That was a terrible and insulting pun to all involved. Sorry about that.
https://www.purexbox.com/news/2023/12/fr...-shut-down
Embracer Group, a company with a name that sounds as ominous as "Umbrella Corp", bought and have now shuttered Free Radical. Maybe they couldn't quite catch the gaming world on fire the way Goldeneye and Perfect Dark did, but Time Splitters 2 is still a good game in it's own right and the series as a whole was pretty entertaining for what it was. Look, they haven't pumped out much of anything, but it's still a shame to see them close down like this, with all their IP owned by some giant megacorp instead of being able to hold onto it themselves or even make it public domain. Seriously what's Embracer going to do with it? Their name means "holding on" after all, they aren't ever going to use the IP but they will NEVER give it up either, JUST in case there's some online brief burst of nostalgic popularity they think they can cash in on at some point down the line.
The whole Embracer situation is so messed up! They bought a massive number of small to medium size developers, based their whole business model on getting a Saudi [blood] money, failed to get that deal done, and now are flailing around, shuttering studios and firing people, because they don't have that funding. This won't end well, it's just a shame that so many good studios are going down because of irresponsible leadership of the company they all sold to...
This isn't JUST an issue with one greedy corporation. They're ALL like this ABF. Every single one of them would have done the same thing Embracer did, without except. Without a single solitary exception in all the modern world. It's systemic. Do you see? Do you see?! Sorry you probably had a hard time understanding me with the pantyhose over my head... Eh never mind let's set that wheelchair I cuffed you to on fire and roll you on out of here, I've got a date with a sleeping tiger to keep.
No, every single company in the world would not do this. The problem is that they bought all of these studios with the assumption that they'd get that $2 billion Saudi deal, but without that deal actually having been concluded yet. That's pretty scummy behavior, and there's no way that "every single company" would do such a thing. Capitalism has its problems, though no more than any other economic system, but this situation is a lot worse than usual.
On the latest from Embracer, they just announced a lot of people fired from Slipgate Ironworks and [the modern Danish-based, previously known as Interceptor] 3D Realms.
(14th December 2023, 10:16 AM)A Black Falcon Wrote: [ -> ]No, every single company in the world would not do this. The problem is that they bought all of these studios with the assumption that they'd get that $2 billion Saudi deal, but without that deal actually having been concluded yet. That's pretty scummy behavior, and there's no way that "every single company" would do such a thing. Capitalism has its problems, though no more than any other economic system, but this situation is a lot worse than usual.
On the latest from Embracer, they just announced a lot of people fired from Slipgate Ironworks and [the modern Danish-based, previously known as Interceptor] 3D Realms.
Capitalism as an ideology is a cancer killing the world in real time, right now, all around us. Games Workshop's stock prices just plummeted to pre-pandemic levels because investors were upset they "only" met expectations, meaning they literally didn't expect expectations, a phrase so insane I would have thought I read it in Alice in Wonderland. Hasbro fired almost everybody that was responsible for Dungeons & Dragons, leaving the company an empty shell, because they think that an unimaginative controlled "digital future" is where the game lies, unable to see that all those game designers are just going to work for Paizo now. Creative Assembly just had to apologize for rampant greed which killed their own franchise. Every single game studio is chasing "live service" games to such an extent they've come away shocked that all this insane money they threw away on making all these "me too" games just got glossed over by viewers of these trailers as "The" Game Awards (the only game awards that exist you see, because why else would they have that name?), as "boring", leading to the collapse and firing of many employees across EA's holdings, WB Game's holdings, and others. Warner Bros. movies are also performing acts of utter madness, shelving whole completed movies not because they won't be successful, but because throwing away literal hears of work representing decades and decades of man-hours will make them MORE money from the insurance they took out than actually releasing it to the public would, and yet they also refuse to just put the "failed" projects into the public domain because someday their shelved movies MIGHT be profitable. The US health care system is killing people I care about because insurance companies are more interested in continuing to exist as a concept than in doing the right thing and ending themselves in favor of universal health care, which can and does work, successfully, in every modern country outside of us in the whole world, and even a few states within our country. Companies can actually die FROM success, growing so huge they can no longer grow any larger, and that is considered a failing, so a company in it's most profitable year on record (Activision-Blizzard) ends up firing countless employees, another act that should be seen as the madness it is.
"No worse than any other economic system".... seriously... I said ALL THAT and didn't even TOUCH on how industries come into existence tricking massive sectors of the public into poisoning themselves rather than make, say, healthier food or how well... the planet is dyin' Cloud.
It's a sickness, a disease rotting our entire world and the only solution is to change it. The religion of Capitalism isn't the same thing as "trade" in and of itself, but it is a worship of money and greed as concepts worth sacrificing literally everything else in our world to protect. THAT is what needs to end.
Why exactly are you a capitalist? Did you come to that position because you were raised in a neoliberal home like a lot of people and aren't too keen on challenging that? It's a good and healthy thing to dismantle at least ONE core belief in your life ABF. Because, if you never do, you will never know if you're actually capable of it, and you also can't expect others to do so.
