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| [Mar 15, 2012, 8:50 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments |
Obsidian's Chris Avellone indicated that Obsidian just missed a bonus for Fallout: New Vegas, reports Joystiq, saying this came in a tweet from a no longer existent account, allegedly saying: "[Fallout: New Vegas] was a straight payment, no royalties, only a bonus if we got an 85+ on Metacritic, which we didn't." Sure enough, the game currently sits at 84 on Metacritic. They also note their report of layoffs at Obsidian, though these are still unconfirmed. Thanks nin.
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| 47. |
Re: Fallout: New Vegas Bonus Missed by 1 Point; Obsidian Layoffs |
Mar 16, 2012, 04:34 |
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Cutter wrote on Mar 15, 2012, 22:02:
Well that's how it goes. Same in sports. Don't do enough of XYZ and no bonus for you. Given how much money they make with this sort of stuff anyway I doubt anyone is shedding any tears for them. There's a lot more money in sports.
Also, they'd probably have made a lot of money if they got ROYALTIES, except they didn't, just a flat payment. The people making the money and raking in the dough are at beth, not Obsidian.
If beth paid obsidian a flat fee of $20 million, and lets say that 100 out of the 135 employees worked on it for 2 years, then that's only $100k per year per employee who worked on it. Keep in mind that it costs a company roughly double to employ someone, so that means the employees would have to work for a salary of $50k. That doesn't count any other expenses such as keeping the company going, doesn't give them any extra money to survive on after completing the game, etc. Also keep in mind that obsidian has to farm out some of the work, such as the voice actors. Even if beth paid them $40 million, after counting the outsourcing and expenses and keeping the company running, pretty sure no one got rich on the proceeds at obsidian. If the company was running flush, they probably wouldn't be laying people off.
On the other hand, I'm certain some VPs in Beth are very very happy and got lots of bonuses with the millions of sales of the game, and all the DLC sales.
Dmitri_M wrote on Mar 16, 2012, 03:57:
Why didn't they just buy a couple of extra reviewers?
I thought that's what game companies did. Maybe thats what beth did... buy some reviewers... to keep the score low so they wouldn't have to pay the bonus.
I dunno, I doubt that happened, but who knows.
jdreyer wrote on Mar 15, 2012, 22:56:
In the movie industry no one cares if a movie scores terribly on Rottentomatoes or Metacritic, as long as it makes $$$. Do you think studios are NOT throwing money at Michael Bay, for example? Or there's the case of Peter Jackson where newline didn't want to pay the percentage of the profit that his contract specified, so they claimed that they didn't owe him anything since all three Lord of the Rings movies supposedly didn't actually make a single dollar in profit (aka hollywood math).
This comment was edited on Mar 16, 2012, 04:50. |
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