Alright, alright, I know this is a pretty negative way to start a column, and we already have enough negativity in this world! So let me start off with some good news that we can all celebrate:Xbox Game Pass is still profitable! Good job, everyone! We did it.
The Games Industry Keeps Pushing Away Its Best Devs
Now, let me be clear right up top. When I say ‘this industry’, I mean more an ephemeral machine of money and executives and decision makers. you’re able to tell who they are because they’ve worn the same exact business casual outfit at every video game announcement since 1999. So, again, I don’t mean the people designing screwed up monsters in horror games that are somehow a relieving distraction from the current world.
I don’t mean designers or writers or support staff or programmers or engineers. There were - and still are - a lot of dedicated, hard working people at these companies who care about the craft and care about making fun experiences and great art. Xbox still has workers who care aboutXboxand its fans. So when I criticize the industry or a company, know that I do not mean the folks who are just trying to make a living helping our lives feel slightly less hellish.
The thing is, despite being the literal people who make the bleeps go bloop, those workers are the first into the woodchipper. Why?Because papa wants to pay for more AI!We did it, folks! Finally, they will have the budget to add more pop-ups asking you if you want an algorithm to write your grandfather’s eulogy for you. Why not go for it? Just correct the mistakes and it’s basically from the heart! What’s the difference between you doing it and you asking something else to do it for you? Nothing, that’s what the people in big offices holding a drink in their hand would say! And as we all know,AI can never be manipulated to give bad information.
But I’m not here to argue that AI should go away or is going away or whatever. I just don’t have the energy for it anymore. I don’t have the energy for anything. Waking up every day increasingly makes me wish I didn’t. There are guidelines on this website that don’t allow me to list the way the end of my life will go. But even the most diehard slop fan has to admit that openly firing 9,000 people so their rent and food money can go to AI is a tiny bit heartless.
It’s kind of giving up the game when you reveal that living human beings making products that are profitable arestillless valuable to you than forcing users to sigh when Copilot slows everything down. I’m glad there are ways to disable it because otherwise my relationship with my computer would involve screaming “shut the hell up!” over and over like my mom and dad fighting over a credit card bill.
There’s A Human Cost To Xbox’s Layoffs
Hey, that’s a question I have! Have any of these executives ever been poor in their entire lives? Have they ever had trouble paying for their family’s food or medicine? Ever had a parent cry late into the night because even multiple jobs can’t solve the mortgage? Because if you did, it ain’t showing in the results! Once your stock options were fully vested, did you sell off all the shares in your humanity?
You’re firing the people that make the games. Games that until mere weeks ago you were talking about as if you didn’talreadyknow you were going to dump them like high school students about to go to different colleges. It’s less disrespect and more something resembling complete contempt.
Seriously, some people only learned they were fired because their work Slack was cut off. You don’t do that unless you see your employee as an inconvenience to be scraped away like gum under a bench. It’s cruel for the sake of being cruel. It’s like a bunch of people with boats named after mistresses got together and asked each other, “What’s the meanest way we can fire people without having to look them in the eye or allow an email response?”
Why not? It’s not like it’s affecting them! Those executives can’t deal with all those tears! They’re the Mountain Dew captains of industry, they’re the Doritos kings of microtransactions. They’ve got places to go and companies to dissolve. They have to hop on a private jet to go to a video game festival in Omelas. They don’t walk away, they come with pitches on what AI could do to that kid.
Computer, Appreciate My Employees For Me!
Here’s how much the industry hates the people who work in it:an executive literally suggested that they consult AI to feel better. Really. What happened, was there not enough quarters to fill a sock so you could just beat each individual person? Great pitch to the workers you’ve let go while you yourself are not a worker who’s been let go. There was a lot of criticism about the post, and to his credit, he did delete it, but I am still dinging him for not including the prompt he used to write it.
Which, let’s be honest, there is a non-zero chance he did. Pushing fired employees away from you and onto the product you’re spending their salaries on is either completely clueless, which itself is bad news for the business, or something that would’ve aroused Patrick Bateman if he existed in 2025.
I’m not sure what we should do about this. I don’t have a solution to pure, destructive avarice. And the belief that everyone could go indie and make money that way (“as long as the games are good”) is about as far from reality as I am from ever understanding why God cursed me to live on this planet.
Because if Xbox Game Pass is profitable, then why are we acting like it’s in such bad shape that we need to let go one and a half Sydney Opera Houses worth of salaries? And if itisin such bad shape, why aren’t we addressingthatinstead? Either excuse, either reason, either situation involves some pretty big questions.
Yes, I’m making it sound like these executives are rubbing their hands together like it’s dinner time and clicking the ‘fired’ box on a list of employees. And they’re probably not. These are theoretically people, too. I’m sure there was at least ten seconds of them feeling a twinge of something resembling a memory of guilt. It’s not easy to fire people, especially when you have to tell a horrified HR department that they’re going to be the ones who do it on your behalf. So, if it’s not intentional, it’s completely callous. People shouldn’t be treated this way. Especially ones who made their company a profit.
