Not only the crappy decisions are to blame. I worked for Siemens... and it's always full with crappy decisions.. but fortunately the real workers never let it go down.. always managed to keep stuff at the top.
I could tell you some stuff about the Nokia Siemens merger.. but I don't feel like getting sued..
Uh ... those three guys actually left NCSoft quite a while before the current layoffs. Adam Martin in July 2008, Matthew Weigel and Scott Jennings in August 2008 (they both worked on Dungeon Runners). They obviously have strong ties to the company and the people inside, and thus I think it's interesting to see their viewpoint on the whole issue.
First
most layoffs at this level are not the fault of the workers. If they, like most of us, are there, doing their jobs then it has nothing to do with them.
What really sucks here is NcSoft has a mature user base in both Korea and US. They had the head start and they had the ideas, but they didn't understand some of the fundimental differences between the markets. That, and trusting British to turn out something spectaliar turned out to be a hugh mistake.
Now, with them falling further and further behind, NcSoft is really going to be hard put to keep Lin2 alive, look at a serious Lin3 product and more importantly, increase the GMs and customer support needed when we, the users, have other options for our time and money than we did 5 years ago.
It is sad to see Lin2 is not considered a core concern by the company. It is also sad to see some of the bed they lay in is of their own or Korea's making with the source code in the wild, private servers everywhat and the rumor that some of these helper programs came from the development phase of these game by NcSoft themselves.
Nope, I just feel sorry for the people and the workers now. They have no control over this and now, durning these awful times, are looking for jobs...
Best wishes to them all and I hope they find good jobs each and everyone.
At least with Lineage 2, I blame it all on directives from the Korean overseers that have dictated that 95% of bots are not to be banned.
Oh wow... That's a pretty big statement right there. You have the proof/weight to punch that high? ;) Don't doubt you as it's not entirely far-fetched at all, but confirmation will surely have repurcussions for a lot of people...
Remember that Lineage II team already had a restructuration (Alyra anyone?). The article is talking about the finalization of that restructuration. Logically, it shouldn't touch L2 anymore.
It's hard to believe that l2 is not core product anymore... But on the other hand l2 requires constant updates in order to keep current player base which is shrinking. It's a shame developers fails to see their mistakes and do not listen community feedbacks.
Oh wow... That's a pretty big statement right there. You have the proof/weight to punch that high? ;) Don't doubt you as it's not entirely far-fetched at all, but confirmation will surely have repurcussions for a lot of people...
The entire games industry, not just NCSoft, is in "layoff mode". Pretty strange for an industry that had 18% year-on-year growth...
Most of the big companies, even with comfortable benefits, use the crisis as an excuse to fire people. However Ubisoft is openly doing the contrary, showing the industry is still expending and isn't much affected by the crisis, so they hire.
But when you see the production units EA is closing (best games of their catalogue), they are pushing themselves into the crisis.