PopCap Update
blog.popcap.com
blog.popcap.com
Solitaire Blitz on Facebook is strong evidence that this freakishly talented game shop remains freakishly talented and capable of applying unprecedented levels of polish to their titles, even the 'Freemium' ones.
Between news like this, Zynga's share-price plummet, and the general "tech bubble" sentiment out there, the social gaming world is in for some serious turbulence. Consider this the bellwether.
Layoffs are a shame and suck for everyone involved, but it's not always an indication that the business is failing, but rather that the business is settling in.
If Kodak had laid off three-quarters of its film staff and hired like crazy to get into the digital business back before digital cameras were a hit, they would have been crucified by the city of Rochester and in the court of public opinion. In hindsight, though, it would have been a smart decision and one that could have saved the company.
If your people can't adapt to the market, you need to change your people. It's an unfortunate reality, and it sucks for all involved, but good businesses make hard decisions like this. I hope things work out for PopCap, and my heart goes out to those laid off--life is about to really suck for them.
Then again, I don't think anyone who followed this space closely didn't see this coming. The industry is maturing. If it frees up some developers to do (in my opinion) better work, that's a "good thing".
There has to be a way to weed out the mediocre. Some companies choose to do it in this manner.
Some companies choose this path to reduce employee cost by sorting the salary sheet by salary descending and chopping off the top.
From the standpoint of the core gaming demographic, the free to play browser based gaming space looks wide open (see Riot Games/League of Legends, Kixeye, wargaming.net, bigpoint).
I wonder if this is really a “change in consumer tastes” or it’s just that it’s much more lucrative than the previous, $2–3 per app model due to universal human behaviour.
I mean, I never would have had a clue that they were making cut-backs if they didn't publicly announce it.
Are they in trouble? Are they going out of business? Should I be reading between the lines?
The state of gaming has changed, and it's easier than heck to get your hands on a fun casual game now-days, so I can see why having 50+ people with multiple offices working as a casual game creating force may not be the greatest plan moving forward, but couldn't this have all been a pretty silent process?
I've always been fearful of openness with business methods and actions, yet I've adopted a lot of practices in my own business because others HAVE been so open. But things like this... a blog saying people are getting canned, well, it just feels "icky" to me. Kind-of pointless almost.
Enlighten me.
What was the point of this blog post?
How does a company benefit from telling the world they are cleaning house?
Who asked? Who are they afraid of? ... Is this because they fear the press would catch wind and report speculation?
It's better to preemptively openly talk about it on your terms as opposed to either Kotaku, Gamasutra, or even Techmeme telling their version first, which may or may not be extremely exaggerated and off-base. Rumors will spread given time.
Part of it is that you hire people that are crap and it's easier to do this than fire them. Part of it is that you've hired people that are good but no longer need and it's easier to do this than pay redundancy.
Again, I don't know what their situation is but you hear about this every six months or so in the industry.
Are there any PopCap employees here?
I can tell you how to improve your profitability in Europe: Try to sell your games there!
Popcap first announched that they would release some of their titles for Android in April 2009. When I asked them about what happended to this release in July 2009, they responded quickly and told me that "Peggle and Bejeweled Twist shouldn't be too far away".
In 2011, they actually released three of their games on Android: Bejeweled, Peggle and Plants vs Zombies. But get this: They did not release those games in Europe!
This is not an issue with content rights: All these games are available worldwide for Windows. There was no reason to restrict the games to any region. And they kept it this way until about a month or so.
In addition to this mess, the games were all really poor ports. Popcap also whitelisted only a very few handsets that the games would run on.
This makes me angry: Not offering anything for sale, and then complaining that your not selling anything.
http://blog.bookworm.at/2009/07/popcap-is-still-working-on-a...
Would be nice if the article actually defined head count. Is it just full-time employees in Seattle? What about part-time employees and employees in Dublin? If the artwork for a game is completed by a team on contract in Bangalore is the "head count" temporarily increased to include those workers? What if they're only part-time? What if they outsource the work to an even cheaper local service provider?
My point is "head count" is vaguely defined if at all. I think this all boils down to "we can do the work for less money with other people or less people."
"Yesterday we announced the much-anticipated sequel to Plants vs. Zombies. That’s very exciting. A lot of people have been asking about it. The game will come to fruition in the spring of 2013."