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Fresh off a campaign to get enthusiasm for a Shenmue 4 sequel trending with a Times Square billboard<\/a>, indie video game publisher New Blood Interactive took out an advertisement in downtown Los Angeles to memorialize the closure of triple-A studios Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Voltion, Roll7, and the loss of their jobs.<\/p>\n All four studios produced notable works over the past three years. None of them became breakout hits, which meant the beancounters at their parent companies necessarily binned them to appease investors.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been a terrible six months<\/a> for employment in the video games space<\/a>, and New Blood Interactive\u2019s advertisement on a billboard on Los Angeles\u2019 Olympic Boulevard \u2014 where thousands from the video games industry would have congregated around this time of year for E3 \u2014 chastises the industry\u2019s hit-driven corporate parents for shutting these award-winning operations and firing their friends.<\/p>\n I’m always trying to find new and creative ways to waste money. <\/p>\n Miss y’all. <\/p>\n Hope you land on your feet soon \ud83e\udee1 https:\/\/t.co\/6hoz5JuMFg<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Dave @ SGF (@DaveOshry) June 7, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Arkane Austin (Redfall<\/a>) and Tango Gameworks (Ghostwire Tokyo and Hi-Fi Rush) were unceremoniously shuttered <\/a>last month by Microsoft, the world\u2019s richest company with a market capitalization of $3.16 trillion<\/a>, greater than the gross domestic product of France<\/a>. They were closed because neither delivered a game that could produce impressive growth for Xbox Game Pass\u2019<\/a>s subscription numbers.<\/p>\n Volition, makers of the 18-year-old, platinum-selling Saints Row series, was passed around hot-potato style among Embracer Group\u2019s crazy quilt of subsidiaries and publishing labels after the studio and its IPs were acquired in 2013. Volition was shuttered in August by the bargain-bin Swedish publisher, before it sold Gearbox Software back to Take-Two in March<\/a>.<\/p>\n This followed a decade in which Embracer\u2019s ambitious leadership chowed down on the fatally overextended original THQ\u2019s IPs and developers at fire-sale prices, then over-bet on licenses<\/a> from The Lord of the Rings and other big name properties that they later decided weren\u2019t money-makers. The publisher recently spun itself off into three subsidiaries<\/a> to keep investors happy<\/a> with its share price(s).<\/p>\n\n