But the thing about news is that it never ends, so here is some news from the start of the week:
The good news is that same as with Elden Rings DLC, we now have the data for the next big Stardew Valley update: version 1.6 will be released soon, on the 19th of March!
For those of you who do not know (do we have people like that?), Stardw Valley was released 8 years ago by one developer, Eric Barone, known professionally as ConcernedApe, and quickly became an indie game sensation. It is a pixel farm simulator with a truly impressive depth and layers (more so as it was made by one person) and is very zen. We even talked about it when discussing games that are good for mental health some time ago ( @Saka, @DracoTarot and @galadrielmt, remember that?)
The new update will add some festivals, dialogues, events, and secrets, as well as new farm type and the thing everyone is most excited about: iridium sickle! So those of us who like Stardew Valley and either play it now or want to get back into it, now is a good time! Same for those who have not tried it yet, as you'll get more content right off the bat! It is nice that Eric Barone manages to find the time to support Stardew Valley while he is working on his next game, Haunted Chocolatier. @Aaricia will probably love that one 😉
***
And now for the bad news: the lay-offs in the gaming industry continue, this time it happened in Supermassive Games. This company is a subsidiary of Avalanche Studios Group, had to let go of almost one-third of its personnel: out of 350 people working there now, 90 will lose their jobs and 150 more will be given notices that their jobs are in danger and may be next in line. A truly sad day.
Supermassive Games is known for horror games like Until Dawn, The Dark Pictures Anthology or The Quarry. It's sad because those (I think) were decent horror games, and I am doubly worried now because currently, they are working on Little Nightmares 3, among others. Let's hope that reduced staff will not impact the quality of the game too much.
More so because it is not even the first bad news for this company recently: earlier this year its co-founders Pete and Joe Samuels said they will be leaving the company. Maybe the layoffs are connected to that announcement.
@DoctorEldritch First of all apologies for not being active. I had a few hard weeks and mentally I'm not doing great. I can't wait for the Elden Ring DLC release. I'm sure it's going to be fun.
It's not only the gaming industry with so many layoffs. Here in SA it's a daily thing in all industries. Really a sad state of affairs.
Small software companies are closing doors and even hardware manufacturers is taking the same route.
@DracoTarot Don't be sorry about that, taking breaks is important. The world is really such a complicated place these days...
Not to be too pessimistic, but it goes beyond just lay-offs in the gaming industry now, as well. 😥 I looked into the situation a bit deeper and, according to GamesIndustry.biz survey, while 2023 was "the year of lay-offs", 2024 may be "the year of closures" when not just people, but whole gaming companies will be going out of business. And not just gaming companies, too, but also distributors, social media and service companies. Kotaku calculated that, as of January, more than 3000 in dave development lost their jobs. Really sad.
At the start of this decade, the gaming market had a spike, and now it is crashing down: there are too many games and too many companies to sustain. Attracting investors into the industry could help, but currently, they are cautious about investing, the market being what it is.
But the hope is not lost, experts say that in a couple of years, the industry will go back to the way it was and stabilize. If so, then hard though it may be, all we can do is wait and hope. Same as always.
@DoctorEldritch Pretty much the whole IT sector has been overhiring in the recent years and when the anticipated growth was not met, the layoffs started.
Covid gave a little bit falsified image; not everything stayed digital when the pandemic subsided.
Unamused Snarktooth. Advocate for hearing loss & accessibility. Person, friend and a terrible/terrific* artist.
*delete as appropriate
Unfortunate time to work over the games industry, there have been lots of projects started during COVID which have not evolved to be good enough for release and 2023 was a very hard year for the whole IT sector.
Covid time growth pushed the hirings to happen very quickly, but after the pandemic everything went sideways.
@SKYTRiXSHA Oh my, the situation is more dire than I realised. I knew that Embracer Group and Ubisoft have problems (and @GoLLuM13 and I talked a bit about why it could be), but EA and Sony are new. It is almost frightening to open news portals these days, you're almost guaranteed to stumble on lay-offs or closures or cancellations...
@SKYTRiXSHA They are massive, so it was bound to happen, true.
In other sad news, after I read that EA lay-offs caused Respawn to cancel a SW game, I started to look into it, and it seems that it was that Mandalorian Game they were working on, I was quite excited about that one. If that rumor turns out to be true, I will be doubly sad 😥
Last edited by DoctorEldritch; 06-03-24 at 16:47.
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DoctorEldritch
