Tag Archives: game industry

21 December 2020
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CD Projekt Red Could Face Class Action Lawsuits

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CD Projekt Red said Friday that it would refund disappointed players “out of our own pocket if necessary.” The company’s stock has dropped 41 percent since early December.

Cyberpunk fans at Gamescom 2019 in Cologne, Germany.
Among other already known difficulties with overloading employees, transfers and a lot of problems at launch (especially in versions for basic consoles) the possibility of a collision of CD Projekt Red with a large class action lawsuit is mentioned.
And here is this aforementioned entry, in which the Warsaw attorney and investor of CDPR Mykolaj Orzechovski writes about the preparation of his own claim, offering other victims to join it:

“Due to recent events – and, in particular, the suspension of sales of Cyberpunk 2077, we are currently considering with the legal team the basis for filing a class action, together with a notice of the possibility of committing a crime under Article 286 of the Criminal Code – the purpose of obtaining financial benefits. If you are interested in participating in the aforementioned lawsuit, please contact me at mikolaj.orzechowski@4bizzz.com. It’s completely free: I want to understand whether to take the indicated actions myself or if there are other people in a situation similar to mine. We are also preparing material, together with one of the Internet portals, on the rights of investors in the case of such an egregious, inconsistent with the facts, the attitude of the board. “

The launch of Cyberpunk 2077 was full of controversy and bugs: the first update was presented last week and fixed some issues. Now CD Projekt Red has released update 1.05. Cyberpunk 2077 is currently available on PC, Xbox One and Google Stadia. Retail PS4 versions are still on sale, but Sony has temporarily removed the game from the PS Store. Microsoft Official Store has a warning about performance issues. Due to the abundance of technical problems, buyers of Cyberpunk 2077 for PS4 and Xbox One (this also applies to retail) have recently been entitled to demand a full refund.

An example of such a large and popular project shows best of all the abyss between employees and company leaders.for creative projects.  Former CDPR workers said there was chaos behind the scenes: Office rumors spreading on Discord servers, misleading deadlines set by managers, infighting among the company’s top brass, and incompetence and poor planning leading to unnecessary “crunch,” a term for overworking employees to produce games under a tight deadline. Longtime engineering staff left the company as a result of overwork.

Sources:

  1. https://www.cbr.com/cyberpunk-2077-developer-potential-lawsuits/
  2. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/style/cyberpunk-2077-video-game-disaster.html
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15 November 2020
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CD Projekt RED’s massive failure with Cyberpunk 2077

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CD Projekt RED is a renowned game developing company after huge success owing to release of “Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt”. From that day our small studio became popular around the world and they flagship product won many awards but most important one was “Game of the year”.
Company started to grow, attract more attention alongside gamers and sponsors. In order to maintain they current position on the market in may 2012 they announced biggest project that gaming world has ever seen, “Cyberpunk 2077”. Game out of this world was suppose to bring innovation, newest and the best graphics but also big trouble to competition.

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9f/Cyberpun...

Years have passed and finally CD Projekt RED in 2019 announced they proud and joy during the biggest gaming event called Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Game itself was presented by Keanu Reeves which created a lot of hype around it while the trailer shook the audience and made sure that Cyberpunk 2077 will be even more desirable. CD Projekt RED set release date to April 16. As soon as they launched option to pre-order the game the game was sold so many times that it became the first title in ranking to sell so many copies.

That’s where all the sweet information ends. Unfortunately with such big project and hype created around it comes great responsibility. Company didn’t manage to release game in time so they pushed it back to September 17, that move of course created a wave of hate but as we all know COVID-19 thwarted plans of almost every company. Sadly they didn’t stop there, CD Projekt RED kept showing they inexperience on the market. Cyberpunk 2077 was once again rescheduled this time to November 19. Within minutes from official announcement gamers and sponsors shown the company their dissatisfaction. Sending death threats or negative reports.

 

They got lost because of their own pride and lack of plan besides announcing the game. After the announced delay “The share price of CD Projekt Red reached the lowest point that its been since April, which is roughly 25% lower than its previous peak. It is currently unclear if the price will start rising once again anytime soon.”

