ZombiePie

I can ping @dtoast to look at this for you.

1. Rollerdrome

2. Turnip Boy

Thanks for pointing that out! I made a typo.

In a move resulted in a collective double-take, Love Live! School idol festival 2 MIRACLE LIVE!, a new entry in the Love Live! rhythm and J-Pop idol simulation series, was announced to be getting a global release with a full English localization. However, the announcement simultaneously revealed that Love Live! School idol festival 2 MIRACLE LIVE! would also have its global servers shutdown on May 31st, 2024. It's... simply the most bonkers wild video game announcement I have ever seen. @marino is the arbiter of the wiki page for Announced and Released on the Same Day wiki page on the site, but I have no idea if this is a concept page that deserves to be added. Unless I am wrong, no other game has ever been "Announced and Discontinued on the Same Day."

You currently need to pre-register to be able to play the game while it is active, and there's even an official Twitter account for the game. Is something afoul? The most likely theory posited to explain this turn of events is that the game's global release is being done to fulfill contractual obligations, but by the time the localization of the original Japanese was complete, the game was flagged for obsolescence. Such is how things are in the fickle world of mobile and gacha games.

If you wish to learn more about what this series is about, we have a shockingly detailed wiki page for Love Live! School Idol Festival, which is the first entry in the School Idol Festival sub-series in the greater Love Live! universe/franchise.

Bumping a thread over ten years old, for the CBS-era video player, which no longer exists, is neither helpful nor assistive. As this thread was connected to something that no longer exists, this thread is being locked.

Kotaku recently published a gut-wrenching article that annotated every single studio closure or layoff announcement in the game development industry and in gaming-related companies in 2024 thus far. There are a few themes with the cuts and layoffs in January. In the gaming adjacent businesses, most, including Twitch and Discord, have admitted that their pandemic-informed growth targets and projects were unsustainable. In terms of the industry, the cuts are starting to shift to international businesses, though a soul-crushing number of layoffs still centered in the US game development sphere. A handful of developers cutting staff came from South Korea where mobile games are cooling and investments into the Metaverse have not delivered. Concerns about the Japanese mobile and gacha market are looming but have yet to translate into any major collapses or layoffs.

Nonetheless, the list of cuts and layoffs in January as of the publishing on this thread are:

• Archiact - Unknown Number Of Impacted Employees - Developer of Doom 3 VR port.
• Bossa Studios - 19 Impacted Employees - Only 40 employees remain and all are dedicated to Lost Skies
• Unity Software - 1,800 Impacted Employees - Layoffs have cut approximately 25% of all staff remaining after 2023's cuts and layoffs.
• Twitch - 500 Impacted Employees - Cuts eliminated approximately 35% of Twitch's total staff and the CEO continues to maintain Twitch is not profitable.
• Playtika - 300-400 Impacted Employees - Israeli mobile game developer.
• Discord - 170 Impacted Employees - Cuts represent approximately 17% of the company's total employees. CEO admits that Discord try to do "too many projects" since 2020.
• Lost Boys Interactive - 125 Impacted Employees - Layoffs impacted "all disciplines at all levels" in this Gearbox-owned subsidiary.
• Funselektor - 3 Impacted Employees - Small indie developer of art of rally.
• PTW (aka Pole To Win) - 45 Impacted Employees - Q&A contractor that has worked for Blizzard & Capcom. Mostly impacting employees oyutside of the United States but in "several countries."
• Thunderful/Thunderful Group - 20% Of Staff Or At Least 100 Impacted Employees - Swedish video game holding company and domestic rival to Embracer.
• Pixelberry Studios - Unknown Number Of Impacted Employees - Nexon-owned mobile game developer that shutdown servers for their game, High School Story.
• Netspeak Games - 25 Impacted Employees - Studio behind Sunshine Days, set to release in Q1 2024.
• Wimo Games - 35 Impacted Employees & Complete Studio Shutdown - Studio behind RPG Dice: Heroes of Whitestone, Battle Bows, and Micro Machines: Mini Challenge Mayhem.
• Behaviour Interactive - 45 Impacted Employees - The studio behind Dead By Daylight and claims the cuts represent "less than 3% of our total workforce."
• CI Games - Cutting 10% Of Staff (Estimated To Be Around 15-20 Impacted Employees) - Developers behind Lords of the Fallen, Hexworks and Sniper Ghost Warrior, Underdog, are reportedly being impacted are targeted in these layoffs.
• 31st Union - ~10 Or Fewer Impacted Employees - This 2K-owned subsidiary claims only "a very small number of team members" are being laid off.
• Com2uS - "a two-digit number of people" Impacted - A Korean mobile and online game developer and the cuts are largely do to a cooling of expectations on Metaverse expectations and a lagging South Korean economy.
• Metaverse World (Netmarble F&C) - 70 Impacted Employees - A South Korean metaverse-focused subsidiary that has been completely liquidated.
• Ntreev Soft (NCSoft) - 70 Impacted Employees - NCSoft has laid off all employees at its Ntreev Soft subsidiary and prior to this shutdown three of its mobile titles, Trickster M, Pro-Baseball H2, and Pro-Baseball H3.
• Riot Games - 530 Impacted Employees - Cuts represent 11% of Riot's workforce and Riot Forge will shutdown in Feb. 2024. Riot promised "a minimum six-month severance pay, a cash bonus equal to their 2023 Annual Performance Bonus, a laptop, job placement services, and access to their work email for a limited time after termination"
• One Player Mission - 15 Impacted Employees & Complete Studio Closure- A video game recruitment agency that had been in operation for 26 years.
• People Can Fly - 30+ Impacted Employees (And Growing) - Scope of Outriders is being scaled back and reports indicate that 20 remaining staff at the Polish developer have been migrated to other projects instead of Outriders previously announced revitalization project/roadmap, "Project Gemini."
• Black Forest Games - ~50 Impacted Employees- Cuts represent 50% of total workforce. Insider source told Kotaku that "creative directors and most “if not all” of the managers will keep their jobs"
• Microsoft - 1,900 Impacted Employees - Approximately 8.6% of Microsoft's "gaming workforce." Cuts primarily impacts Activision-Blizzard and Blizzard president Mike Ybarra and chief design officer Allen Adham have left the company.
• Reikon Games - About 60 to 70 Impacted Employees - Approximately 80% of the studio's workforce. Studio's last release was Ruiner in 2017.
• Little Red Dog Games - 27 Impacted Employees & Complete Studio Shutdown - Indie studio behind Rogue State Revolution.

