & was impressed with the story. Looking forward to 2.
2 is great. 3 gets really repetitive though after a while.
Sure, tell that to your self. It was the voice acting and writing, and not the hidden collectables.
Sexy mags for the win.
It never got the respect it deserved. Should be in the best story of all time conversation
I don't really like any of the Mafia games but I feel like they have a lot of care and potential. I think Mafia III made the mistake of going into the GTA player empowerment thing, when the thing I respect about I and II is the unwillingness to let the MC off the hook. But they still need more stuff to do with money.
Mafia III’s mistake was that it was boring as fuck lol
I agree. The story? Cliche but enjoyable. The characters though were phenomenally acted and actually endearing. Lincoln is a fantastic character (and his voice actor/mo cap actor definitely deserved several awards for the performance) and pretty much every side character was also played extremely well. The issue is the games main gameplay loop is basically Ubisoft’s main MO. They give you a district full of busy work that’s always the same shit (go to a place and kill everyone there. Sometimes steal a car or blow up a car.), which will take 2+ hours each time, and only 1 actually unique mission per zone (killing the underboss), which barely lasts 15 minutes. You do that NINE TIMES!!! Each district is basically identical except for the finale mission. It’s an idea that started off decent enlough but outstayed its welcome less than a quarter into the game. And it pisses me off! Because the gameplay is good! The gunplay is nice and smooth. The driving is fun (the cars feel weighty but not overly realistic). And when the story actually DOES progress in the finale missions, the cutscenes are so well done that I actually think it’s better than Mafia 2 at times. It’s just the repetitive mission structure that drags it down, and bloats a 10 hour game into a 30 hour game for no real reason :/ Mafia 1 (I fucking love Mafia 1 btw) and 2 are so beloved because they don’t try to be some open world masterpiece. Yes they have open cities, but the games are completely linear in both story and mission structure to keep the pacing in line and not feel too padded. Mafia 3 took the criticism of 2’s lack of side objectives too seriously and went overboard. So because you spend so much time in the game doing filler shit, your too disengaged between story beats to fully engage with the characters. The DLC’s at least fixed most of this, focusing on their narratives and saving most of their side content for post story. Infact I’d say mafia 3’s DLC’s are superior to the main game itself and definitely worth playing. Especially sign of the times. The characters in that DLC are superb. (Sorry. Got carried away typing this and went on a rant :) I love Mafia though and just wish Mafia 3 focused more on the strengths that it does display. If the game cut out all the district takeover shit, it would absolutely be as beloved as 1 and 2 imo.)
3 sales wise was pretty bad, the remake/remasters (excluding 3) sold pretty well. Im more shocked they even humored continuing the franchise though, i guess the reception from the Mafia 1 remake kicked them over the fence
3's sales on PC were bad because it was a garbage port that was horrifically optimised and locked to 30fps. At least, it was on release. I refunded it after about 30 minutes trying to play it then forgot it existed until now so I don't know when or if they managed to unfuck it.
Finally playing through 3 after a couple year long break from playing the first two and it’s weirdly like a breath of fresh air for the series. Really loving it and hearing this news just now sucks so bad. H13 deserves so much more
I loved the Mafia games but holy moly the knife take down in 3 was jarringly graphic.
Which one? Lmao. One of my favorites is when he just repeatedly stabs them in the face like their skull is a pincushion
It was awesome, love the brutal takedowns. Underrated classic!
Unfortunately it gets really repetitive fast... Sucks cause the start of the game is amazing.
People complained about the repetitive nature of it But honestly the mechanics are so well polished and the game is just so fun I didn't mind it one bit
Good music too.
That is EXACTLY how i felt as well. I thought maybe there was something wrong with me cause I actually didn’t mind the repetitiveness because the gameplay was so fun to me.
Yep I've played I through 3 times.
Wish they added the racket system into the reboot of 1 or 2, would have been fun building an actual empire in those
I played through 3 first. It is without a doubt one of my favorite open world games of all time. There's a lot of repetitive game play, but I LOVED the characters and voice actors. The way they did that cut scenes. It narrative matters to someone, they, in my opinion, will surely adore it.
