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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.
I blame Pickle. I friggin hate that guy.
When you censor out so much potential subject material for use in a game, you think you're going to have as viable of a market base?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I just prepaid for Kangaroo Hero 5!?!? Now what am I going to do?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
WTF is AAA?
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...
We need new blood in this stale gaming industry to grace us with new games other than Call of Battlefield Raider Evil Kombat: Special Edition 9846545 (2015 Gold Premium Collector's Edition GOTY re-release).
I hardly ever go for AAA titles anymore. I'd much rather spend $20 or less on an indy title. If it turns out to be shit, I'm not out that much and my hit-to-miss ratio tends to be a whole lot better. I've gotten some remarkably good games that way. I think I've still put more time into Dwarf Fortress than the rest of my steam library combined. It has simple, nethack-style ASCII graphics and tends to bog down two or three years into one of the gigantic fortresses I like to dig out, but it's sill a ridiculous amount of fun.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is a real shame for those laid off, not least because there are so few other employers in that sector in Australia.
But it's not unexpected. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (BL:TPS) was a commercial flop. Borderlands 2 has done around 10 million sales across all platforms. Prior to the release of the heavily discounted "Handsome Collection" for PS4 and Xbox-One, BL:TPS hadn't even managed a million.
That's partly because the game wasn't as good as Borderlands 2. Reviews and word of mouth were both pretty harsh on it. I've completed it twice. It actually has some decent (if unoriginal) content, but the first 6 hours or so are a miserable trudge.
But it's also because 2k made a big gamble on the PS4 and Xbox-One being commercial failures, and hence the game launched on PS3, 360 and PC. Their gamble was wrong; both of those consoles managed strong sales. Worse, the early-adopters had a huge overlap with "people who buy a lot of games". While the installed base for the PS3 and 360 remains huge, sales for them have largely dried up, outside of Call of Duty and FIFA.
Console transitions are scary for publishers. 2k's bet wasn't entirely unreasonable. The 3DS had a difficult launch, while the Vita and Wii-U basically flopped. The industry saw Ubisoft invest heavily in the Wii-U launch and get burned by it. But of all the major houses, 2k bet most heavily against the PS4 and Xbox-One and their first major release after those consoles launched paid the price.
It was clear that 2k had largely given up on the game. While Borderlands 2 was supported for years post-launch with well-crafted and extensive DLC, BL:TPS was funded to deliver precisely enough DLC to satisfy the contractual requirements of the Season Pass; not an ounce more. Its inclusion so soon after launch in a cut-price compilation was another sure sign that 2k were in damage-limitation mode.
"costs of operating in Australia"...apparently they get more gov't handouts elsewhere. Except perhaps in Rhode Island (thanks for screwing up that source of funds, Curt).
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
2K Games is the publisher of Borderlands while the developer is Gearbox Software, which is based in Texas, US.
2K has several studios all over, the one from the article was 2K Australia.
It's like Kokatu, but it's region-locked, censored and only available six months after the real Kokatu. Plus it costs twice as much.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Judging by the bulk of games on steam, iTunes and the android play store, there must be a massive market for low quality unimaginative copycat games that take at most 2 or 3 weeks to hack together. its seems its just more evidence that you can never understimate the level of quality that many consumers will accept and pay for.
Consequently 'm wondering if real reason for 2k closing is that the whole model of fronting tens of millions to develop a AAA game is just no longer as viable/profitable as just chucking a few grand at a cheap coder to churn out yet another crap copycat mobile app that you can sell online in volume for $20+ a shot, especially if you also put some money into marketing it.
How exactly do H1B workers (a type of USA visa) affect the job situation in Australia? And in a particular sub-industry not even known for hiring H1B workers?
2K Games is the publisher of Borderlands while the developer is Gearbox Software, which is based in Texas, US.
That's not entirely true. Gearbox developed Borderlands and Borderlands 2 and 2K Games published both. Borderlands the Pre-sequel was developed by 2K Australia "with assistance from Gearbox".
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.
It's relatively common knowledge for those in or interested in the gaming industry. It means very expensive, very large games with a large staff and long development time. These games are usually produced by a smaller company, and published by a major distributor. A counter to AAA titles would be "indie" games, which usually means that they're both produced and published by the same people, or at least that the producing company is not under contract for publishing.
The top-selling game this week in Australia is GTA V. Just because you can't buy it in K-Mart doesn't mean it's not available.
Who even buys games at K-Mart?
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
The thing is, BL2 was beautifully written. So much was gotten right at the story level in BL2 that the sequel was fine as a stand alone game, but not nearly as good.
Let me give an example: the hub of the story takes place at Sanctuary. It's where you get instructions from some of the major NPCs and get upgrades. However, you aren't there until the first quarter of the game and when you do, you approach its high walls on foot and have a job defending them. A few chapters later, you're pitched out of Sanctuary and can't get back there.
