The thing about Microsoft shutting down Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin is that it isn’t really a case of finance bros not understanding how game development works. Sure, saying “we need smaller games that will win us awards” while shuttering studios which have a record of producing smaller, award-winning games looks dumb on paper, but you need to know how to parse corporate doublespeak.
In brief, they want the prestige of producing smaller, award-winning games, but not the risk. The way you get the former without the latter is by constantly buying up independent studios which already have successful titles in their portfolios, keeping them around long enough to provide post-launch support, crank out paid DLC for their already-proven properties, and finish development of whatever is currently in the pipeline, then dismantle them and shut them down before they get any funny ideas about risking your money on new, unproven projects.
If you’re thinking “hey, that sounds a lot like a predatory business model”, well, exactly.
@sketch-ee replied:
I feel like that would be illegal. For example, if a company buys another, they should take good care of them. Otherwise, they should be allowed to be unbought and be separated and even be given financial compensation. Is it just me? Am I sounding insane?
This practice of repeatedly buying up and subsequently shutting down one’s smaller competitors arguably already is illegal under American federal antitrust laws. It’s just that those laws haven’t meaningfully been enforced in decades.