Embracer Group Cancels 'Deus Ex' Video Game, Lays Off Workers | Hacker News Reader

Embracer Group Cancels 'Deus Ex' Video Game, Lays Off Workers

bloomberg.com

37 pointspavel_lishin24 comments

Hope this isn't to give up on the franchise because if they can't make Deus Ex work, they are absolutely incompetent. I wouldn't be surprised, lots of AAA companies giving up on legendary IPs, thinking that they need some new parasitic business model like microtransactions, yet there are so many great indie games proving the contrary.

> I wouldn't be surprised, lots of AAA companies giving up on legendary IPs, thinking that they need some new parasitic business model like micro transactions.

This is what I’m seeing a lot of, along with the general creative bankruptcy you see from established media in general. Luckily, there’s a lot of interesting looking games from smaller studios and indies as you mention, even in genres that are typically dominated by big players. Hell if I had the ability, I’d have half the mind to start working on my own stuff.

> if they can't make Deus Ex work, they are absolutely incompetent.

The previous games set a pretty high bar, though, didn't they? It's not like they're making Farming Clicker 3000.

Some of them set a pretty high bar, mostly the OG and Mankind Divided as well

Sure, but we're talking about one of the most influential franchises of all time. If done right I'm sure it could break records. We're in the perfect time for the subject matter it deals with.

Cyberpunk 2077 proves there is a market, and they screwed that up initially (now it's great, but it still lacks the substance that Deus Ex has).

2077 is as deep as the modern deus ex games IMO. they could both learn from each other

Yes, it definitely has amazing detail in its design and world building. The moral subject matters it deals with though, seem to be more superficial compared to Deus Ex, in my opinion. You have similar themes, but with different impact on the player. 2077 is almost normalizing the tech and making you think it's mundane, ordinary, and something you get used to as you play through it, while Deus Ex made it part of the moral dilemma, keeping the player thinking about what it means to be human.

Cyberpunk did more of that through it's exploration of netrunning and AIs rather than augments I felt, like you said it did a good job of making augmentation an almost mundane part of the world. It also focused a lot more on the plight of individuals as they were getting squashed between the tech and the corporate political machine. Deus Ex focused much more on bigger world scale conspiracies, and the player character was quite emotionally disconnected from it all.

Both truly excellent stories, and the DLC Phantom Liberty did focus on some big concept conspiracies external to the player and felt a bit more like a plot in Deus Ex.

Yes, I agree on that one, 2077 focused more on the individual's perspective. The world seems to be overflowing with conspiracy theories in the past 5+ years though, I feel like Deus Ex has so much to work with.

Deus Ex is about sci-fi tropes, 2077 is about late 1980ies/early 1990ies nostalgia, just dressed up a little as 1980ies/90ies sci-fi. Corporate Japan on the rise, peak MTV rock stars so full of themselves they are hardly able to live. Edgy cars with huge combustion engines, cockpit electronic looks created by people who must have spent many hours studying the elaborate display designs of the modular hi-fi stacks of that era to get that look so right. All those veteran stories in the background, similar ones had been a Hollywood focus point until well into the 1990ies from Vietnam. The most amazing part about the 2077 retrofuturism is its secrecy, because they clearly shared the agenda internally (cockpit designs! But also many other things), but apparently took extreme care to never mention any of that in PR material.

Deus Ex is story, 2077 is ambience. Both games do very different things as their centrepiece, even if they both aren't too bad at their also-ran complement: ambience in Deus Ex, a bit aimless but they did find their style in the main Eidos iterations, story in 2077 which just happens to work well despite perhaps some of the supposed highlights not being the most memorable parts.

What are some top indie games you would recommend?

My top rec would be Factorio if you like sandbox building games (almost RTS, but not quite). Talos Principle 2 is the best puzzle game I've played (might not be indie, but I don't think it's a large studio). Last Epoch is a solid ARPG like Diablo, but more old-school in how it plays and feels. Outer Wilds is also an amazing exploration, narrative-driven game.

Talos Principle 2 was a masterpiece. The concepts explored in the story were really interesting to boot, I also did not anticipate it to be so stunning visually.

Cruelty Squad

Signalis

Post Void

Ultrakill

Omori

Everything from David Szymanski

Looking at the insane success of PalWorld - single player narrative driven games after the dubious success of Starfield is going to be hard to justify to investors and years it takes.

Rockstar and MS(Bethesda), Sony (Naughty Dog/Guerrilla Games) and the J-RPG companies might be the only ones left standing.

Activision will be around - no more COD single player and it will be an annual season release just in time for Xmas full of map upgrades and other micro transactions.

> single player narrative driven games after the dubious success of Starfield is going to be hard to justify

The best selling game of 2023 was Hogwarts Legacy.

Tears of the Kingdom and Spiderman 2 also did very well. Starfield was more of a "this game is not very good" thing than a "single player games are doomed" thing

I think that still remains to be seen. Elden Ring did well (granted it mas multiplayer but it's not the main experience), Resident Evil games still do well, in the West there is Alan Wake 2, Senua's Sacrifice, and the others you already mentioned which include God of War, Tomb Raider, etc.

The question here is can Deus Ex compete with these titles, and it absolutely can depending on the execution of it. The brand is definitely there, and it really feels like they're underestimating it.

It seems that their plan was never to develop any actual games, but to sell their corp to saudis. I have zero hope for any of their franchises. Maybe after they will go bankrupt and then sell IPs again. And even then it could be some EA with GAAS plan.

Games companies seem to struggle to branch out. Like all the employees are put on one game at a time which takes longer to make than ever before. You can't polish a turd - why isn't putting all your eggs in one basket considered a risk? Why aren't these valuable IPs being exercised while we still remember what they are?

I don't buy that it suddenly takes 5 times longer to make a game. Voice acting and mocap FMVs are self-inflicted wounds. There are some genres like 'imsims' and metroidvanias which are so strongly defined by a few beleaguered series that talented indie devs have picked up the slack. Their great challenge is not making a good game, it's making the game be seen. Make a game with a similar team size but using an IP people remember fondly and you've got a hit. At worst, you've wasted a fraction of the budget Rockstar are spending on bespoke concrete textures.

Sad news, I was really looking forward to at least a fitting conclusion to the Adam Jensen prequel arc.

Square Enix shouldn't have sold Deus Ex IP.

No, I was glad that Deus Ex finally got out from under squeenix's thumb, and given their pivot to NFTs about a year after that bubble popped I'm even more glad. But apparently Embracer was one of the only worse companies to go to

Acquire, Embracer, Extinguish.

This company recently laid off, I think it was 40% of the people, from its Riot Games as well.

Nintendo made a statement maybe not directly about embracer but that they choose to not do layoffs for short-term profitability but instead they are simply frugal. Because they don't want to make their employees be afraid of layoffs. Embracer has not made a similar statement.

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