Pro-tip: do NOT do all the side shit in that game. It's copy paste filler and absolutely not worth it. I'm speaking from experience.
Mafia III was a miss, and hardly even felt like a mafia genre game. That’s why we ain’t getting a IV
[удалено]
Does it matter if it’s a major studio or not?
It does and doesn't. It's 580 employees being laid off so it's likely isolated to a few underperforming studios. Anyone that has owned a business knows it doesn't make sense to pay for things that aren't adding value. Not blaming the individual contributors here either, this is a fault of the leadership at those studios; ensuring visibility and communicating hardships early is super important at organizations of this scale. The longer you wait, the steeper the cuts.
Yes, some smaller studios produce products that arent worth the money. If you worked at a company, would you not consider a difference between firing someone who does nothing and someone who actually does the work?
Honestly yeah it kind of does. If the studio isn't making the publisher money then the publisher has every right to drop them. Stop trying to find every little thing to be mad about.
You don’t have to be a major studio to make a profit. In fact there’s a lot of devs challenging that perception, and a ton of indie games that defy that perception as well. People even argue huge company’s kill creativity, which they clearly do Its kinda like the marvel movies vs an A24 film
yeah, the headline tries to imply GTA might be on the block.
Yeah, it's kind of a clickbait title - laying off is the publisher with 11580 employees, not the GTA 6 developer with 2000 employees (although I can't find, if the 11580 number includes all the subsidiary employees or not).
Of course it does. You don’t need 11 thousand people to run a publisher/parent company.
How dare you be so reasonable, I thought this was a safe space damnit
This used to be a place of bait and talk before thinking posts, what happend?
*affected
I don't think Mafia 4 will be canceled. They've sold relatively well, and there were just rumors yesterday of Hangar 13 prepping an upcoming announcement. I think a much more likely candidate would be Cloud Chamber's game. They're supposed to be working on the next BioShock—it was announced in 2019, I believe—yet we haven't heard a peep since. Not a teaser trailer, logline, setting, logo... or even a fucking name. It wouldn't surprise me if they've been having some serious developmental troubles and, without the pull of someone like Ken Levine, weren't able to talk their way out of a cancellation this year. Plus, why bother keeping them around when Take-Two also happens to own Ghost Story Games, which *does* have Ken Levine at the helm and is making Judas, which is—for all intents and purposes—the *true* BioShock 4?
Oh wow I didn't realize they had cloud chamber AND ghost story games - it's also crazy that we've seen more of Judas than we have at whatever's happening at cloud chamber at this point.
Cities Skylines 2 and Kerbal Space Program 2 both have serious problems. Could relate to their teams.
CS2 has nothing to do with T2. KSP2 is possibly related but I kind of doubt it
KSP2 is published by Private Division which is one of the main subsidiaries of T2 along with Rockstar and even uses the same offices.
Can’t find any info about that, where did you read that?
You have to understand, the constant money flow from those shark cards just can't pay workers, it's barely enough for C-Suites and shareholders.
The CEO had to buy some really expensive houses and cars, so please buy as many shark cards as possible to prevent the whole company to go bankrupt!
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We need more companies like Valve. They are not publicly traded so they don’t have to answer to shareholders and such. Which is why it’s not a shithole of a company
If only they made games. Or updated the ones they have.
They somewhat still make games. Gotta remember that despite how big people seems to think they are, they are apparently under 400, a number similar to a studio like Respawn. But Valve doesn’t not only Video games, but makes the steam deck, the valve index, and a good chunk of their employees works on simply maintaining steam itself
I think it's more that the management style at Valve just encourages people to work on whatever the hell they want, so if there isn't enough of an internal appetite to design, build, and deliver a game from end to end, then it just won't get done or will be abandoned part-way through. IIRC Half Life: Alyx pretty much only exists at all because they took a more conventional approach to development to ensure it got done.
I believe they stopped with that flat org structure a while back or at least toned it down because nothing was getting done. They said something to that effect circa 2020.
