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Vivendi Games Lays Off 350, To Close Sierra Offices
An anonymous reader writes "Vivendi Universal Games has laid off 350 people and closed its Bellevue, Wa. office (formerly Sierra), according to a report on CNN/Money. In addition to the shuttering of Sierra, say goodbye to the Hoyle card games, which may not have been popular with hardcore gamers, but were beloved by mothers and other casual players." The article also notes: "The job cuts follow the May shutdown of a pair of longtime [Vivendi-owned] development studios... Papyrus Studios (makers of the company's 'NASCAR' games for years) and Impressions Games (makers of strategy titles, such as 'Zeus', 'Cleopatra' and 'Lords of the Realm III'.)", However: "Blizzard Entertainment, VU Games' top earning developer, was not affected by the restructuring."
Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. Those were the days. Sierra didnt really make anything worth anybody's attention the past few years tho, I guess it's understandable.
This is AWESOME! Now I get to compete with 350 MORE people for that ONE 25,000 yr entry level position!
Fucking a, alright!
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
They had better not have been affected. They're a cornerstore of the gaming world.
But then again, so was Sierra and look where that got them. I guess, in the end, the quality of game you make really doesn't make too much of a difference. I'm just glad they're finally laying the burnt-out shell that was Sierra to rest.
He must mean 25,000 rupees a year.
:P)
(Thats about $545US for all you curious types
As a longtime D2 fanatic, I must admit that when the subject for this article popped up on my nifty little Trillian RSS feed reader, I was feeling some trepidation.
Fortunately my concerns seem somewhat mollified. I gotta admit, I am one of those that still holds a grudge against Blizz for killing off (for the most part) BnetD.. Such a useful program, and one that is still used today by a few here and there to host servers to run some of the excellent mod options that are available for this game. OTOH, D2 remains a great game, one that some would argue revived the whole RPG genre, and I definately give blizz props for pioneering the first and still to this day pretty much only free service for playing online. I only wish more companies had followed thier lead, because no matter how much I yearn to play many of the available MMORPGs out there, I'll never commit myself to paying a monthly fee to play one.
-taosk8r
--
Evan "They may have stopped being who they were, but damn, they were good for a long time"
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
When Blizzard *does* go under and Battle.net service stops being offered, I'm sure that everyone will appreciate the presence of bnetd, despite Blizzard's attempts to squash it.
May we never see th
...opportunity. Vivendi seems dedicated to making no new games, but simply sequels and copycat games. The good part of this is that the market for new ideas is that much more open. I hope that some the poor souls in Bellevue can get together and make VU regret their decisions.
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
Ken Williams got out just in time!
Papyrus Studios and Impressions Games are both Boston-area studios... While their closures come amidst the opening (at least publically) of Tilted Mill and Turbine's major expansion push, you just can't help but feel that this developer's region is again being pinched out by the larger west-coast developers. When Looking Glass closed, it was a blow felt across the region, one that was delt not because Looking Glass was unworthy, but because the publisher felt the region was unworthy. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as every team out here benefits in some way or another from a lot of experienced Looking Glass people, but why was that studio closed? Why did one of the most successful game developers get canned? Why did no white knight show up?
This isn't such a clear-cut case of the expendability of your north-west studios. Papayrus has been frozen with Nascar for years, and losing that license meant losing their company. Impression games was stuck too, stuck making Caeser and other historical strategy games in a saturated market. I don't think the closure of either of these studios comes as a surprise to anybody. But one can't shake the feeling that we're in for another round of publisher abuse, looking at their North East studios as if they were expendable, despite having produced Asheron's Call, Karaoke Revolution, System Shock II, Empire Earth, Neverwinter Nights, Thief 1 and 2, The great Mind Rover, etc, etc.
The ______ Agenda
I thought their home base was always in Northern California?
Still... you gotta wonder... How can there be articles one month proclaiming how the video game industry takes in more money than Hollywood and is stealing viewers from TELEVISION, but yet everybody is "losing" money and firing people left and right.
Almost like the publishers are churning the staff so they don't have to pay real salaries and can keep hiring kids outta school at basement prices to work on the revitalization of Leisure Suit Larry...
I swore off Sierra games after far too many bad experiences.
I don't think I've ever bought one that actually worked without hundreds of mb of patch downloads.
To me the "Sierra" logo on a game box is a clear sign that it will give me hours of trouble just to get it to run. Then it'll probably crash part way through and lose my save file. Doesn't even seem to matter if they wrote it themselves or not.
And of course you can't return them because somehow computer software isn't covered by consumer guarantees type acts seemingly.
Give me Id or LucarArts any day. Those just work.
- MugginsM
Still, I doubt many young gamers realize the influence that Sierra had on the industry. These are the people who developed the very first graphical adventures when everyone else was just using text. They might have been one of the first to use motion capture to animate a game (King's Quest 5). They were innovative, and they created what are certainly some of the best computer games ever made. I realize the lack of flashy 3D graphics is a turn-off these days, but I played through the QFG series again about a year ago and loved it. No one else has done anything that rivals QFG and KQ5+6. The adventure genre has simply been dead for ten years.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Although you may have intended your comment as funny, I didn't read it as such. Vivendi is a publisher, not a development studio. If Vivendi went the way of the dodo, there would be tons of publishers looking to pick up Blizzard in the fallout. Although it's not good for stability, it probably would not be the end of Blizzard.
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
Yeah, its hard to believe that just 10 years ago, Sierra used to be one of the most powerful, and prolific companies in the computer game industry - they co-owned the adventure genre with LucasArts, and with the buyout of Dynamix they also had a lot of Sim and Sports titles also...
Ah... for the days of Al Lowe and Roberta Williams. When instead of Sim, every game seemed to have the word Quest in the title. sniff.
Vivendi has closed the doors on Sierra, but Sierra ran itself into the ground years ago. I'd like to see a company acquire the Sierra line and make Sierra adventure games again. It's obvious that Vivendi had no intentions of doing that sort of thing anyways. I hope they let someone else give it a go. Maybe we could eventually see Space Quest 7. I've always wondered how they would work that considering a Space Quest 7 was already established in Space Quest 4.