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Upcoming Kotaku story on Undead Labs

nikolino840

Member
Fuck off Kotaku. Not going to read your ideological cult shit.

Glad they got out in front and stole their thunder from their typical mental diarrhea.
The ex boss of UL twitted this Yesterday..in the blog seems that Jeff Is not so Happy too about kotaku 😅 (Today Kotaku will be running an article about Undead Labs, one of four studios I have founded in my career. It’s been two-and-a-half years since I was leading Undead, but two days ago Kotaku sent me a list of questions and gave me a short time to respond to them. The tone of the article is clearly going to be critical of me personally.)
you could read jeff's blog..he included all the questions

 

reksveks

Member
Wow, fucking wow. Been 4 years under Microsoft, and this is what comes out of undead labs? Microsoft also not moving mountains to change the situation when it seemed dire, is also a little worrying. Hope Activision/Blizzard mess gets sorted when FTC approves of the deal.
I don't know if 84% of your employees recommending working at a studio is a good number or a bad one. I suspect that's on the higher side personally. Thoughts?

They also did kick out the HR lead which seemingly some people like and others were confused by (not sure why they would be confused if they didn't like her but ehh)
 

Jigsaah

Gold Member
Confused, do people generally announce when another news outlet is going to put an article out? That seems so...weird.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
I don't know if 84% of your employees recommending working at a studio is a good number or a bad one. I suspect that's on the higher side personally. Thoughts?

They also did kick out the HR lead which seemingly some people like and others were confused by (not sure why they would be confused if they didn't like her but ehh)

Yea, it just seems super messy. ANd that article paints a story that they had issues pre-Microsoft buying them. So my question is why did Microsoft not investigate sooner? Usually when you buy a studio, you are going to send people out to assess the studio.

These issues could have been ironed out. But to me it smells of Microsoft making the deal, studio head wanted out and doing so very quickly. WHich seems what Microsoft continued to do with other studios. And look at whats going on now?

Feel LIKE alot of things are coming to a head.

Confused, do people generally announce when another news outlet is going to put an article out? That seems so...weird.
Only if there's dirt in said article about you and the studio you once represented.
 
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cormack12

Gold Member
The joke about rag magazines is that they'd always be good for toilet paper... kotaku isn't even good for that. So what is it good for?

96a97d02-175a-4125-8977-b3409bdae690_text.gif
 

reksveks

Member
These issues could have been ironed out. But to me it smells of Microsoft making the deal, studio head wanted out and doing so very quickly. WHich seems what Microsoft continued to do with other studios. And look at whats going on now?
its growing to twice the size and its got 84% employee approval. We don't know what the state was before MS bought.

Jeff stayed there for 18 months after the acquisition, it happens in start ups all the time btw.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
its growing to twice the size and its got 84% employee approval. We don't know what the state was before MS bought.

Jeff stayed there for 18 months after the acquisition, it happens in start ups all the time btw.

It took a while though and tons of people who made up the studio originally left. And also the bigger talking point is Microsoft management of said project. Microsoft has its own big HR department and all that. WHich it looks like got deployed and weeded out some of the issues but kind of creating new ones with how they hired bunch of woke/Binary/Ethnic people based off of a %/chart.

And if your still one of the original developers, that hiring by quota thing would make me uncomfortable. Which seems to be what happened to a lesser extent at Insomniac. And it was 1 person vs rest of the studio. What is happening to Undead labs though is another story entirely.
 

darthpaxton

Neo Member
I’m not saying Playstation is perfect but you rarely hear any complaints from devs outside of a few specific cases.
It literally has been less than a month since we reset PlayStation's clock.

ANd that article paints a story that they had issues pre-Microsoft buying them.
The article literally says THE EXACT OPPOSITE of this.

“We were afraid they would come in and change our culture but our collapse came from within, and we could have used [Microsoft’s] help.”
 

Papacheeks

Banned
It literally has been less than a month since we reset PlayStation's clock.


The article literally says THE EXACT OPPOSITE of this.

Your quote says it came from within which was what I said? Pre-Microsoft Buy?

darthpaxton darthpaxton

Learn to read more than the headlines:

“The culture the studio had up until recently was not the most hospitable for anyone that was not a white cishet man,” said one current developer. “It’s improved in the last six months or so. But the studio hired a lot of diverse talent that it did not adequately support [in the past].”

Strain didn’t officially leave Undead Labs until the end of 2019, but current and former developers say he already seemed checked out from the day-to-day by early 2018, when State of Decay 2 was getting ready to ship

Whole point was Microsoft was suppose to make it better, but up until 2021 it's still been a influx. ANd took a bad showing to force Microsoft's hand in weeding out what seemed like a disjoined studio.

And now seems like they still have issues leadership wise in terms of project.

4 years since Microsoft bought them.


It took shit falling apart for Microsoft to actually come in and make drastic changes. Now most senior talent has left. Sounds familiar doesn't it?
 
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Papacheeks

Banned
Reading this, this guy was on his way out well before the acquisition. He just played his best cards.

Yup, and I think he saw internally that they needed help to grow further, and also needed a reshuffling internally pre-Microsoft buy, to get them where they need to be and he didn't want to stick around for that.

State of Decay 2's buggy launch shows they needed more help to get where they needed to be.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Pretty much. Plus you can always spot a reporter's bias by reading their past tweets.

A studio bought 4 years ago that had internal issues prior, to where the lead sold the studio, and peaced out? Is not having trouble? Then the parent company comes in and tries to revamp for a even bigger project when their last project came out hot, buggy, and took multiple months to get fixed. And have them turn the game more into a service game.

Then when they were given more to expand project wise, it seemed internally it was a shit show and no one knew what direction to go because they were bought and their higher up had basically checked out.

Then they tried to have demo;s ready to show/Impress Microsoft higher ups and end up worse than they were within the project. And here we are Microsoft showing in 2020 CGI trailer, with basically nothing internally playable to show? Not until 2021 Microsoft comes in panics and makes drastic studio changes. Now they say we think we are in a good place, knowing they still are not even in full production.

Another poorly managed studio, one that should have had better eyes on it when they were being eyed for purchase of issues.
 

zeorhymer

Member
Confused, do people generally announce when another news outlet is going to put an article out? That seems so...weird.
It's usually along the lines of "Hi, I'm from <company> writer and would like to follow up on comments you made about <stuff years ago.> Etc etc." Basically trying to get quotes from you and make you look as bad as possible. A few folks are starting to call them out on their behaviour.
 
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