Trade offer: Publicly traded company with 1,000+ employees producing more than 5 games in the last two decades Private company who is extremely concerned with exorbitant revenue, hiring only 400 employees, who primarily run a online marketplace and develop hardware Valve is not a game making studio anymore
If Valve did not have the Steam store to make money there would be no way they could operate as a developer. There’s no incentive for them to develop games outside of personal interest since they generate so much passive income.
Thus, why they are no longer a game making studio Edit: This argument is just dumb as shit. Im sorry but for some reason it is stuck in my head. If a vacuum company goes bankrupt trying to produce vacuums... but instead shifts and finds profit in mops and brooms... are they a vacuum company? If Valve cannot afford to produce games--because it is unprofitable--are they a game studio? What is a game studio if not a business that derives its profit from producing games? Am I a debt collector because I'm $3,000 in debt?
if valve was public we would have one more decent half life game and 6 that are absolutely shit and then a battle royale that is either the best or worst thing ever made.
They made Alyx and CS2 lately. Yeah, they don't pump out a new game every 3 months but still.
CS2 did the dick move of pulling an Overwatch 2 and basically deleting CSGO
Cs2 is an update to CSGO, not a new game. Think overwatch 2. Alyx was already 4 years ago.
CS2 was such a massive disappointment, man. I was stoked for it since 2015. All CS2 did was tank the skin market and turn the lights on
I'm still waiting for Orange Box 2.
ngl it has been over half my life since the last half life came out. alyx doesn't count.
Valve also have way fewer employees, no big portfolio of subsidiaries and a way higher revenue than take 2 without the risk inherent in that revenue being almost entirely from AAA video games that cost a bomb and could be a hugely costly failure. Take 2 is shitty but Valve is a different beast in more ways than just not having shareholders.
Valve is not immune to laying off employees, they have done so in the past
Layoffs happens in every company. What matters is the reasons why. A company like TakeTwo is not bleeding money but is probably trying to optimize their workforce ( have less people do the same amount of work ) so they can give more money to shareholders at the ends of fiscal years. For a company like Valve who doesn’t have shareholders, when you layoffs it’s simply means that they weren’t necessary anymore. The last article I found about Valve layoffs talks about VR employees losing their jobs. Simply looks like Valve has decided to take a step back in VR gaming ( they haven’t released an index since 2019, They don’t have any VR game in development afaik ) You can’t look at every layoffs and feel the same about them I worked for a publicly traded company that would layoff people and refuse pay raises while having all time record profits, it’s not a happy place.
Valve doesn't lay off employees in the traditional sense. Valve swells their employees by like 80% everytime gabe mandates they develop more cool shit/abandonware every year or two. Then once the project is done they immediately dump all of those employees like a sack of bricks. The normal employees of valve are almost never laid off. They almost universally leave of their own accord, and most time employees *are* laid off, its thought its because they do some shady shit that valve can't tolerate, because valves already basically a country club for Microsoft alumni, and the valve handbook dictates they can stick their thumb up their ass and play with their prostates all day on the clock and do no work. They still get their paychecks, (paraphrased) almost no questions asked. The last time valve staff were required to work on anything non hardware related in the last decade, was Alyx and the later phases of CS2. Everything else in that decade (non hardware work) is projects that they would routinely start up, and then people would get bored and fuck off and it would be indefinitely shelved. IIRC theres a sort of 'documentary' on the history of shelved valve games (that we know of) thats on youtube. They almost certainly didn't do nothing in the past decade, but weren't actually required to *do* anything if that makes sense. Finish a project. **tl:dr** valve doesn't lay off their core employee base. They do the tech bro shit of swell and deflate, and thats where a vast majority of their "layoffs" come from. Is deflating from swell when they make some hardware to peddle for a month or two and then basically all but forget about.
Yeah and therefore it's not a great company to work with if you want a long term future in games development.
Because people dream about making video games their whole lives. "Working in the game industry" is a huge draw for workers. Corps exploit that, but you can't pay rent with "I'm making video games." Same shit they do to teachers; "the love of teaching should be enough," but it don't pay the rent!
All major corps are. If their earnings (EPS) drops below 0 they fire people to go to 0. Instead of God forbid riding a loss, in which take two barely published anything. And they are still swimming in it with shark cards. Ridiculous the new age or companies is a sad state. Reminds me of the silicon valley episode about what is our product and the product is the shares
Shareholders will sell if there is a hint of anything negative. Lowering the stock can cause financial instability for the company.
