I used to work at DE. Still in the industry so I’m staying anonymous.
My buddy and I were just hearing more bad news out of DE and found ourselves looking online to see if anyone’s pieced together what’s happening behind the scenes. Yours is the first comment we’ve seen. Made this account to thank you. You’re spot on.
The “Devstream Steve” persona is definitely not the Steve devs know internally. Rebecca works overtime trying to keep him looking good to players (but I won’t knock her cause she’s just trying to keep the studio going). Probably the closest players ever got to seeing what he’s actually like was when he tried to cancel a big devstream last minute, making Rebecca do it solo, then randomly crashed it and just fucked with her. Devstream 133 if you want to look it up (that entire day was weird let me tell ya)
Things took a sharp turn when Steve became CEO. It wasn’t just Wayfinder getting the axe. Longtime Warframe devs were let go too. Basically anyone Steve might’ve seen as a threat over the years. A lot of those folks used to shield the rest of us from the worst of it, so losing them hit hard. Morale dropped off a cliff.
Plenty of us chose to walk not long after. Hard to say how much of what’s happening now is Steve or Tencent but Steve’s always had a way of setting things up so there’s a scapegoat. I’ve watched good people (even ones I thought he liked) get thrown under the bus for him.
The layoffs weren’t even the end of the cuts. He got rid of bonuses for a while too. There was a rumor going around that Steve and some of the devstream guys still got theirs, but no idea if that’s actually true. I think the rest of the team just recently started getting (smaller) bonuses again. At least there’s that.
Biggest issue is just the fear. Not everyone was lucky enough to find another job they could flee to.
The whole industry’s a mess right now, and nobody wants to speak up because it could mean never getting hired again. I heard a journalist tried reaching out to ex-employees for a story about Wayfinder, but no one wanted to go on record. Can’t really blame them. I feel for the folks burning out over at DE trying to meet pre-layoff outputs and hoping they don’t become Steve’s next target.
And all that is just scratching the surface. Damn this turned into a real rant.
Anyways thanks for caring and actually looking into things. Folks working on Warframe and Wayfinder both really need that right now.
Wow, just looked into it cuz I hadn’t heard about that. And yeah, it looks like that’s exactly what he did a month after becoming CEO. In fact it looks like they closed the entire publishing side of the company and possibly laid those employees off. Super disappointed to hear that from the studio behind such a beloved game
This is a bit frustrating to hear from him considering this is exactly what he did with Wayfinders when he became CEO.
I used to work at DE. Still in the industry so I’m staying anonymous.
My buddy and I were just hearing more bad news out of DE and found ourselves looking online to see if anyone’s pieced together what’s happening behind the scenes. Yours is the first comment we’ve seen. Made this account to thank you. You’re spot on.
The “Devstream Steve” persona is definitely not the Steve devs know internally. Rebecca works overtime trying to keep him looking good to players (but I won’t knock her cause she’s just trying to keep the studio going). Probably the closest players ever got to seeing what he’s actually like was when he tried to cancel a big devstream last minute, making Rebecca do it solo, then randomly crashed it and just fucked with her. Devstream 133 if you want to look it up (that entire day was weird let me tell ya)
Things took a sharp turn when Steve became CEO. It wasn’t just Wayfinder getting the axe. Longtime Warframe devs were let go too. Basically anyone Steve might’ve seen as a threat over the years. A lot of those folks used to shield the rest of us from the worst of it, so losing them hit hard. Morale dropped off a cliff.
Plenty of us chose to walk not long after. Hard to say how much of what’s happening now is Steve or Tencent but Steve’s always had a way of setting things up so there’s a scapegoat. I’ve watched good people (even ones I thought he liked) get thrown under the bus for him.
The layoffs weren’t even the end of the cuts. He got rid of bonuses for a while too. There was a rumor going around that Steve and some of the devstream guys still got theirs, but no idea if that’s actually true. I think the rest of the team just recently started getting (smaller) bonuses again. At least there’s that.
Biggest issue is just the fear. Not everyone was lucky enough to find another job they could flee to.
The whole industry’s a mess right now, and nobody wants to speak up because it could mean never getting hired again. I heard a journalist tried reaching out to ex-employees for a story about Wayfinder, but no one wanted to go on record. Can’t really blame them. I feel for the folks burning out over at DE trying to meet pre-layoff outputs and hoping they don’t become Steve’s next target.
And all that is just scratching the surface. Damn this turned into a real rant.
Anyways thanks for caring and actually looking into things. Folks working on Warframe and Wayfinder both really need that right now.
Wow, just looked into it cuz I hadn’t heard about that. And yeah, it looks like that’s exactly what he did a month after becoming CEO. In fact it looks like they closed the entire publishing side of the company and possibly laid those employees off. Super disappointed to hear that from the studio behind such a beloved game