Sure, capitalism has faults, but I don't think the world is going to go back to mercantilism or feudalism or slave societies or anything like that. So what are the options? Capitalism, communism, or some socialist mix of the two, pretty much.
And of those, communism is the clear worst, by far. Communist nations are dictatorships with zero freedom, individualism is crushed, tens of millions died in the 20th century because of communism (more than died from any other -ism that century), etc; I think communism's crippling faults are well known. Marx didn't understand people and it shows, communism totally fails to account for human nature. Capitalism certainly has serious problems, but it is built around human nature. It's a very dramatically better system than communism, near-infinitely better.
Socialist mixes are much better than communism, where nations have a system that is mostly capitalist but with some socialism mixed in. Pretty much all nations do this to some greater or lesser extent. America has less socialism than the poster child of this kind of government, those of Scandinavia, but those are relatively small and homogeneous nations; would their government systems work on a large, diverse nation? Perhaps, but changes would be required.
And, supermarkets in Scandinavia for example are dramatically smaller than those in the US. They have less access to the insane variety of products than we do. Because they spend so much on health care and other social services, they have less spending money than Americans. Do they get benefits we don't in terms of health care and such, yes, but it's not like the US doesn't have advantages over Scandinavia, it does. It just depends on what subject you are focusing on.
As for the concept of infinite growth, I agree that that is impossible. Being stable in a market should be good enough, yes, I agree about that. "If you are not growing you are dying" is a flawed philosophy. The world is finite, its resources are finite, and not everything can grow. And yeah what the WB is doing with not releasing movies is disgusting and needs to be stopped. But even so, no other system does as well overall at creating strong economies than capitalism does, and it isn't close.
I agree with ABF, but it's seriously bizarre and disheartening that a company is considered a failure if it doesn't endlessly grow. My old boss said something of the same effect. We were a small company, and he essentially said, "in my experience, if a company doesn't grow, it's doomed". Really? So it can't just tread water? What's wrong with providing a valuable service and just chugging along, breaking even?
Quote:America has socialism than the poster child of this kind of government, those of Scandinavia, but those are relatively small and homogeneous nations; would their government systems work on a large, diverse nation?
Why does a population need to be small and homogeneous for government systems to work? Don't they scale? What is it about diversity that makes social programs break down?
I'm not well-versed in the history of communism, so it could be that there are other confounding factors that caused such mass murders and torture. Perhaps this is simply a talking point that capitalists trot out to justify why alternatives are not only a failure, but a death sentence. Still, a society that demands the occupations of its citizens is violating their individual rights and liberty. Perhaps if automation takes enough hold to make the human race a much more comfortable place to live, it will lift the burden of populations to have to toil away to put bread on the table and roofs over their heads.
Unfortunately, if history is any indicator, more efficient technologies will simply fill the time it saves to demand more production. What's the cause of this? Is it oppressive executives, demanding to wring just that much more blood from stone? Or is it that people inherently WANT something to occupy their time and feel productive? Sitting around, laying by the pool all day, with a perfect life, sounds boring. I'm a creative person, so I could probably dedicate extra time to something artistic. But that isn't so for everyone. What will it take for a person to feel constructive? It seems to me that it's necessary for a fulfilling life.
Quote:And, supermarkets in Scandinavia for example are dramatically smaller than those in the US. They have less access to the insane variety of products than we do. Because they spend so much on health care and other social services, they have less spending money than Americans. Do they get benefits we don't in terms of health care and such, yes, but it's not like the US doesn't have advantages over Scandinavia, it does. It just depends on what subject you are focusing on.
Human flourishing is more important than choice. In fact, studies demonstrate that people who have more choice end up more dissatisfied with the outcome. If I drank soda, I'd be okay with just having Coke and Sprite and not Pepsi and Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb and Sierra Mist and... you get the idea. (Coke is best though, so as my first proclamation as dictator-for-life, we'll keep that).
Free markets and competition are best, but capitalism needs strong regulations, and the government has an obligation to give basic necessities for its citizens. It's the ethical and necessary thing to do. Not every trade-off is an equivalent two choices.
You lack imagination ABF. I've specified numerous options in the past that don't perfectly slot into "communism or capitalism". There's a wider variety of solutions than what those labels alone allow for. Again, I'm not against trade, which isn't itself "capitalism" by the way, I'm against trade so unrestrained that corporations are allowed to destroy everything in it's name. That's plain evil, no matter how you slice it. I've already suggested solutions where the workers own the company they work for. That's a far cry from something like soviet communism, where the government owns it all instead. A corporation can be profitable without growth, sure, but only if it's not publically traded.
The key thing you need to understand is hierarchies, and how flattening hierarchies is my goal.
In any case... back on topic.
I consider this a wonderful scam, if only it had paid off. Ripping off giant corporations is morally good, because they GET our tax money in returns instead of paying it, so this is reclamation, not theft. But, in any case I think it's hilarious they told the parent company they were making another "me too" battle royal game and were secretly going to make a remake of TimeSplitters 2 that was a remake in the same sense FF7 Remake is a remake, it's a compete new timeline using time travel shenanigans.