This past month has seen an unprecedented amount of acquisitions. The big fish in the game industry are swallowing up the smaller fish and the only reason why is because things are on sale, but may also be in trouble. It’s no secret that Activision/Blizzard has been facing inner turmoil with harassment claims and allegations piling up and unfair practices within the workplace. They have backpedaled far from their initial response of shooting down all allegations and have not accepted that things need to change. Would they have been more prepared to sell if their branding wasn’t as tarnished?
Also, within the last two weeks Sony went out to purchase Bungie for $3.6 billion dollars. Sure, Bungie has enjoyed a great reputation that spans over two decades with the creation of the Halo and Destiny franchise. However, I would argue that their relevance the past three years have been waning and housing 900 employees can be expensive.
There is a misconception that the Pandemic has been overall good to the game industry, but the truth is that there has been also a bad amount of companies that were struggling to find footing. Perhaps, with remote working, employees got wrapped up with feeling empowered and felt more open to speaking out on past offenses. Whatever the case, there is a major shift in hierarchy and game developers have more leverage than ever.
Topics discussed in this episode:
0:00 AppFigures
1:34 Introduction
2:23 Roundtable News: Acquisitions
4:46 Microsoft Buys Activison/Blizzard
5:55 Sony buys Bungie
18:24 Microsoft Game Pass Plans
19:36 Other Acquisitons under the radar
26:00 Why all these companies for sale?
33:14 Is Bungie worth the Buy?
58:52 Meta and the AR/VR industry decline
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