This situation not only affects the company crowd of fans, sponsors or stock prices the worst of them all is the situation inside the company. Many workers of the company share their point of view about what’s going on in the company ranks. Game developers are ill because of days and nights they have to spend in order to finish the project. Moreover it is said that CDPR is not paying for overtime hours that workers have to spend on the project. Even though the company is sacrificing so much they still didn’t manage to release the game in 2nd date. They are stuck in vicious cycle the more they promise the more responsibility they have to take, the more they delay in the worse position they get. Unfortunately they do not learn recently CDPR delayed the most expected title in the history of gaming by another 3 weeks.

In my opinion they did it to themselves. Creating such hype around their product with such lack of experience, badly devised business plan and moreover working spontaneous.

 

Sources :

https://screenrant.com/cyberpunk-2077-delay-cd-projekt-red-stock-price/

https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/28/21538525/cyberpunk-2077-cd-projekt-red-death-threats-game-delay

https://www.pcgamer.com/cd-projekt-shoots-down-a-new-cyberpunk-2077-delay-rumor/

https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/

https://www.investing.com/equities/cdproject

 

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30 December 2017
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Reasons behind smartphone games’ popularity

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We all know that devices such as smartphones or tablets are multitasking handheld personal computer that are used for several purposes other than calling and texting alone.
Today’s mobile devices are used as camera, calendar, television, web browsing, sending e-mail, geolocation, tape recorder, calculator, compass, accelerometer, digital mapping and many other. These features build a strong product value to consumers which gives the possibility for each consumer to personalise their device(s) further by downloading any applications needed and wished resulting to use one single device instead of few for many users.

Games are one of the most popular application’s categories, representing a total of 39% of all downloaded applications, generating over $50 billions in revenue worldwide in 2016 which counts up to 81% of mobile store consumer spending (compering to 75% in 2014). While the gaming industry is growing in terms of profitability counting over $100 billion in revenue in 2016, the thriving preferences to play games on mobile devices seen these past few years resulted last year to generate (for the first time) the biggest source of revenue from the other devices such as PC or even consoles games (32% in total comparing at 31% for consoles and 23% for PC).


source: Newzoo, 2017

The reasons of it changed trend are caused due to few main reasons:

• Lower cost of production: Due to a far less development costs to create games on smartphones thanks to a far less needs of complicated coding because of smartphone’s smaller screen sizes, lower resolution and processing power, it results to decrease greatly the cost to produce such games. Also, because these are downloaded by the users directly through the device, it negating the need for packaging and shipping, all that resulting to lower as well dramatically the price of the game to the user.

• Growing number of smartphone users: We see every year a considerable growing number of smartphone users worldwide (this year, almost 11% increase of smartphone users in comparison to 2016, making in total around 2.4 billion to use such a device), making these games a lot more accessible for any smartphone owner today.

• New type of market segment: Not everyone wants complicated games and willing to “waist” their time on time-consuming games. Rather than that, a lot are just looking for quick and easy time-passing games just to entertain themselves for a few laps of time while waiting for a friend, on the bus and other ones.

• Makes it possible to play anywhere, anytime: Smartphones gives the possibility to play games anywhere thanks to their size, making them extremely portable oppositely to PC or consoles that requires bigger space and more are more complicated to connect in comparison to smartphones.

https://www.appannie.com/en/about/press/releases/app-annie-forecasts-33-percent-growth-consumer-spend-app-stores-2017-surpassing-139b-2021/

http://resources.newzoo.com/hubfs/Reports/Newzoo_Global_Games_Market_Report_2017_Light.pdf?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_Z0XYnALOZRIbak6BMlZ5WvAxRSVmDAVdHrfgD_L75oFhAr2vD-z76u_h0gnhgXytqwj5VN4Mjhx-Iy–J_8oD73UFpayprei7D3UQ9VKbVkqeX7g&_hsmi=53391639&utm_content=53391903&utm_source=hs_email&hsCtaTracking=b1e7ad0f-0367-47fe-af74-d25b087e0247%7C1f97673a-73fc-4014-ac26-8ed0a696bc2a

https://www.wired.com/2013/01/how-mobile-kills-the-console-but-advances-the-gaming-industry/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/

http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/24bn-smartphone-users-in-2017-says-emarketer