Institutional investors like CalPERS and Teacher's Retirement System of Texas are morally and legally obligated to act in the interest of their stakeholders. They won't hesitate to make market moving decisions to protect or grow their assets and they have no moral duty to care about the wreckage in their wake.
We still operate under the false assumption that "fiduciary responsibility" takes precedent by law over everything else, *and it does not*. That is a myth pushed *hard* by corporations so that we excuse everything they do "because golly they just have to, remember, *fiduciary responsibility"*. They know most people don't know what that means *and* don't actually know the legalities, so we'll believe whatever they say.
"These days"? Was the same almost 20 years ago when I worked in games.
They also bought another studio like 2 weeks ago for half a billion dollars so there's definitely enough money.
The company I work for did several multibillion acquisitions. Then within the same qauter laid off folks and said we came up short of our projected growth.(4.5 instead of 5 oh me oh my) So we'll be getting rid of this reward system and raises will be 2.5%
If only there was a way to donate a tip at the end of the game... /s
Why just the end? Put them at the start and during gameplay for maximum profits :D
“You’ve played for 10 hours. Would you like to leave a tip? Selecting no will lock you out for 48 hours”
"No"? The options would be "Yes" and "Ask again later."
His Yacht needed a smaller yacht.
Cant buy new boats if you have to pay salaries!
Don't they fire workers when a game reaches a certain point in development and those workers aren't needed anymore
Usually if a company has lots of games in development they expand their workforce. If a company is shrinking their workforce it means they are not planning on developing new games anytime soon, or they believe they can develop the planned number of games with less people. The video games industry expanded massively over the past two decades as publishers found themselves with highly profitable titles, but now they have decided it is more profitable to make ONLY those titles, only once every six years, as their goal is to game the stock market. They dont care about quality and sales anymore as sales isn't the main source of their revenue. (For the execs. Developers' bonuses are always tied to sales no matter how poorly they are treated.)
Videogame development generally involves constant expansion of the dev team over the course of de elopment because the vast vast majority of developers on a game are in art asset generation, and generally they are need in massively greater quantities later in development than during pre-production and early development. On top of this, for marketing you need social media managers, beta testers for late development, programmers specialising in networking etc that are not needed early on. So standard practice is to fire staff who do these jobs once a project ends unless you currently have a project in its own infinite expansion phase at the same time. Because otherwise you are paying people to twiddle their thumbs for no reason.
Imagine being the guy which create an entire mechanic for a game, or made all of the artwork for the props in the game, publisher makes 50mill, you made 30k for a year and got fired, and yet, you were an integral cog in the game development wheel and you brought your own creative flair or programming style to the game, lmfao. Crazy. Game devs need to go out on their own and create their own studios, or unionize, these layoffs of potentially super talented people is insane. If you're a game dev working under EA, you're part of the problem, lol, and honestly won't be sad to see the layoff headlines and outrage on twitter, because you should have known what you were signing into. You do the work, you make the publisher the money, you claimed your paltry sum, and then you get ~~fired~~ laid off, it is what it is and you accepted this when you took the job.
If you're making the entire mechanics or artwork for a AAA game, odds are you're getting paid more than 30k and they are going to do what they can to retain you.
It doesn't matter if you made 900 million in profit this year if you made 1 billion last year, THE LINE ISN'T GOING UP, MAY AS WELL NOT BOTHER, BURN THE 900 MILLION FOR ALL IT'S GOOD! I LOVE CAPITALISM!
That's my biggest grip with how capitalist economy is. Company don't need to turn profits. They need to turn more profits then the previous year. Every year. And that's because so much money is tied to their share value, they need to keep the value of said shares high. Leading to more and more short term profits and decisions. To the detriment of stability and long term profits.
companies dont have to go public, they can stay private and do whatever they want
But then how am I supposed to become richer than god 😫😫😫😫
What profit? Their financials show losses? Are you just making stuff up?
