Thomas Mahler, CEO of Moon Studiostalked about the possible reasons behind the closing of Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austinillustrating his point of view on the issue and reiterating that it is also for this kind of thing that he never wanted his team to be acquired.
Just a few days ago Mahler explained why No Rest for the Wicked was not produced by Microsoft, after which yesterday the sensational news of the closure of Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Games and Roundhouse Games arrived, which raised fierce controversies.
“I’d like to tell everyone who’s been bugging me for years about why we didn’t get Moon Studios acquired by a major publisher… well, here’s why,” the CEO wrote. “I lived in the 90s and I saw what happened when small teams were acquired by Electronic Arts. Never again!”
The reasons
After that, however, Mahler made a more detailed and comprehensive argument. “I’ve been in this business long enough to have seen how things are done on both sidesand I’m honestly not a fan of the rage culture we’ve created these days,” he wrote.
“Listen to me for a moment: I know this isn’t much comfort to the people who lost their jobs today, but I think the press needs to be very careful about how it writes its articles, especially if you don’t have good sources or if you don’t know exactly what’s going on. Let’s be honest, he usually doesn’t know.”
“I don’t have all the information on what happened today regarding the closure of the Microsoft studios, and while insulting publishers in your articles will absolutely earn you clicks, it is entirely possible and I would even say very likely that there were from the internal negotiations that reasonably explain this situation.”
“I have rarely seen decisions of this magnitude made that make absolutely no sense. It could very well be that Microsoft has already had previous discussions with these studios and that we chose to close them to allow them to reform more efficientlyto then make agreements again with new companies.”
“Take Tango Gameworks for example. They just released the excellent Hi-Fi RUSH, which everyone rightly loved. Maybe the way to produce more titles like that is for the core team forms a new venture so they can focus on producing these types of games, but not within the – probably bloated – organization they had before.”
“Obviously I’m only making hypotheses and I have no internal information, but something like this seems completely plausible to me,” continued the CEO of Moon Studios, saying that instead the titles of the various newspapers at the moment are the fair of ‘evil publisher shutting down the studio that created a hit game out of pure greed‘.
“Everyone loved Hi-Fi RUSH and obviously there is a lot of potential behind it. The people who created that game could very likely develop another similar title on a larger scale, creating an even better and more complex product. I’m sure many publishers would be interested in this offer because – guess what – it could make them a lot of money.”
“You really think Microsoft is completely stupid, happy to burn bridges with talented developers who could then immediately make deals with the competition? I mean… that may be the case, but usually these deals happen on a little more sophisticated level. Real life is a game of chess, not checkers, guys.”