For a while at least. You can see it, it's always present but off in the distance but it's 'you can't they there from here'. Later, after (no spoilers) changes involving two major characters, the terrain changes and colour scheme becomes really dark.
In contrast, the Presquel's story hub literally has no purpose in the plot. Sure you can buy gear there like at Sanctuary but you have no emotional investment in Concordia, and you don't even know what it looks like from the outside. Finally, there's zero, nada, third act twist. As the game takes place before BL2 we know the NPCs will fall out with Jack. Okay, but the 'reason' when it happened not only idiotic, but had no story function. Jack murders someone who gives gives him excellent advice about reducing the risk of being betrayed. Okay, no only does that make no sense but there are multiple prison cells on that very map!
Moreover, Tassiter had no story. If the story had been that Tassiter alerts the vault hunters about what's happening to Angel, and Jack's wife is killed in the rescue while trying to get Angel to New Haven (destroyed for unknown reason after BL1) then you'd have a story.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Fair enough, never played the Pre-sequel and just assumed. And that's always a bad idea :)
Since the executives will continue to demand the same money and the investors the same ROI, the costs of being in Australia won't make a single damn difference to the profitability of making games elsewhere.
This is merely a demand to get tax cuts for the companies and the executives, and wage depression for the workers.
For 2k, the biggest problem was the asshats mismanaging the company, not the cost of the workers. Mismanagement who will get a job at another company as soon as their parachute deploys.
Why should they? Between making sure your dog doesn't get killed by a hissing giant spider and trying to convince your crazy daughter that boa constrictors aren't 'cute', you're practically on the edge 24/7.
The article doesn't contain any evidence that the cost of operating in Australia was a significant part of the problem, but it does contain evidence that the management pissed off a significant part of the company's talent.
When you censor out so much potential subject material for use in a game, you think you're going to have as viable of a market base?
Well, Harry Potter is really GTA4 cleaned up and put into a book.
Aside for those directly involved, it is a sad day only for the aussie economy to an order of a rather insignificant magnitude. Otherwise...meh.
I have always found the bending over forwards governments do for the movie/game industry when they would rather eat hot coals than do it for anyone else due to their ideology. In NZ they *changed employment law* a few years ago (AFAIK an unprecedented move) to avoid "losing" the hobbit filming and they were already giving massive tax breaks. (and that was a right wing government)
If that were a sound idea then why not do it for more industries? But they tend not to.
No prizes for guessing why the movies are different. Games, not too sure about that one.
Isn't that just irrational.
The Australian video game industry has always been a bit boom or bust. We had some great stuff going on in the late 90s and some great titles coming out, then a bit of a downturn during the dotcom bubble burst.
But when that happened, one USD started buying two AUD, and a lot of US companies started setting up studios in Australia. They had a few good years, taking advantage of the cheap cost of labour thanks to both leveraging the exchange rate and the enthusiastic and excellent Australian staff, but once the AUD starting doing well the benefits started fading. Studios shut up shop and vanished with barely any notice.
There's a lot of awesome Australian talent scattered over the globe now; most of the people I know who were serious about the industry decided that if they wanted to make a reliable career out of it they needed to head stateside.
Now the AUD is waning again it's possible we'll see some more American dollars going into it, but it's easier than ever for US companies to bring Australians to the US, so I suspect that's more likely.
Salaries in Australia are relatively high compared to the rest of the world, especially Canberra. Even bad devs here can happily take home 100k+, good devs more than double that. It has a serious impact on the cost of developing anything here.
They are higher but don't be absurd. The low end of the salary range for a developer is around the $70k mark. ($65k for a JAVA developer). The high end is around $125k. The most well paid developer I know gets around $135k, is near retirement, and is a guru that would make neckbeards go weak at the knees. The most well paid IT professional I know gets around $170k and is the CIO for a company with 380 employees.
The people I know is anecdotal. The salary ranges were from the AITP 2014 review.
All dollars are Australian Dollars. Multiply by 0.8 to get US Dollars.
2k Australia did both. Their games were funny, thoughtful, and really enjoyable despite their big budget.
How to piss off an Aussie
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This was the studio that brought us Bioshock: Infinite. I still remember that game blowing my mind which was a pleasant change from the general crap that had been released in the past few years.
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.
Your information is just plain WRONG. the average salary for Canberra residents is 85k, IT workers are generally above average. Even a lowly public servant developer will be getting more than the low end salaries you listed and they are the worst paid. $170k for a CIO? WTF, contractors, high end devs and It consultants easily make more than that, I get 185k and I am only a mid level senior dev.
And for Americans we have dumber and dumber.
We're a country which still bans games (hotline miami 2 was recently banned). The games industry here never became anything large anyway, and we're way too far away from the game hubs. All that ends up happening here is that we spend a lot of money on games, often times, paying well above what other regions do. The government couldn't care less about games or the industry (as long as we aren't playing games that are considered bad) as the age groups that play games, aren't big enough. We have a lot of baby boomers, and they're running the country.
Let me guess: public sector or o bliv sector cobtractor.
