Slashdot Mirror
2K, Australia's Last AAA Studio, Closes Its Doors
beaverdownunder writes 2K Australia, the Canberra studio that most recently developed Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, is closing its doors. The entire studio is closing, and all staff members will lose their jobs. "All hands are gone," said a source for Kotaku Australia. 2K Canberra was the last major AAA-style studio operating out of Australia. The costs of operating in Australia are apparently to blame for the decision. This raises questions as to the viability of developing major video games in Australia.
Australia has corporate tax rates that are in general lower than those in, say, the United States. The US has lower tax rates for corporations with income less than $100,000, but I would very much assume that this studio made more than that. Regulations for this sort of industry are essentially the same around the world as well.
The cost of doing business in Australia is negatively impacted because of major time zone differences from other English-speaking nations, and the significantly higher costs of transportation to/from and telecommunications with what is really a very geographically isolated nation.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Steam Greenlight in the worst thing that's happened to gaming in years. I remember when games on Steam ranged from excellent titles to just plain terrible crap that publishers shat out. I thought it couldn't get worse.
Holy crap was I ever wrong! The shit that manages to get Greenlit is just amazing. Stupid visual novels, games that were created via "Make a Game" type programs, literal "choose your own adventure" novels done as an "HTML program", just absolutely terrible shit that previously publishers would filter out that now managed to get Greenlit because apparently no one has any sort of standards.
Steam is now absolutely useless for finding games. What used to be a great way to find good games has turned into the equivalent of a mobile app store: a whole lot of shit to the point you give up looking for gems.
Then again, I think 2K's problem is that they keep rehashing the same game. I remember playing through Borderlands, but I got bored of Borderlands 2 half way through and therefore didn't bother with the Pre-Sequel and couldn't care less about whatever new Borderlands crap they're churning out.
So even if you are right (and I think there's truth to what you're saying) I think 2K's problems lie mostly with themselves.
If you like DF, you should check out Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, if you haven't already. Set after a zombie apocalypse, it is somewhat like adventure and fortress modes combined.
Meh, most AAA publishers and studios stayed as far away from that whole shitstorm as they possibly could; it was a hysterical debate (out of which nobody on either side came out well) that came out of the indie gaming scene and mostly stayed in the indie gaming scene.
I doubt most people who buy and play games even noticed it. And I doubt a single AAA publisher changed their strategy as a result of it. It got a lot of blogs and gaming news sites very upset, generated a handful of fairly well-buried articles in the mainstream press and then the world moved on.
But most people involved on both sides were full-blown narcissists, so they didn't really see things that way.
What a load of shit. I get 210k (been working in Canberra for last 20 years), contractors all around me are on between 120-200k. $70k is below the average salary for a resident of Canberra let alone a professional and devs are most definitely not the lowest paid professions in Canberra.