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Comment by flohofwoe | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like a good decision by the team tbh. Blurring the lines by 'integrating' functioning teams into a bigger entity which does completely unrelated things (TV, film and theater) never goes well. The team will most likely found their independent 'spin-off' company as they had planned already, no talent or knowledge is lost, only risk is financing for new projects.

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It seems like all their other IP is derived from the game IPs, so I'm a little confused how this leaves Annapurna in a better position.

It doesn't. It's the people who actually did all the work who are benefiting, not the corporate entity. The coordinated mass resignations make it obvious that the former management is ready to immediately start up their own company in the office next door and hire on everyone who just quit Annapurna.

Dr Dr

Ah yes you're correct, I misread the above comment.

And that's why you don't sign non-competes and they should be illegal to protect those with no leverage.

Clearly not accurate, they've produced quite a few famous and acclaimed films based on original ideas, Philip K Dick novels & real life events.

Ah, my bad.

Not the parent company, but the game team that resigned is in a better position. They can continue focus on building games, instead of being 'integrated' with the TV, film and theater people (I bet most of that 'integration' is about 'outsourcing' CGI work to the 3D artists in the game team - e.g. a distraction from making games).

You're not quite there. Annapurna does not make games, it publishes them. There's no significant number of 3D artist working there. Even on the movie side, they don't directly make the movies.

They do (did?) have an in-house team working on a Blade Runner game, I haven't seen any mention in news coverage if that team is out as well

https://annapurnainteractive.com/en/games/blade-runner-2033-...

From that page:

> From Annapurna Interactive, ...

Sounds like it's the same group. I doubt they're leaving with the IP but I also doubt that Annapurna Productions is going to make a game with it.

in particular, media mergers have a long history of going south pretty quickly because company culture is so fundamental to media production.

AOL+Time Warner is up there in the history of worst mergers.

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