The main thing for the weekend (October 7-8)
CD PROJEKT employees joined a trade union, more than 11 million people played at EA Sports FC 24 during the week, there were rumors that the text apologizing for the unsuccessful release of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was written by AI, — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.
Employees of CD PROJEKT and a number of other Polish studios have created a trade union called Związek Pracowników Branży Gier — the union of workers of the Polish gaming industry. It was decided to form it after CD PROJEKT announced a reduction of 9% of the staff in July 2023. The union wants to achieve improvements in working conditions at gaming companies and the ability to make games in a "stable, fair, diverse and healthy environment." The statement of the trade union emphasizes that representatives of all professions can join it, the main condition is to work in the gaming field.
The developers of Just Cause have also joined the trade union movement. More than 100 Avalanche Studios employees have joined the Swedish Unionen trade union. According to IGN, among other things, they want to negotiate with the studio management to switch to a four-day working week.
▪️After the release of the disastrous stealth action The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, Daedalic Entertainment studio apologized for the "negative impressions" that users had. But there is a caveat. Sources of the German edition of Game Two claim that the text of the apology was written by the chatbot ChatGPT. In addition, the statement of apology was allegedly prepared by the publisher of the game Nacon, and Daedalic Entertainment did not see it before publication. The interlocutors of Game Two also reported that the budget for the development of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum amounted to € 15 million. According to the former technical director of the studio, Paul Schulze, the game turned out to be of poor quality largely due to lack of funds. The developers didn't have enough time either. Due to the rush, they had to, in particular, hide a number of characters so as not to animate them, and cut out several cut scenes.
▪️Electronic Arts shared the success of its new games. She announced that in its debut week, EA Sports FC 24 attracted 11.3 million people, including EA Play subscribers. For comparison, 10.3 million people tried FIFA 23 in the week after its release. Electronic Arts also said that EA SPORTS FC Mobile was downloaded 2.2 million times on the first day, and 11.2 million times in ten days.
In six months, Dredge's gloomy fishing simulator has sold more than a million copies. This result turned out to be much higher than the authors of the game expected. In an interview with the Game Developer portal, Dredge producer Mikey Bastiaens admitted that they expected to sell only 100,000 copies in the first year.