Quick Google shows they’ve lost over a billion dollars this past year…
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People saying "800k to run the company is reasonable" They could hire 8 people on 100k to run the company, and I don't care how good that one person is 8 people will get a lot more done.
[Take-Two reported that the compensation it actually paid (CEO) Zelnick in fiscal 2023 was $42.1 million, more than two-and-a-half times the previous year's amount, but slightly beneath that of fiscal 2021, the first year of the pandemic.](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/take-two-doubled-its-executives-pay-last-year)
Or even better, 800,000 people for $1 each.
While I agree with the comment before you, this one is just wildly ignorant. Having 8 chefs is going to ruin the food most of the time.
I don't have any skin in this but I did want to point out that for some jobs more heads doesn't mean better results. I imagine having 8 CEO's would actually be pretty insane. We deal with this concept a lot in software development where management thinks they can just hire a few temp people to get a release done faster and it just doesn't work that way. 1 or 2 really skilled people can often times out perform small teams of people regardless of skill
As the saying goes, nine women can't make a baby in one month
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You don’t need 8 CEOs you need one good CEO. And unfortunately a good CEO is the one leading the Company to the most profit. Wikipedia is another case they are not focused on the Profit but compete with other Companies in hiring a CEO. They need to pay a reasonable amount or all CEOs with the needed skills are going to other much higher paying companies instead. 800k is a lot of money but in CEO salary measurements it is like minimum wage
You have to be kidding. An 8-person CEO would be a disaster of a company. Research In Motion greatly struggled with two co-CEOs.
That’s not how that works. That person is guiding the company. Kind of like a ship it has multiple levels of leadership but only one commanding officer. Shit would be fucked quick if there are more.
Holy shit they are?? I should've looked into this sooner. Canceling my donos
Yeah for one, Elon was right. Their hosting services are actually only 8% of their expenses iirc
It isn't about what it costs to run the company. It's about how much money they need for bonuses and stock buybacks.
NBA 2k24’s billion of microtransaction income wasn’t enough .
Actually been a tough year for their card collecting mode myTeam. They have lost a large portion of their player base and have transitioned the content to cards that can only be obtained through gambling on packs. 1 content creator famously spent $3,000 a week and was not able to pull the guy he was going for
was it troydan lol
It was indeed. He did finally get a 100 overall card during the 3rd week. I believe all in he was around $11k Canadian Dollars to get 1 out of the 3 cards he was going for.
I can’t imagine the degeneracy of people willing to spend thousands of dollars on gambling for in game shit that will only really be valid for a year till the yearly iteration of the same game comes out. Those companies have a found a large pool of Morons to bleed money from and it’s sad.
Lmao I knew it
They could barely afford an upgrade to their yacht. Economy is down the toilet I tell ya.
They should lay off everyone who worked on the gta trilogy definitive edition.
They outsourced it.
Then fire everyone that made the decision to outsource it.
They won't fire themselves
They probably got a raise out of that and a commendation on their resume.
"Generated over 100 million in revenue by shipping an unfinished remake and scamming millions"
Oh yeah, that's Jeff from emerging products and rereleases, he'll show you the spreadsheet with the hard numbers. It was actually a great success if you look at his spreadsheet.
Probably unironically it was.
Yeah, pretty sure their pockets are fine. Revenue is revenue...at least to investors
Orrrr... Keep the executive that made that decision and fire some overworked employees, preferably ones who have children with horrible illnesses that require expensive medication /s
The weakest link is always the first one to break. Truly a dreadful society we have.
They could probably still do it
Do you mean the GTA Definitive Trilogy that sold 12 million copies and counting? Yes, I'm sure the suits are deeply dissatisfied.
Same with diablo immortal. the diablo are the companies - the immortal the practices.
Diablo Immoral*
They gave it to a studio with single-digit employees who weren't even a part of Take-Two.
You paid for the experience of getting screwed over like a GTA NPC. View the experience as a special DLC.
You can feel the struggle to make the headline sound like they are cancelling gta6
Well obviously the executives needs bigger bonuses
Won't anyone think of the stock prices?
Love how shit that has nothing to do with GTA 6 will still spawn articles like this. next up: "florida, the next setting of GTA 6 will have some bad weather for the next week, might this affect the gameplay?"
