Over Half of Season Dev Scavengers Studio Laid Off

That’s a real shame, Seasons has been on my wishlist since release but haven’t had the cashflow to make the purchase, hard not to feel a pang of guilt.

I tried the demo and didn't like it. Hate to see anyone lose their jobs though.

Always sad to hear such news. We give so much money 0to companies that help the rich get richer and when something special comes along, we ignore it and people lose their jobs. It sucks.

Sadly PlayStation issnt the home of Indie Games anymore so not surprised that it flopped. Especially since its a more artistic one

@Magnus_Selene was it a ps exclusive?

I love me some artsy indies, but this looked dull as hell and I honestly forgot it was even out.

Sorry to hear people lost their jobs but when so many games are fighting for attention, you need to really stand out.

@naruball it is also available on PC.

@naruball Console exclusive yeah. Games like these do way better on Switch and Xbox via Gamepass

Season is a meditative game with non-typical gameplay... Some people like games like this, but it is not the most popular genre / setting / type of gameplay. And if you make such a game you should always consider the possibility of being a commercial failure even despite being a decent game itself. So it's executive's mistake.

@Magnus_Selene I'm sure if it was on ps plus, it would've done just as well as it would 'potentially' do on gamepass and switch.

Personally didn't enjoy the demo as much as I thought I might. So never bothered buying it.

Yes, because these days average gamers die for flashy action games to kill hundred enemies a day!

never even heard of the game before this article

@Magnus_Selene that's a shame. I could see it performing decently on switch.

@daveofduncan Well it wasn't tho because Sony is way more stingy with those Deals. And even then, Oddworld Soulstorm was a big flop aswell for the Studio and this was a Day1 PS+ Launch

60.000 * 29,99 = around 1.800.000 bucks. Minus the 30% going to Sony/Steam
= 1.260.000 bucks remains.
I wonder what the expectation was.
I mean 1.2 million dollars should easily cover the costs of such artsy fartsy type of video games, I assume.

@JAMes-BroWWWn If they had ~32 devs working on it for a few years and they all earn 30k+ a year you can imagine that this issnt enough

This game has been on my radar since it was announced and I didn't actually realise it had released already. I don't know if that's a me problem or a lack of marketing

I LEGIT thought the game wasnt out yet 😲

If this released during the PS3 era, it would have performed better, but now we are flooded with indies, and I do wonder how many of them make money outside of PS+ or gamepass deals.
This was even promoted during a State of Play, so you can't say it had no marketing, but maybe low reviews hurt it as always.

@JAMes-BroWWWn let's say it's 30 Devs on the team, from a quick Google the average wage for game Dev in Montreal is 70,000CAD. So 2.1M per year. Not that I'd expect those figures to be what an indie studio are necessarily paying but just gives an idea that just paying staff alone requires higher sales than 60,000

That’s unfortunate, but hopefully they attract some investment in their current project and are able to rehire some of those let go. I picked up Season but it makes kind of a rough first impression so I didn’t get far with it. I’m sure I’ll come back to it eventually though.

@iapaulogise Unfortunately that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s also licensing fees for tools and apps, insurance, rent & utilities (if they have a physical space), and a host of other costs to deal with.

Couldn't even finish Demo from what I remember. Hope lay offs find new jobs. :/

You'd think it'd do better with Sony giving it time on a few of their state of plays. Even among these types of games it seems it did exceptionally poorly. I don't want to say it outright but I'm sure we're all thinking it. Do try to support your games with actual money instead of just words on Twitter. Too many financial flops and you'll start to see big corpos dropping the act. They only care about causes that make them cash.

The issue with indie games like this is that ps+ extra and gamepass has devalued them massively. Everyone just waits for them to pop up on there now

@AgentMantis For sure, if your game is not something with big hype like Hades, people will just wait for PS+ or deep discounts.

Such a shame, regardless of your feelings, it’s a game that does things differently. We’re really losing originality and new voices.

@Magnus_Selene regardless of what flopped or not, you're clearly just having a dig here. This isn't the type of game for everyone. Do yourself a favour and accept that fact.

At this point we're flooded with indies addressing grief, queerness, coming of age, trauma etc... While all valid, it's become just as oversaturated as your grissly dude military shooter.

I called this when they announced the game alongside that we are OFK garbage

@tameshiyaku "At this point we're flooded with indies addressing grief, queerness, coming of age, trauma etc"

We are? (genuine question)

Damn that's crazy. Moving on now

@naruball
I mean video games and media have normalized it at this point (which is perfectly fine) so it's no surprise that they don't make as many games explicitly dedicated to it.

I'm afraid they didnt do a great job of selling this title. You could watch trailers for it (and I did) without really getting a feel for what you would be playing. It seemed like it might be something I would enjoy, but it was hard to commit to the spend based on the trailers they made.
Not that my one sale would have helped, but I do feel slightly bad that this still sits in my Wishlist and I never drew the trigger.

I hate to see studios shedding workforce. I've seen too much of it first hand over the years and these situations are always stressful to the Devs and their families who's hopes and dreams get squished in such decisions. I do hope they all land on their feet and get great new opportunities 🙏

@KaijuKaiser that's a female?!

I bought it and really enjoyed it. It's an intelligent, slow paced but beautiful story - the gameplay will not be for everyone, collecting sounds, photographs and stories from a land that will not be there anymore. It genuinely made me reflect. Recommended for sure and sorry to hear about the lack of sales.

Wait, was this out already? Seriously missed that.

Maybe Sony needs to put more effort into promoting indies on the PS Store, rather than only boosting the games you already know.

