A Pokémon website which hosted links to fan-made Pokémon games has been taken offline.
05.03.2024 - 03:33 / gamerant.com / Ethan Gach / London Studio / Brett Byll
Media Molecule has reportedly avoided closure amid the continuing round of layoffs. In 2023, approximately 9,000 workers in the video game industry were hit by a round of layoffs and some of these workers included employees at Media Molecule. Perhaps the most shocking was the fact that these layoffs had hit the biggest companies, such as Hasbro, EA, Microsoft, and more. It seemed like that was the worst it would get, and many looked to 2024 with hope for the future.
Despite that hope, the industry has been hit even harder this year. In January there were approximately 6,000 layoffs. In February, somewhere around 2,000 workers were laid off, with approximately 900 more layoffs coming from Sony, including Naughty Dog and Insomniac, which is surprising, considering the recent success of The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered and Marvel's Spider-Man 2.
Kotaku senior reporter Ethan Gach shares in a newsletter that British developer Media Molecule was positioned right alongside PlayStation's London Studio as most likely for closure during that round of layoffs. Media Molecule helped define the PlayStation brand during the era its games were popular. London Studio, which was closed, held a legacy with PlayStation as developer of Singstar, EyeToy games, and PlayStation Home. The studio similarly helped shape the image of what the PlayStation 3 had to offer to players. Gach reached out to the studios for more information, but has not heard back.
Media Molecule's last release, Dreams, emphasized the interactive nature of the gaming medium itself. Dreams offered a toolkit to create and share games, a reiteration of the formula many players had become fans of with the studio's LittleBigPlanet franchise. Last year, live support for the game was shuttered and the studio was hit with some layoffs. It seemed that the team would still have the chance to move on to the next thing, though. That hope is being put into question with the news that the studio was in consideration for closure, and the knowledge that there could be more layoffs happening in the future.
It seems pertinent to ask when these layoffs will end and when developers will be able to rest easy knowing they won't be next. Naughty Dog is responsible for what some may consider the biggest PlayStation franchise out there right now, especially with the likelihood of a thirdThe Last of Us game, as the franchise continues dominating pop culture. If those developers are still not safe, then audiences may lose the ability to trust that any studio can retain all the people that helped make their games great.
A Pokémon website which hosted links to fan-made Pokémon games has been taken offline.
Media Molecule has set a date for the last of its staff affected by layoffs announced last October to leave the studio.
Studio Media Molecule has been winding down its live development and support for Dreams for a while now, as it shifts towards work on its next big game. The next step in this process is the stoppage of the game's live curation, which has been manually handled by a dedicated team since the game's launch.
Media Molecule has confirmed that its curation team is being let go as part of previously announced layoffs.
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The former chief lawyer for The Pokémon Company says fan projects are more likely to be taken down if they get press coverage and start making money.
The console wars are a tale as old as time—or at least as old as the point when games consoles from multiple companies came onto the market. Whether Sega claimed to do what Nintendon't or actual customers determined to justify why their console of choice was objectively the best, this war continues to rage on to this day. However, even as far back as the 90s, it wasn't an ideology that Nintendo wanted to promote.
The last few months have made it quite clear that the console market hasn’t grown the way the likes of Microsoft and Sony would have wanted. Xbox sales have been inconsistent at best for a while now, and PS5 recently also missed its sales targets by a notable margin. Combined with the mass layoffs the games industry has been hit with over the last 14 months (and 2024 in particular) – with the likes of PlayStation, Microsoft, EA, Riot Games, Embracer Group, and many others have cut a significant number of jobs – it’s no surprise that questions are being asked about the future of the business louder than they have been in a while.
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