>We have a lot of baby boomers, and they're running the country.
Nope. Not even close.
They are ignorant and not very open to change and thus HELP vote in the people who ARE in charge.
But in charge themselves?
DIGGER, PUUULEASE!?
The same sort of wealthy, typically white haired old white men are in charge of your country just like all the other 1st world western countries.
To pretend that all "Baby Boomers" are somehow in charge is just laughable.
Where if it doesn't involve a shovel and a hole in the ground, we're not interested!
We have absolutely no future proofing of our economy or concept of sustainability. Everyone is 100% focused on digging up iron ore and *nothing else matters*. If the iron ore price tanks (and it has) - we just lay people off and dig more up!
Not to be the typical IT person who only focuses on IT but I've never understood our national refusal to consider the Internet as a viable business location - it's still viewed by politicians as kind of a toy for residentials only and a place where piracy happens. We have a completely stable country, politically and geographically. We don't get tornadoes. We don't get earthquakes. We don't get wars. We have huge tracks of unused land, that has ample sunlight, low temperatures and massive amounts of wind and tide (the entire southern coastline). We could have the best datacentres in the world - and anyone who thinks there's no money in the cloud isn't paying attention. But there's zero will to even consider it because it's not about digging up rocks and paying China to smash them up for us.
There's quite a few games you can't buy from Australia at all(i.e. refused classification). For my friends who live there, they usually paypal me the money and I fire them off either a code or gift it.
Om, nomnomnom...
They are higher but don't be absurd. The low end of the salary range for a developer is around the $70k mark. ($65k for a JAVA developer). The high end is around $125k. The most well paid developer I know gets around $135k, is near retirement, and is a guru that would make neckbeards go weak at the knees. The most well paid IT professional I know gets around $170k and is the CIO for a company with 380 employees.
The people I know is anecdotal. The salary ranges were from the AITP 2014 review.
All dollars are Australian Dollars. Multiply by 0.8 to get US Dollars.
someone is being aburd but it appears to be you. I don't know any dev in Canberra getting under a 100k and I would say most are above your so called 135k high water mark. I have a 2000 hour contract for the year at $110 an hour and I am by no means the best paid and that is just as a .NET dev. Even full time (non contractors are in the 100-150k range).
It's far cheaper to live in the rural areas on Canberra's doorstep, or the large town next door, than in that geographically tiny city.
I've got relatives that live half an hour out of Canberra in a medium sized "hobby" farm with about 20 head of stock and a few horses, and that cost less than they made from selling a modest three bedroom place in outer suburbia. House/land prices and rent drop off very rapidly with distance and the roads are not congested.
Deal with enough stuff and it doesn't matter where you are, somebody you want to communicate with is going to be in a different time zone.
It's far cheaper to live in the rural areas on Canberra's doorstep, or the large town next door, than in that geographically tiny city.
I've got relatives that live half an hour out of Canberra in a medium sized "hobby" farm with about 20 head of stock and a few horses, and that cost less than they made from selling a modest three bedroom place in outer suburbia. House/land prices and rent drop off very rapidly with distance and the roads are not congested.
What has that got to do with the topic? simple fact is the average salary in Canberra is approximately 85-90k. even public servant devs make more than that unless they are just a graduate or in the lowly APS ranks.
Your information is just plain WRONG
Not my information. The source is stated. Take it up with them.
And then come back and tell me where all these exciting $200k/y + jobs are at.
It's spelled "cockatoo". HTH!
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I have played it, it wasnt that good and even most reviews were meh about it so I dont think it made the money back
There is no way that a public sector developer can make anywhere near $210k. Contractor, perhaps. Employee, no chance.
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I spoke plural you spoke singular. They made more then one game. Yeah Borderlands Pre wasn't as good as Borderlands 2. Bioshock Infinite on the other hand was critically acclaimed and in one case even rated the best game of the generation of consoles at the time.
I must have got you while half asleep or something. It means the people who clean the buildings, work in the supermarkets etc reside in less fashionable areas nearby which pushes the average of "Canberra residents" up. It's also a very artificial salary environment by being effectively a "one company town", and like some mining companies in such a situation the employer is very generous (due to historical linking of MP and PS salary plus paying people enough to relocate from Sydney, Melbourne and those other parts of the country which most of the government holds in utter contempt).
I'm sure you already are very much aware of all this which is why I'm wondering why you are making me spell it out.
Indeed not. Top pay for a scientific/technical position in the Commonwealth public service is about $130K.
I thought that studio were involved with bioshock 2 and not so much with infinite
The tax breaks for the Hobbit filming (and earlier for Lord of the Rings) might have actually worked out for the NZ government because of the huge boon to tourism. But that's a really rare example of an area benefiting from the film industry. Usually they give out lots of tax money with little to show for it; at most you get a minor spike to visits that doesn't cover the expense.
You completely missed the most important and central part about them changing employment law then?
It's ripping money off babes in Toytown.