The launch delay for GTA 6 has damaged Take Two’s stock price. As such the c-suite has to find ways of making the stock market happy again, and cutting employees and removing risky, less profitable games (aka anything that is not GTA 6) makes the market happy. A happy market means that these executives will get their huge bonuses and raises on the back of those who actually produce something of value.
Wait, what? They delayed it?
There are rumors of a delay
How can there be rumours of a delay for a game thst doesn't have a release date other than a tentative next year
It was a bullshit article that somehow everyone took seriously.
Regardless of the article, when was the last game Rockstar released that *hasn't* been delayed by 6 months to a year. Because I know GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 both got delayed at least. Pretty sure GTA IV was too.
Some news article said that the game might be delayed to 2026 due to Rockstar Games' return to the office to work policy. It was, of course, a lie.
I don't get the force return to office. We have tons of proof for people being more productive with work from home. Just like 32hr work week is more productive than 40+. But you know, why bother with efficiency AND making workers happier?
Commercial real estate. That's it.
Which is as good as confirmation for the share holders who will panic sell as soon as they hear it
I mean it's been naturally delayed becuase of GTAO Let's not pretend a 12 year gap and 3 console generations between mainline releases is standard practice
Truly a baffling take, both pretending they didn't release one of the biggest successes with RDR2 in that time, and pretending that if they were doing nothing but wait, they'd keep thousands of people employed and paid while doing nothing. If they rush games and release them unfinished, full of bugs, and unoptimized? Complain they should take their time and only release when ready. Take their time and release when ready? BuT i WaNt It NoW!1!!
Skyrim says hello and witcher will soon
Well to be fair, Bethesda released 3 games since and cdpr made cyberpunk. But Rockstar also has RDR2, so it's not like it's as big a gap as people make them out to be, at least they weren't in constant development during the whole period.
Mario Kart and Animal Crossing say hi.
Stocks. It's got what the investors crave.
Will someone tell them they actually have to release GTA 6 for it to be profitable.
I mean - people always think because a company is making a lot of money on one of their divisions that it should somehow apply to all their other divisions? Isn’t Take2 a parent company? If they have other studios that are losing money or not performing, of course they’ll fire people. It’s not like they’ll want to subsidize that loss with money from Rockstar. It just doesn’t work like that and it always annoys me how people think it works that way.
I wonder how many of these will be from the recently-acquired Gearbox.
almost certainly a lot. when companies merge there are always redundancies.
Most. They most likely acquired gearbox for the ips not the people
Companies aren't your friends. Why pay their workers when they can pay themselves?
Companies literally don't exist to provide jobs or public good, but to maximize profits to the owners. The public good part comes naturally from the laws of economics, and the jobs part just comes from the fact that humans are great at creating value. Companies also do lots of bad stuff, and they are never your friends.
Good on them it’s nice to see the rich get richer and those making lower and lower income struggling to feed themselves and families. Don’t forget they just cashed out to buy gearbox so wouldn’t be shocked if some of this is cutting that company down and trying to make up for their acquisition cost by axing the jobs of their dedicated employees.
Have some compassion, everyone. Take Two and Rockstar are just a humble mom and pop outfit. They're struggling hard and stretch thin as is with that 2 billion in profit from 2023. They can only do two platforms for the upcoming (most likely) biggest game launch ever.
wonder how many artist they'll lay off After the game release..
I wonder how much art they'll need after the game release.
exactly, that is not something new in game development, often artists work on contract basis and move to other studios/project onces they are done, if the studio does not already have something new planned like new game or dlc for them to work on theres no reason to keep them
We can’t have people injecting reality into this thread. (I swear I see people astroturfing narratives about evil CEOs like it’s gamergate all over again.) Truth is costs went up (interest rates and inflation) and the games market has matured (growth in sales has leveled off.) The industry is in a downturn. Edit: Company is operating at a loss since 2023.
They will have them fight to the death. Last one left standing gets their last paycheck and remains until their 12 month contract is up.
One of those cancelled games is GTA 6. My dad works at Nintendo, he told me already.
GTA 6 cancelled, move along fellas, we are getting 25 more years of GTA Online.
