https://www.theverge.com/games/2024/9/12/24243317/annapurna-interactive-staff-reportedly-resigns
They wanted to spin out the game division.
Stray was excellent
It's kind of funny. The studio wanted to spin off to be independent. So everybody resigning, is effectively doing the same thing. It's not like there's big heavy machinery they have to move. The studio is the people.
If they start their own company, they have successfully totally spun off
Eh, reputation is still a thing and they probably aren't getting to keep any of the IPs they worked on, like Stray or Outer Wilds. They also won't get to keep whatever cash the company might have had in reserve. My understanding is that the idea of spinning off a studio to be indie is that you get to keep developing your IPs to some extent, you still have your brand and your reputation, etc. Otherwise they probably would have done this at the beginning.
So, no, they didn't really spin it off heh.
Yeah but publishing is still work though. It's become much easier to self publish on Steam as a small developer, but there is still value in having a professional publisher. It's hard to say how much value and sometimes the publisher takes up more than their fair share, but it's not like zero value either.
Fair, but the point was that the parent company is unaffected by this, the people who work there haven't quit afaik.
Edit: hold up I just had a double take at the article and it's the publisher where people quit lmao. I actually can't read goddamn ignore me...
Edit 2: Ok I see what confused me now. On another site I read that the Alan wake deal is unaffected because that's with the parent company Annapurna Pictures. Mixed them together.
I'd be willing to bet with the right PR this would only strengthen the reputation of whatever studio they decide to create next.
This is not the stray team, the article picture confuses the story. They should've used the Annapurna logo instead but they probably wanted more clicks.
Not exactly the same. First of all, a new company hasn't formed yet and if it does it won't retain as many of the original staff because it doesn't have the same momentum as one formed through a legal separation of the companies while everyone is still employed.
It also can't retain the rights to Stray which would have provided some funding. And it doesn't retain the rights to whatever projects they had in development, so they won't have anything to work on for a while.
That legal spinning off was actually pretty important.
That's the kindest thing anyone's ever said to me on the internet. I'd like to be a robot.
Well damn. I hope they can get a start under a new company. Annapurna has been kind of a seal of approval for high quality, small dev team games that weren't the usual triple A bullshit or obvious cash grabs.
They have a solid catalog and a lot of talent on board. I hope everyone is able to land on their feet. It would be a shame to lose out on those great minds.
They don’t have a solid catalog anymore, they quit the company that owns the publishing rights to the catalog.
These aren’t the developers quitting. It’s the publisher’s staff. Like If the employees of Republic Records all quit, Universal Music Group would still have the right to publish Taylor Swift’s or John Legend’s next album.
Yes, the publishers have a solid catalog of games they have published. Those games were selected and published by people with great minds. I hope they all land in their feet and continue to publish great games.
It’s weird. Looking at my game catalog, a large percentage of my favorite games are all Annapurna. I will miss them.
They all quit, so presumably they'll attempt to establish themselves as a new publisher. I am.very much hoping for an announcement of that soon. If Annapurna, the parent company, was trying to blend their agencies, it'll be interesting to see if they can maintain the quality of their productions.
I mean I had actually had a conversation a long while ago when I originally fell in love with Annapurna games about my perceived dangers of it being run almost single handedly by a billionaire playing around with her Dad's money that the level of control she had would make it risky to treat like a legitimate company but they really put the gold star stamp of approval on so many games they made and published.
Honestly this won't really hurt the billionaire. She has the publishing contracts still and whatever partial finished games were already in development but I really do hope the best for the actual talent and employees.
I really want to see them help push into that more united gaming labor force that the Henry Stickman developers foundation (Outersloth), and other groups are doing to let them actually help games be unique and good.
Man, I loved Gorogoa and What Remains of Edith Finch, and while I don't know a ton about the publishing business, I did recognize Annapurna as a company that published good games. I hope these staffers go on to keep finding good indie games to publish.
If anyone keeps tabs on this, please post whatever new company they create/join because I'm interested in seeing what games they get involved with in the future.
Was t there just an announcement that they’d be partnering up with remedy for control 2 and control universe media?
I just played Sayonara Wild Hearts. It's very aesthetic. Fun gameplay.
Best wishes to the staff :)
And now when you buy their games none of moneys will go to the actual devs??
(Or do they get royalties?)
Arr, what a shitty system we built for ourselves.
Annapurna was a publisher team, not a dev team (that published a lot of indie teams' games). I'm not entirely sure how this affects the devs though since I'm in general software development and not game development.
When Warner Bros shut down Adult Swim's game publishing team a few months ago, they did at least give publishing rights back to the original devs so something similar might end up happening here.
That being said it's also possible that all of the games Annapurna published get put in licensing limbo and the original devs get screwed over by this if the Annapurna parent company doesn't want to give up their publishing rights.
The Annapurna Interactive entity still exists and still has contracts with developers and platform owners.
What's happened is that all their staff left. People have been moved over from other Annapurna divisions in an effort to keep things running but its likely a lot of institutional knowledge has been lost.
If I was a developer with a title being managed by them I would be very concerned for its future.
What responsibilities do publishers do to benefit the developers these days, with Steam available for self-publishing? Looking for an honest explanation, as I read some wiki pages and don't really understand the value of publishers (same for book publishers).