Elemental launch results in Stardock layoffs
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The "consequences" of Elemental's "disastrous" launch were swift as Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has confirmed layoffs at the company. Shacknews reported yesterday that those let go included developers, designers, and salespeople working on Elemental. Wardell stated in his post on the subject that these are the first layoffs to the company since 1998, while elaborating, "Elemental's revenue was anticipated to provide the revenue both for our main games team's next project as well as a second team. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen so we've had to start laying people off."
Wardell contacted Joystiq to say, "We obviously have had technical issues on launch that we are paying for in reviews and weakened sales, but as anyone in our QA can tell you - and I've interviewed them post-launch - we thought the game was ready which merely shows, I think pretty obviously, that we will need to change the way we do QA on major new releases as well as how we handle our own betas."
The executive concludes, "It aggravates me to no end that there's often very little connection between the myriad of poor decisions made at the executive level - including myself at the top - and the people who end up losing their jobs. But my job isn't to dispense economic justice. My job is to try to keep as many people employed as possible and make sure our customers are taken care of."
Update: Added official statements.
Wardell contacted Joystiq to say, "We obviously have had technical issues on launch that we are paying for in reviews and weakened sales, but as anyone in our QA can tell you - and I've interviewed them post-launch - we thought the game was ready which merely shows, I think pretty obviously, that we will need to change the way we do QA on major new releases as well as how we handle our own betas."
The executive concludes, "It aggravates me to no end that there's often very little connection between the myriad of poor decisions made at the executive level - including myself at the top - and the people who end up losing their jobs. But my job isn't to dispense economic justice. My job is to try to keep as many people employed as possible and make sure our customers are taken care of."
Update: Added official statements.
Reader Comments (25)
Posted: Sep 4th 2010 3:42PM Mmmmz said
@Miketor
The game was terrible. I don't like layoffs, especially in this economy, but if they don't get their house in check and stop the bleeding now the entire company will fold which would result in more job losses.
Frankly, the producer should have been fired or at least laid off for 3-6 months. Maybe it's different at every company, but generally a producer keeps things in line and help determines if a product should be released. If that was their duty, they failed on this launch and should be punished accordingly. I mean, why keep the person that screwed everyone and fire the people that actually did their job as told?
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The game was terrible. I don't like layoffs, especially in this economy, but if they don't get their house in check and stop the bleeding now the entire company will fold which would result in more job losses.
Frankly, the producer should have been fired or at least laid off for 3-6 months. Maybe it's different at every company, but generally a producer keeps things in line and help determines if a product should be released. If that was their duty, they failed on this launch and should be punished accordingly. I mean, why keep the person that screwed everyone and fire the people that actually did their job as told?
Posted: Sep 4th 2010 3:09PM Xevn said
@Otimus
Actually Stardock is a privately owned business. Meaning all that debt mentioned in the article Brad is directly responsible for. So when Elemental doesn't make back its development costs for those employee salaries paid over the past 2 years, the rest comes out of his own pocket. Now if Stardock was publicly traded that wouldn't be true. The company could go bankrupt without forcing him to also go bankrupt.
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Actually Stardock is a privately owned business. Meaning all that debt mentioned in the article Brad is directly responsible for. So when Elemental doesn't make back its development costs for those employee salaries paid over the past 2 years, the rest comes out of his own pocket. Now if Stardock was publicly traded that wouldn't be true. The company could go bankrupt without forcing him to also go bankrupt.
Posted: Sep 4th 2010 8:59PM 2late2die said
@Otimus
Seems to me that seeing poor reception for a product you loved, watching your company bleed money (which as pointed out above comes directly from Brad's pocket), and having to fire people with whom you worked for months if not years, and given the small size of the company, may very well have become friends, is not a small amount of suffering.
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Seems to me that seeing poor reception for a product you loved, watching your company bleed money (which as pointed out above comes directly from Brad's pocket), and having to fire people with whom you worked for months if not years, and given the small size of the company, may very well have become friends, is not a small amount of suffering.
Posted: Sep 4th 2010 3:36PM WC said
Oh perhaps the plan was always to finish the game, then lay off everyone not needed to continue fixing and improving it. It's not uncommon for that to be the case.
The source claims that Wardell lied about it not being rushed for money, but there's absolutely no proof that he lied about that.
The source could even be one of the bitter, laid-off developers. We don't know.
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The source claims that Wardell lied about it not being rushed for money, but there's absolutely no proof that he lied about that.
The source could even be one of the bitter, laid-off developers. We don't know.
