Publisher 505 Games Closes Offices in France, Germany, Spain | Push Square
05.03.2024 - 21:38
/ pushsquare.com
Italian publisher 505 Games has shuttered several of its European offices in France, Germany, and Spain, the result of a business review conducted in September. Just yesterday, we told you that Remedy Entertainment had acquired full publishing rights for Control back from 505 Games.
Gamereactor initially reported on the closures, and Eurogamer was told by 505 that: «Today's news regarding our European offices is a part of our original announcement from November regarding 505's business review.» 505 Games parent company, Digital Bros, announced it would lay off 30% of its global workforce late last year.
In addition to the job losses, another cost is the conservative publishing stance Digital Bros will adopt in response, so moving forward, expect to see «sequels and new versions of previously successful and established games, with a limited number of new larger budgets productions.» Recently, 505 has worked to release games like Ghost Runner 2, Death Stranding on PC, and, of course, Control, and has had significant success in the past, distributing titles like Rocket League and Terraria.
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For a steal
«With the predominant portion concentrated within the studios»
Tales like this will continue throughout the year as previously announced layoffs come home to roost. Commiserate in the comments section below.
Khayl Adam is the second-best video game journalist Australia has ever produced, and his ambitions of world domination have (thus far) been curbed by the twin siren songs of strategy games and CRPGs. He has always felt an affinity for the noble dachshund, the best kind of dog.
Thank goodness Remedy took full...uhm...control of its game now before the dumpster fires started.
Sounds like yet another publisher is going to rely on sequels and remakes and make very little new stuff.
I do miss the days when everyone and their mother didn't have a video game studio. Games got noticed and not everything had to be expensive AAAAAAAAA budget games to be successful.
As much as I hate seeing layoffs and closures, it's probably about time we had a trimmer video game industry so risks can be made that didn't get lost in the sea of games
If companies can't afford their staff or studios, why would they take on risky projects? It's worrying to see a tenth of devs at studios laid off and all the restructuring going on. Games are more expensive than ever to make, and the expectations of quality in production are higher than ever. So if you scale back, how can you achieve even that new 'baseline', let alone push the medium… I worry we may experience a plateau for a time
@zhoont yea, who's gonna make games without any people? It's a paradox.
It's weird they're doing this in an era where people are buying