PS5's once best free-to-play game is everything that's wrong with the industry

The industry is in crisis, with news of lay-offs, studio closures, and pulled funding surfacing on a near daily basis.

Xbox is the latest industry giant to hit the headlines with new CEO Asha Sharma vowing to cut the company’s headcount by 3,200 throughout the next financial year with 1,600 staff almost immediately let go.

Xbox has parted ways with Compulsion Games and Double Fine which are, thankfully, set to remain open independently.

Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are reportedly set to be acquired by new buyers with Arkane Lyon’s fate hanging in the balance.

ID Software staff say their studio has been “nuked into the dirt” while Bethesda’s team say The Elder Scrolls VI “will suffer” because of the lay-offs.

READ MORE: The Elder Scrolls 6 launch window revealed as lay-offs push game out of touching distance

Obsidian has been pulled from a supposed Avowed sequel, instead now forced to work on a new Fallout entry. It’s a bloodbath.

Xbox Game Studios

Xbox has acquired tons of studios in recent years - the most notable being Activision for $75.4 billion - without effectively reaping any benefits.

The more layers of management, the more studios seem to be creatively stifled. Toys For Bob was pretty keen to break away from Activison Blizzard after its acquisition.

It’s not a problem unique to Xbox. PlayStation spent $3.7 billion acquiring Bungie and what does it have to show for it?

Destiny 2 is now dead, with no sign that Destiny 3 is in development, and Marathon is on its last legs with all-time record low player numbers.

Sony has since laid off a large chunk of Bungie’s staff. Of course, the industry wouldn’t have the AAAs gamers desire if the whole set up was independent.

But I highly doubt it's controversial or unpopular to suggest that the industry was all the better before the last five years’ obsession with acquisitions came into effect.

Acquiring independent studios always seems to end in disaster

Previously-independent studios are now lucky to end up back where they started, as independents. Many, of course, have been shuttered entirely like Bluepoint at PlayStation.

When giants like PlayStation and Xbox had a smaller pool of first-party studios, those studios seemed to flourish.

You can’t necessarily blame Naughty Dog’s lack of new releases this generation on PlayStation’s prior obsession with acquisitions, but you do have to question how the stretched management and funding factors in.

Today’s industry usually ends up with developers feeling the brunt of bad news and, of course, our thoughts remain with all those affected by ongoing industry volatility.

Fall Guys is the one that hurts the most for me, ruined by acquisition

You can't blame players for being frustrated with the state of the industry though, and I use Fall Guys as a key example.

This unassuming little bean battle royale was once my favourite game and now, it hardly registers in my mind.

That’s not because I chose to move on from Fall Guys; it forced me to move on. I’d pick up Mediatonic’s delightful creation every single day, spending unspeakable hours trying to get the golden hotdog skin during Glizzy Gang events.

It was my go-to game when I just wanted to relax, unwind, and zone out. Every new season brought new levels and thus new challenges.

As the level pool got bigger, old tried and tested levels began to feel new again because they’d come in up rotation less often. It was, for me, a perfect game.

Until it wasn’t. Fall Guys was snatched up by Epic Games in 2021 and, well, let’s just say that many of the game’s key developers have since moved onto pastures new.

First began the monetisation. Fall Guys launched as both a paid title and PlayStation Plus freebie before it went free-to-play.

Going free-to-play took some of the fun out of the game. Cosmetics you’d previously be able to buy using crowns (earned from winning) suddenly required you to purchase in-game currency.

Epic Games

Eventually though, Epic just gave up on Fall Guys.

Instead of launching new levels and themed seasons, it put all of its efforts into formulating a level creator and from then on, Fall Guys players have been pretty much doing the work.

Player levels are … fine … but they don’t have the excitement and depth of a whole dev-created season.

Then, dev levels started getting vaulted for extremely long periods of time. The once growing level pool was whittled down to just a repetitive few in rotation.

Every wrong decision was made and the players left in their droves. At the time of writing, Fall Guys has a Steam 24-hour peak of 631 players. Its all-time peak is 172,213.

It feels like a dead man walking and you can’t help but stop to think what could have been had it stayed independent under Mediatonic’s control with assistance from original publisher Devolver.

Everyone will have a similar case study of, ‘What if?’ It could be Destiny 2, Redfall, or perhaps even Minecraft.

When the dust has settled and the game industry's big corporations even out their finances, I can only hope we go back to a simpler time.

Yes, AAAs are important and have a place in our industry, but it’s about time that powerhouses fostered their heritage studios and left everyone else alone to do their own thing.