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16 November 2015
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PornHub traffic fell by 10% on the day of the release of Fallout 4

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Out of Fallout 4 not only enhance the the number of workers take sick days on the planet, but also significantly affect other vital functions. For example, a sharp decline in traffic experienced the one of the world’s most popular resources on
adult video – Pornhub.porn hub stat

The profile resource GamesBeat leads Post Corey Price (Corey Price), Vice-President of PornHub. According to him, the day of the release of Fallout 4, there was a decline in the share of traffic by 10% among gamers. November 10 traffic began to decline at around 5 am, when most people are finished to download and install the game. The deviation from the normal pattern was observed until about 3 pm, and then from 6pm decline began again. According to Cory Price, they were not too surprised by what happened to PornHub traffic during peak gaming hours.

The company Bethesda Softworks has released 10 November hotly anticipated sequel to the post-apocalyptic series Fallout. Game Fallout 4 is available for purchase on the platforms Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.

More info: GamesBeat

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24 October 2015
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Life is just a game

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Hey there. Recently I have been surfing though the internet and had encountered an amusing pic.1

I laughed for a while and then it stuck me – I new the game industry accumulate enormous pile of money, but lately it has became ubiquitous and keeps growing, engulfing new gamers in its nets.

Game industry evolved with the evolution of complement equipment – PC, consoles, Youtube (don’t You think that video service played enormous role in it?),  Twitch (another famous video streaming service) etc. Now the market is so big, that it attracts both content consumers and producers easily. Just some facts:

  1. 155 m americans play games
  2. 51% of americans have game console. Not a PC, but game console.
  3. Gamers are young? Laughing in your face: average male – 35, average female – 43.(source: http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ESA-Essential-Facts-2015.pdf)

Industry growth encourages both game producers (EA Sports, Blizzard, Konami etc), but also producers of complement content, namely streamers – PewDiePie makes 12m dollars a year overviewing and streaming games. (source: http://forbes.net.ua/lifestyle/1403890-zvezdy-youtube-ckolko-mozhno-zarabotat-na-videobloge).

But what I’ve become amazed by is the game contests. It’s something truly mind-bogling: Huge orcs stampeding over the venue, Metallica playing US anthem, thousands (literally) acolytes waiting for the final round etc. It becomes gorgeous show, surpassing NBA finals many times.

blizzcon-2013-anaheim-convention-center-outdoor-1   blizzcon-costume-wallpaper-2560x1440513147948464_b0b290cc9b_k

Performance like this make gamers all over the world to stick to their screen with mouths opened is awe. Everyone wants to become a pro player and get an invitation from the Blizzard. Making comparison with Nobel prize, here everything is crystal clear and comprehensive. I don’t want to blame Nobel nominations, but winning a Nobel Prize in an age of 70 for a topic You have been developing for decades (Angus Deaton) or  even sadder story with John Nash – it does not encourage to become a Ph.D. 🙂

Whereas in cyber sport everything is more prosaic: if u kill more enemies, collected more points and completed the quest faster then others – You are “Nobel Prize” winner.

Prize pool? well, it’s fabulous:

  1. Hearthstone – 250 000$
  2. Starcraft – 1.6 m $
  3. Fifa 2015 – 15 m $
  4. Dota2 – 18.5 m $

In conclusion i want to stress out – the industry is bursting and individuals as well as companies pour huge sums of money to soar it even further. What is the effect on players: more interesting projects and chances to participate in tournaments; for streamers: endless opportunity to create content; for scholars: it’s never too late to start playing DOTA 2 🙂

P.S. If You mother tells You to stop playing games, because You would never achieve anything in your life – just give her a link to this blog…

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