The developer behind Singularity, Wolfenstein and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance was hit with layoffs today, according to sources familiar with the Raven Software.
About forty people were let go today, according to some of the folks directly effects by the layoffs. Reached for comment this morning, Activision had this to say:
"With the recent completion of Singularity, Raven Software is realigning its workforce to better reflect the studio's upcoming slate."
Quality assurance workers at Raven Software, one of the developers of Call of Duty, have officially ratified their first union contract with Microsoft three years after they first unionized.
3 years? That's patience for making a billion dollar company pay you fairly for what you do.
Better than Amazon, which shut down an entire branch in my area because of the new union and their obligation to ratify a contract.
Raven Software, the legendary developer of Heretic, can do much more than just support Call of Duty; when will Activision realize this?
It's reprehensible how Activision reduced THE Raven Software responsible for Hexen, Singularity, and X-Men to a mere CoD support studio.
Raven put out a lot of bangers over the years. The sad truth is a lot of their more modern releases never found a big audience. They were a talented team, and seems Activision knew as much when, instead of closing the studio, they put them on one of their biggest IP. Still, I miss the Raven that had creative freedom. Hexen, Quake 4 and Singularity are among my favorite games.
Yep. I think people generally understand that games have to sell more now than what they used to in order to be successful, but they don't fully appreciate what that has caused us to lose in terms of variety. Studios used to be able to put out weird, interesting games that sold a few hundred thousand copies and get by, but that just doesn't fly anymore (except maybe with certain budget conscious indies).
Yep now its mass budgets without check along with games that a failures yet they sold millions of copies.
I still have no idea how games today have 250mill to 1 billion dollar budgets yet they come out with 0 innovation reused assets or are just another live service trash fire. The only explanation is money laundering and or alot going into certain pockets.
@just_looken
I think in at least some cases like those you mentioned the issue is the game is heavily changed multiple times throughout development in response to the trends of the moment. So when the game comes out and is a pile of trash despite 7+ years in development and a huge budget, we look at it and wonder where all the time and money went, but in reality it wasn't one continuous development process over seven years, but rather several fits and starts that resulted in a lot of work being thrown away and redone. I can't prove it, but I expect this is a lot of what happened with Suicide Squad.
Something like The Day Before, on the other hand, may have been a straight up scam.
“Yep. I think people generally understand that games have to sell more now than what they used to in order to be successful.”
I’ve yet to see any of these supposedly more expensive games today look better than big AAA games from last generation.
@JEECE
For those big long dev games ok sure
But we also have alot of spiderman 2 games mass budgets but nothing to show for it
imortals fo avium hitman 3 or your cod games
Edit: thrown in sports games they keep talking about investment bigger budget's but were is that going?
Raven used to work closely with id software since early 1990s till 2008, when both were under Activision ... the company would've faired much better if they were aquired by Zenimax along with id in 2009.
Most of the Raven staffs were laid off by Activision in early 2000s and along with id leaving for Zenimax, the studio was ultimately transformed into CoD support studio.
But even earlier, when Activision bought Raven in 1996, many of Raven's veteran devs left and goes to form their own studio, the Human Head Studios in 1997. Human Head was responsible for the original Prey, Brink and Rune games.
The same team then closes independent Human Head Studios and forms Roundhouse games under Zenimax in 2019.
Microsoft then closes Roundhouse in 2024 and the team has been moved to Zenimax Online studio.
This is much of the journey of Raven devs.
Very few of the original devs might be still at Raven and some og devs are ultimately at Zenimax online and while others are in other 3rd party studios.
Soldier of Fortune 2 multiplayer was damn fun in 2002, it was almost the only online game I played until Half Life 2 and its multiplayer mode released in 04.
Oh man! Soldier of Fortune was wild back in the day. You could really mess people up, not a game you showed your parents for sure lol
It's better to be tech support than unemployed. The people who don't like it can find another job, and the people who like it or just want a steady paycheck can stay. I wonder if Tango or Arkane Austin would have liked that option.
Crystal Dynamics is technically tech support on Perfect Dark but no articles bashing that decision. Kinda weird we're criticizing a publisher for not laying off an underperforming developer as is usually the case.
Most of OG tango developers left that's why MS decided to close it. And we will see once COD comes to GP day one h0w developers will react. Royalties are a big deal especially on games selling millions to being on GP day one
But Crystal Dynamics aren't just a support studio like Raven. It's already confirmed that while a team is helping with Perfect Dark, the main crux are working on the new Tomb Raider.
Half of Crystal dynamics is on Perfect Dark.
https://www.tombraiderforum...
The main crux isn't on Tomb Raider even assuming it's the only other project they are working on.
Square loaned them out to Microsoft to help perfect dark after their Marvel games went poorly. Kinda like raven got put on COD help when their games didn't sale. Embracer had to hounor the deal after buying them.
Better question us how many of the Og members are still there. Raven by name might be there but talent has moved around.
