Flouride

No one is suggesting they should go fully to Kickstarter projects. But if InXile can raise 1 million in just 3 days, I'm pretty sure Obsidian would get double if not even triple that amount in a month. You can do a fairly good quality indie rpg with that money and if it's succesfull they get some income from sales when it's released. And this while still doing work for publishers. Also it's an opportunity do something of their own, and it will give them some cash flow while looking for the next two AAA projects.

I imagine South Park still employs about 40 to 50 people. That would leave about 40 to 50 people for other projects. Seeing how much money Wasteland 2 has gathered in such short time (even though InExile hasn't done any remarkable games) is good sign. Obsidian should be able to double the amount they have gathered for Wasteland 2 so far, that would give another 10 to 20 people something to do. I would personally give money to two Kickstarter games if that would mean the people will get to keep their jobs. Makes you wonder how good of a game they could come up with the over 2 million Double Fine got as funding... Or they might try to push South Park faster depending on the deal they have with Matt & Trey and THQ. THQ is bleeding money, so I'm sure they would gladly get the game out sooner than later. A lot is hanging in the balance though, they need another deal soon with South Park about to be released in Q3/Q4. Hopefully the deal they have on it isn't as bad for them as the one with Bethesda. And ffs, some publisher better pick up PNC (especially if it's that Defiance game).

M********f***********ng Microsoft. Now I got even more reasons to hate that damn company.

So, I guess I'll buy PS4 nextgen instead of Xbox18000

They did find success, but all it takes is one publisher deciding to cancel at a "right time". It's not like every damn publisher is waiting for Obs to make them a rpg. Takes time to get a deal done. Takes 1 phone call to cancel one.

Yes, they owned DA license, also they never found anyone to publish it before EA bought the company. Hence, it's pretty damn impossible to say how much power they had in the negotiations when it comes to DA prior to EA purchasing them. It's not that rare for MS to do deals that allow the developer to keep the license, when and if it involves the game only coming out to XBOX (for a certain period of time). Whether you agree or not, part of it is always luck/timing. You cannot compare a company founded in 90's and 2000 and something, because the business models and the market were different. Not to mention comparing a company that makes western rpgs to say companies that do shooters, is pointless. Completely different market when it comes to the games.Don't even bother mentioning whatever company is doing Witcher, since they are from Poland so their costs are way way lower than companies in California. Which already gives them a huge advantage over any "Western" companies. And I'm not saying BioWare (or other companies) didn't do things right, they certainly did. It's just that it's that much harder to make it these days when your average business deal doesn't involve you getting paid royalties over each copy of the game that is sold. And with the economy being pretty damn bad for what 4 years now? And to be honest, I don't think are that many success stories (in AAA) gaming companies these days, I mean new ones that have been established recently (5 years). Especially not if you compare how many go down in flames due to whatever reasons.

They did not technically get to keep the DA license, since they never found a publisher for it before EA bought them. I can't remember if EA bought the rights to ME from Microsoft, or if MS actually let BioWare keep the rights in the 1st place. Also back in the day publishers were more keen on paying actual royalties, not that much these days. BioWare were in great position with Interplay since they actually got paid royalties for their succesful games even though the company was pretty much unknown at that point. If BioWare was founded in 2005 things would be completely different, since that's not the business model publishers use. "Work for hire" method doesn't really let you raise the same kinda capital that you could with the royalties if you made a succesful game.

Seems like they had to release even their hiring manager Jim Rivers http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=4096614&authType=name&authToken=D3Ql&locale=en_US&pvs=pp&trk=ppro_viewmore

Aye, I bet most of them got really really drunk. Down to 114 now.

Since publishers have all the power in contract negotiations Obsidian didn't really make much profit with FNV, Bethesda did. All it takes is one publisher to screw them over and cancel a project midway through when they don't have a Plan B ready and waiting.

South Park in doubt? Kickstarter immediately. Shut up and take my money MCA & Feargus. Edit: Oh and WUE, I seriously hope your tipster names and shames the publisher.

GAF writers are pretty educated when it comes to gaming business, it's the masses of tards that write on some of other sites that I would worry about.

Indeed, but like always the publishers name won't be mentioned due to NDA's. So people like me can't boycott their ****** products unless they are dirt cheap on Steam.

This was Josh's project. Seriously what has Josh done to deserve this? This must be like the 4th or 5th major release of his that gets cancelled for some weird reason.

Nope, see how it lists Obsidian in the past section.

It's sad that dev takes the reputation hit, while the publisher remains anynomous even though it's publishers call to kill the project.

With Kickstarter I think some of the talented companies can get some capital of their own, so they don't have to rely on publishers. But even then getting the capital to make AAA quality projects will be damn hard if not even impossible. And everyone and their mom know that publisher model doesn't work for devs, it only works for publishers and even for them it works badly. If you look at where gaming was back in the 90's and you compare it to what it is now, it's pretty sad. While gaming in general is popular and there more ways to get your products into the market the AAA games / publisher released games have gone down the drain. It's just sequels after sequels, generic shooters, licence games and sports games (Yes, I'm exaggereting a bit) with massive gudgets. There's no room for new IP's or actually something innovative, even though if it's not that expensive to make that. At least there's still Paradox, they actually try to make games that aren't generic clones of what everyone else is making.

It's really news like this that make me hate the gaming business. At least there's still hope of Kickstarter projects and some indie companies (and Paradox) actually making something worth getting instead of the 41312 generic shooters / sports games we are getting. Getting all that talent back even if they get a new project somewhat soon will take some time, not to mention how demoralizing it must be for those who still stay at Obs. Don't think there's really any way to plan on these things, if it comes as suddenly as it seems to have come. Especially at a time like this when the nextgen consoles are kinda coming to the market in 2013/2014.

So Sawyer's curse strikes again Makes me wonder which publisher ****** them over this time.

Lead programmer and Lead producer from PNC laid off, that doesn't sound good It's a shame that gaming industry just doesn't work as well as it could, I imagine it's really stressful to never know when you might get laid off due to publisher/pick a reason here.

Oh, not again :/ 123 -> 119 so far on LinkedIn. Does that mean they finished some of the work on South Park? Did something bad happen to PNC?

Seems like they will easily make the 900k. C'mon MCA time to announce your Kickstarter. I'm saving my euros for that

It didn't wipe out all my achievements. It seems only to be affecting Mass Effect 3.

Mass Effect 3. I think I broke the achievements. The game decided today on start-up that I had played it on different console the last time I played (WHAT?). And now my gamertag shows I have 14/52 achievements done on one screen and 9/52 on one screen (from today's session). So great.

Does anyone actually want to play a game made by Romero? Maybe in 1996 but in 2012? I doubt it.