It's not just competition from big games though. There's tons of indies you can play for 'free' on PS Plus Extra and Game Pass, and even way more great narrative indie games are on sale about every month on both stores, going as low as 2-5 dollars!

It's just stupid to buy a new game at 20-70 dollars when there's so much ultra-cheap gems yet to play.

Petty as it may be I didn’t buy this game yet because it doesn’t have a platinum.

I didn't even know it came out LOL

@Amnesiac oh 100% agree. I was just giving the most basic breakdown based on the previous posters logic. 1.2M is nothing to a studio of that size unfortunately.

Hopefully they can rebuild. They seem to make decent quality games. Just difficult to get that success

I'm curious though, now that a lot of you guys know that the game is actually out...will you be buying it? It might be too late for the people who lost their jobs but maybe you can stop the studio from getting shuttered entirely?

@Magnus_Selene so more people give it a go because its free and ms pay the devs ,which is what Sony would have done for it to be an exclusive, devs take a chance with these types of slow burn games ,unfortunately this time it didn't pay off.

@glassmusic yeah maybe charge 9.99 and people will give it a go ,some of them are pure 4hr crap, and they have the nerve to charge 30 quid.

@ATaco hmm at 24.99 nah, maybe a tenner i would

As always, the better something is, the less successful it is or will be
Most beautiful game ever created and one of the greatest audio visual experiences

One of the most depressing things on this world to always see crap being successful and quality not.
No idea how true artists do this

@ATaco I think it has more to do with their sales potential. Can't think of many that have performed particularly well. Even with The Last of Us, Ellie's sexuality was revealed in the DLC, after the game became uber successful.

@BamBamBaklava89 it’s actually a huge misstep not to include a platinum on a story driven indie title. It draws in a whole separate crowd who are interested and will play for the plat. It’s why I played Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and I ended up really enjoying that game.

@naruball if you speak of maturity, then please at least try to stay collected in your writings. I merely assumed you were sealioning, if not, my bad.

I didn't enjoy the game (played it on one of the PS+ tiers) but sorry to hear that for the team affected. The biking was not enjoyable and that concept was what I was interested in the most oddly enough.

It sucks for people to lose their jobs but I have to say when it comes to "aesthetics" games maybe trying to release it on the Switch is the best option just to exploit the idea that many Switch users have about they being "different" for not liking the same normal hype stuff (like shooters and sports) and liking these kind of experiences instead. Even Nintendo is aware of that mentality and that's why in every direct there is at least one aesthetics game.

Game was gorgeous but then I played the demo. I found traversal too slow and clunky and I genuinely didn’t enjoy the interaction model. I actually got lost in the demo and I really didn’t enjoy biking. I was really sad when it was over because I think they had some really good ideas here and it just needed more polish.

@Loftimus. That’s such a hater comment. There are so many more LGBT people than your made-up numbers suggest. And don’t make up rules for what people can enjoy. That’s so 1950.

@Magnus_Selene dude you are aware 2 of the 3 biggest Epic games right now (former indie games) in Fall Guys and Rocket League are what they are thanks to PlayStation marketing and playerbase right? Even single players like Stray can build a lot of hype thanks to PS and that is good for business. It's not about if it's indie or not, it's about what's the indie about and if it attractive to the playerbase.

(btw the REAL indie house has always been Steam because you can self publish without that being a pain in the ass like in xbox, nintendo and playstation where you need either a miracle or a publisher. This game is on Steam and that didn't work either)

Also, this is being said here in different ways. Gamers have too many choices and combined with inflation this is bad news for new game makers.

I can’t imagine having to launch a new game in 2023 and compete with both free-to-play, Gamepass for $10-15, and all the games that have been made over the past 10 years. Make a building game better than Minecraft or cheaper! Make a farm game better than Stardew Valley or cheaper! And you have AAA award winning games going half price after a month. Sure Plague Tale launches at $60 but it’s $30 now. It’s crazy.

I blame Gamespass and PS Plus. Gamers wait for games to go to these services. Developers then have no choice but to participate in these services most likely for next to nothing. It's that or this is what happens if they don't. PS Plus and Gamepass are great deals for gamers, terrible for developers and publishers.

I have it on my wishlist but wasn't willing to fork over $30 to ride my bike around and taking photos. This seem like a easy $20 game not $30.

There can be so many chill and artsy games before ppl get tired of them.

I think people these days just have less money to spend on their gaming hobby, so whatever money they do have is going on the bigger games or games on sale. So any new indies are going to struggle unless they're on ps plus.

@Dman10 “I blame Gamespass and PS Plus. ”
I blame the tone deaf price for a 6 hour game with rocky gameplay that targeted a very niche audience. Sorry, but the game was destined to fail by design, not because of GamePass

@Loftimus I was completely unaware that cycling and photography were queer pursuits. Looks like the wife and I need to have quite the conversation…

Not gonna lie, I didn't even know the game even released months ago. I put the blame on how poor the game's marketing was.

The game concept didn't interest me from the beginning, and I'm done buying indie games just because it looks interesting, like in the early part of ps4 gen.

@JAMes-BroWWWn minus 600.000 to taxes.
And special taxes 300.000 for unions.

Union taxes are insane in canada.
Sounds to me they took goverment funding and have to repay that fast.

@SoulsBourne128 developers probably knew it was going to fail and pulled all ad funding to save some money.

@tameshiyaku by all means, please take your own advice. I merely asked a question without offending you in any way and your immediate reaction was to accuse me of being triggered when I simply asked for some examples.

@koffing it's the same with TV shows nowadays. Too many options and, as a result, most of them end up being cancelled after a single season, even if they're great. It's incredibly difficult for games to stand out nowadays, so making an indie game only makes sense if it's through Kickstarter, I think.