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Comment by johnnyanmac | Hacker News Reader

>Double Fine (one of the studios being chopped) has released 2 games since 2021, Keeper (191 peak player count on steam) and Kiln (163 peak players); these would be flops even for a normal indie game, for a studio getting Microsoft salaries those are enormous flops.

Hard to really say. Kiln and Keeper can easily be made up for by the sales of Psychonauts 2. I'm sure an indie Double Fine would not have been able to make those kinds of games.

This takes me back to Pertinent, another small game from a reputable studio, had its main writer saying that "this kind of game would not be possible without Gamepass". Which I 100% believe. Microsoft definitely didn't buy Double Fine trying to make the next Fortnite, but that arthouse strategy clearly isn't a factor these days.

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DF basically got paid to goof off an a very expensive city. MS basically bankrolled their hangout and chill lifestyle. Day to day was basically them having mildly interesting discussions about their personal lives and easily solvable creative/ technical stuff that went round and round.

Double Fine has been an indie studio for longer than Xbox has been invested in games. And as far as I know they've been situated on San Francisco for that entire time. They didn't just bumble into a trillionaire company and lounge on the job security.

Those kinds of statements show a misunderstanding of both the studio and how the games industry works. Any one of those engineers could have gotten into a FAANG the traditional way and doubled, if not tripled, their salary on arguably less involved problems than what they go through creating a real time game.

Its also likely why Schafer chose to take the studio back rather than go the route of finding a new publisher to work under. He still wants to work on games for a little longer rather than get a last paycheck and retire early.

Psychonauts 2 was funded we-got-kickstarter-at-home and already well into development before MS acquired DF. If anything this exemplifies that DF did not function under MS if they couldn't replicate that post-acquisition.

Ehh, Microsoft still got to reap the profits of it.

And yes, no one expects a brand new IP to have the same odds of success as a old IP that's become a cult classic. DF's strategy and directions were not to make the most profitable, safe release because that's not why you buy a studio like DF.

did you mean Pentiment, led by Josh Sawyer at Obsidian?

Yes, apologies for the misspelling. Very likely another game that wouldn't "succeed" in a traditional release, but would potentially get people into a subscription service.

Despite that loss leading strategy, Obsidian has had quite a few other releases that did to make up for that side project. So the studio would overall be in the green despite that.

I loved Pentiment, but it was soooo much reading.

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