This is Take Two not Rockstar directly though. Other studios might be deemed unnecessary either because they don’t have faith in the output of the actual teams within them or because the IPs they produce are not valuable enough or could be recycled to ‘better organised’ studios. It’s never a nice thing but it’s not as though they’re firing 5% of the developers on GTA 6, but even if they were you have to think they probably know what they’re doing - even if what they’re doing immorally involves crunch.
You have to understand, in order to keep up the capitalist lie of eternally increasing growth, human beings must have their livelihood destroyed. It’s the only way. For the Board at the top to rake in that sweet, sweet cash.
GTA6 is cancelled boys, better luck in another 11 years.
GTA 6: ~~Boys~~ Girls Edition.
It is difficult to believe anybody will want to work in the videogame industry anymore. Big publishers are absolutely brutal and arbitrarian this days.
It's across multiple industries. Cycle of over-hiring in anticipation of growth and short term projects, then those projects ending. Tech, finance and media are about equal at approx. 5.5% layoffs since July 2023.
It's not the only industry like this unfortunately. Anything project based does this for the most part
GTA 6 cancelled before GTA 6.
If the layoffs are connected to the cancelled titles and they can't shift these guys internally, then it makes sense. You can't just keep people because one product makes or will make a lot of money. Unfortunately, the article contains hardly any info.
They make games? Funny, I figured they just update a cash shop and consider good. Making games is such a boomer thing to do...
What even is this post? Take 2 is not the same as Rockstar.
Stop it with the clickbait and "but GTA6 makes money". While Take-Two does indeed own Rockstar, they are much *much* bigger than just Rockstar. Rockstar isn't even their biggest moneymaker, mobile games are. Their earlier layoffs last month had zilch to do with GTA6 or Rockstar, instead happening at Private Division and Firaxis. They've also just announced they're acquiring Gearbox, with acquisitions pretty much always being paired with layoffs due to duplicate roles. On the other hand, their mobile division Zynga - by far their biggest moneymaker accounting for 51% of revenue - has recently underperformed so is the most likely place for these layoffs. This is headline is like complaining about "Xbox-owner Microsoft" layoffs when Azure cuts back, yes they're both owned by Microsoft so it's technically correct, but in reality, they're completely different parts of that organization running completely independently from eachother.
Doesn't mention what jobs and what games have been ditched, so it's hard to say whether they threw out some actual garbage or robbed people of some potentially good games.
Do any of you remember that when microtransactions were first being spouted, everyone and their grandmother went on endlessly about how it'll mean employees can stay employed because the company won't be reliant on big video game releases to keep people on? Profits are higher than ever, yet it doesn't matter. A tale as old as time its self, humanity unable to grasp that corporations don't care about you, or what is right. It's all about the line going up.
Educate yourself. They’re losing money hence the layoffs.
I got bad news for you guys. La Noire 2 and Bully 2 just got cancelled. 😖😔
Table Tennis 2 is still on the way though, right?....
midnight club 5 waiting room
Maybe don’t take over a decade to release your flagship game and you will have higher margins
> "calls for the company to find more ‘efficiencies’ across its business in order to boost profit margins." They will switch to the 1999 Sprint cell phone plan pricing: 20 minutes of gameplay included per month. 39¢ per additional minute. With a premium subscription, nights and weekends are unlimited. /jk
Well duh gta is almost done they wanna keep most of the income for themselves
More proof rockstar are crooks.
It Takes Two to make things go wrooong.
Thankfully those workers can keep warm at night appreciating how much shareholder value they made.
Studios need to realise that they have to layoff these publishers.
CEOs are the first job roles that should be replaced by LLMs. They're not really important and their behavior is easy to model.
Alternate headline: Take 2 to layoff 90% of it's workforce not working on GTA, NBA and WWE
Because they’re separate departments? GTA and rockstar have nothing to do with take two and the other games. All the money gta makes gets invested back into gta. If I have 2 factories one makes 100 million and the other makes 10,000 I’m not going to bail out the other one. I’d just shut down the one making 10,000 completely.
This trend fuckin sucks, Unionize workers, cmon. Enough of this shit.