Posted: Sep 4th 2010 3:40PM Cypher FDP said
I bought this game, learned that there was a bug or something that reduced framerate to 20 fps over cities, then realized I wasted my money.
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Posted: Sep 4th 2010 5:01PM GreenReaper said
@Cypher FDP : Did you try grabbing the latest update, 1.07? There were a lot of improvements to the graphical subsystem, and they significantly increased framerates when things got busy.
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Posted: Sep 4th 2010 6:57PM wcarnation said
This game had a lot of promise, but was so rough off the printing press. It's story gets more depressing each day.
Elemental: War of Magic should get the Depressing Game of the Year award.
The little train that could, but tried and didn't. Now he's being disassembled and sent to Russia.
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Elemental: War of Magic should get the Depressing Game of the Year award.
The little train that could, but tried and didn't. Now he's being disassembled and sent to Russia.
Posted: Sep 4th 2010 6:59PM wcarnation said
Also, I'd just like to say it's kinda weird how reactionary a lot of the press and gamers are. Stardock has always always received heaps of praise for everything they've done, then they make one mistake and everyone acts like the entire company should be put out of business and every copy of the game destroyed.
Granted a lot of it is on them, but really? I think we've gotten to a pretty extreme point of self entitlement sometimes.
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Granted a lot of it is on them, but really? I think we've gotten to a pretty extreme point of self entitlement sometimes.
Posted: Sep 4th 2010 9:35PM darkinchworm said
@wcarnation Were you around for the Demigod launch? It was very similar, although with a bit less drama surrounding it.
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Posted: Sep 4th 2010 9:38PM darkinchworm said
I don't know why this didn't cross my mind when I commented, but to be fair, Stardock only published Demigod and didn't have a hand in developing it. I would've thought they'd learn from that, but surely this time hits close enough to home.
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Posted: Sep 4th 2010 7:59PM Draugdraugr said
This guy is way confused. As a PC developer, when profits aren't looking right, he should be complaining about how everyone stole their game and not how they didn't deliver a good product. FOR SHAME!
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Posted: Sep 4th 2010 10:42PM BIGMercenary said
I've never seen a single bit of marketing from this game and the only time I've seen it was in stores. I took a look at the box and couldn't decide whether it was RPG, RTS, or city-building. The screens on the back of the box might as well be stick art. I put it back and got Plants vs Zombies instead.
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Posted: Sep 4th 2010 11:50PM Cap Morgan said
It's looked down upon to pirate at Stardock game because the don't use DRM.
I fully plan on picking up this game in a few weeks bad press or no. Ultimately it's fun, they support their games with patches so I'm not worried
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I fully plan on picking up this game in a few weeks bad press or no. Ultimately it's fun, they support their games with patches so I'm not worried
Posted: Sep 5th 2010 3:25AM Crayola Q Pants ESQ said
Sucks to see a company with so much goodwill (I'm ignoring any Demigod stuff, since I've only really heard of its issues since this fiasco appeared) fall south so rapidly. Especially that something like this could seriously top them producing games for a long while, given the size of their company in the first place.
Wardell's candidosity (is that even a real word?) is fresh to hear, but yeah... doesn't exactly save the game. I'd love to pick it up when it's all fixed, but who knows when that'll be and if anyone even remembers it by that stage.
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Wardell's candidosity (is that even a real word?) is fresh to hear, but yeah... doesn't exactly save the game. I'd love to pick it up when it's all fixed, but who knows when that'll be and if anyone even remembers it by that stage.
Posted: Sep 5th 2010 5:39PM Lucas Fenix said
I supported this through the beta and there was crashing, it released with crashing and I felt quite let down. I have alot of faith in Stardock as they've never let bugs go unfixed, I downloaded a patch yesterday and all my issues are now fixed, I could now alt-tab out of the game without it crashing and I played for quite a long time without a memory leak.
In my opinion, putting the game back a few weeks and dealing with this issue would have led to stronger sales numbers as every review seemed to slate it for errors. It seems now that it's finally fixed it's probably too late to salvage such a mishandled launch.
Get the next Gal Civ out and get your revenue back up, every company's gotta take a hit at some point.
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In my opinion, putting the game back a few weeks and dealing with this issue would have led to stronger sales numbers as every review seemed to slate it for errors. It seems now that it's finally fixed it's probably too late to salvage such a mishandled launch.
Get the next Gal Civ out and get your revenue back up, every company's gotta take a hit at some point.
Posted: Sep 8th 2010 2:46AM Its X with Guns said
Well, yeah, it should have been an open beta, not closed to anyone that hadn't preordered.
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