Krome Studios opens door for ex-Auran employees

Yay! Good showing from Krome.

We love you krome!

Very nice stuff. Hats off.

Krome rocks!!

oh so now you all love krome, whereas any other time you flame them?

Krom suck's, is that better for you?

Krome has a pool, no way!

It's a trap!

Krome & Christmas layoff rescues seem to go hand-in-hand....

CONSPIRACY?

Nah....not in this industry. Opportunism?

Saved a bunch of RatBag Christmases so let's hope the same happens here.

Did anyone else notice that Auran shut down EXACTLY 2 years after Ratbag did?

Huh?! Don't try and tell me that's a coincidence!

And wasn't Evolution two years before Ratbag??

Let's get a pool going. Who's next?

Its also 1 year after HardCover closed.

Although the directors at HardCover weren't honest to their staff and told them to keep coming to work even after the company was in administration. They didn't tell any of their staff to look for other work or that they were entitled to apply for the dole.

EA bought Pandemic. You do the math

So it's all praise for Krome when they come to the rescue but how long before the negative comments start again? How many of you who may end up working for Krome have bagged them in the past?

It's fun to sling mud until the company you're working for sinks into it, how does it feel to be bailed out by the very people you were so vehemently against not so long ago?

That is so much garbage - Krome has done a good thing in being there to take on people at the worst possible times (is there ever a good time when the carpet's pulled from under your feet). But don't try to claim it's simply for altruistic reasons. What will you say if and when you need to be bailed out? When there are few other options then what choice is there to keep food on the table. Krome is not some saintly organisation. They need to feed the bottom line as much as anyone else and the way that's done isn't always in the interests or to the benefit of their own employees. Some of that mud slung is rightly deserved.

some people at work bagged krome i guess, although not many.. some pandemic... and sometime each others mothers... but mostly over the last 6 months we were all bagging a dude named adam carpenter ...

Fat lot of good that did us though.

"Adam, your game is broken - there is no overall design, you aren't keeping hardcore nor newbie players happy, you have never made it clear what sort of game you want, the item, combat and reward systems are broken and telling us to learn to play won't help Fury sell the 200,000 copies it needs to to break even."

We also spent some time privately blaming Tony Hilliam for making kneejerk changes a few days before every major release or patch, for not coming up with a realistic revenue model and for being an executive producer and money man who spent more time redesigning the game (in his newly discovered leet speak no less) than keeping the company financially viable.

I personally also bagged marketing out a lot, but then moved back up the chain and bagged Tony out again for not having a company structure that includes little things like a PR person or any sort of link from the dev team to marketing. Auran self published Fury, but it was very clear that the publishing arm was horribly under equipped to undertake such a task.

Lastly, we all kind of bagged out the producer for never wresting control back from Tony and Adam and sitting and watching as the project got completely out of control. We know there was always tension between Adam and Paul (well, Adam and anyone except Cam really), but someone needed to tell Tony to back off and let the people hired to design the game to do so, and to tell Adam to communicate with the team once in a while.

But no, I don't think we spent too much time bagging Krome out. Too many easier targets closer to home.

I just wondering why people did NOT see Krome just trying to help here? I would say just move on; as you all work in the game industry for a while now (I assumed), you should know Game studios come and go all the time. This is business at the end of the day, pointing fingers are not going to help Auran come back. (I have a few friends in Auran too, I hope they find the job soon)

I am glad to see all the developers helping up the refugees personally. I think its great efforts from all developers. Let's focus on making good games before comparing who is good or bad shall we? :)

I just heard through some fairly reliable sources over the weekend that EA are indeed planning to uproot the Brisbane Pandemic office and transfer the work and as much as possible of the staff to either their california offices or to Vancouver. It probably won't happen for another year though. These things take time to organise properly.

I'd be putting money on 2 years from now..

...Just a hunch

I think your 'fairly reliable source' is full of shit. Move 80 odd people half way round the world and lose most of them in the shift? How is that good business practice? And their wages would have to be increased as well so it would cost them more.

Assimilation makes things cheaper? I dunno, I'm not a businessman.

I think you should do a bit more research before you throw out terms like "full of shit".

It's not as if this is the first time EA has closed down a studio and moved part of the work force. It's part of their general strategy to consolidate their studios. I've been expecting this since EA bought VG Holding, so I was far from surprised when my source told me.

As for the cost, it costs EA a bit to maintain multiple studios around the globe. It's cheaper to keep more people in the same location. At the same time, it also costs them a bit to hire new people, so if they think that most of the workers are going to leave when they move the studio, that is something they will take into consideration. In the end, we'll just have to wait and see. Time will tell.

Yeah, true, EA is one of those strange places where a mixed lot of business goes on.

They have a case of sometimes centralising their studios, and other times letting them operate on their own. I think it has a lot to do with how well they are performing. Centralising supposedly reduces costs and increases quality control, decentralising supposedly increases costs and increases creativity.

It'll be a wait and see for sure.

Exactly.

Which I think is why they are begrudgingly leaving DICE be where they are in Sweden. And they would be stupid to mess with Bioware in Edmonton. But the creative drive of the Brisbane Pandemic office isn't high profile enough to offset the cost of how far they are away from the head office.

You also have to remember that EA didn't buy Pandemic Brisbane. They bought VG Holding, probably to get hold of the Bioware and Pandemic IPs. The Brisbane office just sort of came along for the ride. It's not like they bought an Australian studio just to close it down. The Brisbane office is just a very small piece in this play. And to be honest, it's probably pretty easy to sacrifice for the EA big wigs when they see it in comparison to their other assets.

I hope that's not true for the sake of the Brissy Pando guys. I just think no one outside Pandemic seriously believes EA's commitment. They just shut down two other interal studios since the Bioware Pandemic acquisition yet they are talking about opening a new office in Colorado.
They just shuffle theses offices around and when the have the occasion bad quarter and the stock price goes down, they just shutter a studio here and there.

I hope for their sake I am wrong...

Could you explain to me the cost involved in maintaining Pandemic Brisbane over the cost of maintaining it in LA or Canada?

How do you know I didn't do some research? Did you read any of the the releases when EA bought Pandemic/Bioware? The only studios being shut down are those that are losing money - as long as Pandemic Brisbane is successful (and from what they are working on it would be foolish to drop them) they will remain open and in Brisbane.

The old centralised EA is gone - what was before is no more.

not to mention the costs of working visas

Unless your 'fairly reliable sources' are placed high up in EA I would call this merely 'opinion'. And baseless at that.

i don't see a company paying to ship a heap of people overseas, and pay for all their worker visa's.

I've seen it happen a few times.

International relocations aren't that uncommon in large companies. Some times it's just individuals that get relocated, some times entire teams or studios.