Unofficial estimates indicate as many as 9,000 people in the games industry were laid off in 2023. With these cuts in just the first month of 2024, the new year does not look like it will be any better for individuals not in the highest and most-protected echelons of the industry. That's especially the case when insiders are apparently telling corporate leaders in the industry to prepare for "two years of pain" regardless if the United States and world markets ebb into a recession or not. To highlight, here's what one such insider and a studio boss had to say about the financial prospects of the industry heading into 2024:

The video game industry and its supporting beneficiaries echo resounding and overwhelming cuts in technology this year. For example, Google has laid off around 1,000 employees in January of 2024 alone, though its attempts to introduce layoffs in South Korea are being met with massive resistance. Cuts in legacy media this year have also been especially brutal with Pitchfork being subsumed into CG, National Geographic discontinuing newsstand sales, and Sports Illustrated firing its entire editorial staff. Also, Giant Bomb's former owner, Red Ventures is attempting to explore a sale of CNET and other CBS/Viacom websites it purchased in 2020 for $500 million. Axios reports that they are attempting to "to get at least half of that for CNET alone."

Unfortunately, in this specific case, after referring to @dtoast, this is a problem on YouTube's end and there's no real remedy for videos that got blocked on YouTube due to music copyright issues or DMCA. Even if the video was fine for years on YouTube, a music rights holder likely ran an algorithm or bot and automatically flagged it to be taken down.

@calvinball: I have pinged @dtoast for you.

@blitzfitness: got word from Jan that Tam and Lucy are definitely going and will be chatting with folks. Maybe you will see some things from them, but that seems like the ceiling.

This, combined with Condé Nast folding Pitchfork into GQ, thereby stripping one of the last stalwarts of traditional music media coverage, has been a complete bummer. I'm not saying that Pitchfork and SI are perfect, but losing them as resources is gut-wrenching. If this news does not scare you even a little; it is time to wake up. Go out there and find out what your local newspaper is and start subscribing.

Brooks and Capehart on PBS, both journalists that work in traditional media, and I get one of those is NOT GREAT, made the point that traditional media, when applied under the expectations of modern capitalism only survives if it held under a benevolent overlord/billionaire. Likewise, without regulations on ChatGPT and other AI algorithms, the work of actual journalists is bound to be regurgitated, without credit, to people for free with no context of the hard work that went into that information.