Layoffs at Uber today?

Yep because at PA stage you really need concept artists. /s

Except for the people that were hired specifically to work on HR.

After reading the hate, I wanted to share my opinion

http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2ko9hw/layoffs_at_uber_ent_today/clnmwex

I hope the haters are happy now.

Hope jables didn't join Uber at the wrong time.

PA could absolutely make use of concept artists. There have been major complaints in reviews about the lack of interesting terrain features, units, the fact that there is only one faction, GW being a shadow of a complete single player game, gas giants, etc.

@cptconundrum Name the people who were hired to work on HR who did not work on PA (and yes, we all know Nate).

Name the people that were layed off that worked on PA?

Here's my thinking. HR was just a kickstarter pitch really - almost no development work was put in to it from a technical/art pov beyond the videos, because that would not have made sense. You don't hire people full-time just to work on a basic pitch (and it was clear how little went in to that Kickstarter too just judging purely by the outputs relating to HR). So there is no "separate team" - it has been and always was just the folk who worked on PA, and thus now what we are seeing is people who worked on PA being let go.

@Zainny

Why does it matter if they had worked on PA in the past, the fact is- they didn't when they moved to HR. There were two separate teams...

It should be obvious that there were people working on HR that had not worked on PA anyhow. As cola said, they were laid off.

GW cannot be fixed by art. It can be fixed by additional programmed mechanics. Multiple factions cannot be a thing, unless you add an upgrade system and everything else that bastardized Supcom2. Terrain and units doesn't consume a full team of asset devs and is not a bottleneck in creating units as much as programming new unit abilities like cloak.

Pretty much this. They were going to be layed off if they couldn't find a project that wasn't PA to occupy them. Post a picture of your business and business economics degree and then you get to say they could be useful on the current project. Well, they didn't find a project to use them up to their cost in upkeep, so we go back to plan A... if you can't reuse your spent resources, you recycle them back into the pool to be made into something else for some other use.

Why are you all so eager to create the narrative that only HR people were let go? It's like you all want to create this clear divide in your heads to protect the idea that PA will continue to be developed, when logically, it doesn't make much sense. I get it - you're emotionally invested in this game. But still...do you really think there was this separate ramped up team just for HR - which literally only produced one video? Do you think Uber hired full-time employees to produce one video and several paragraphs of text updates for a project that wasn't even funded? Really?

These people did work on PA. They were getting let go... into another division of Uber to work on HR.

Well, they were getting let go off of PA anyway. Now, they don't have another division of Uber to go to, no other job inside of Uber to be placed on. Since they can't get placed on the old finished job, since they were already dismissed from PA work, now they are just outright dismissed.

So, PA people were let go. They were let go and then reassigned to HR. HR didn't make it. HR people were then let go again, reassigned off of Uber entirely. I mean, you are right, and we are right, but it sucks that the bottom line had to be them getting let go from PA is a definite and being let go of HR is a shame.

THE BUSINESS STANDPOINT REMAINS WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT: Example, you are a construction worker. You do foundation work. Once the foundation is done, they can build the house on top. Once the frame is done, they can design rooms and wall them off, then paint and decorate.

Well, when you run out of land, you need less foundation people. You could use all of them to do continuously shrinking work, or you could save your company a longer existance by shrinking the staff to the work. Also, they don't let go of the wall and decor workers because houses can be rennovated with rearranged walls and rooms and color and decor numerous times, the foundation only needs laid once or at least 1/8th the time.

Anyone here work fast food before? When does your manager ever tolerate 4-8 people on the clock, and business is down to 4 customers an hour? I have never seen it from any fast food place, they closely measure and balance labor to sales.

Well yeah everyone at Uber probably has more or less contact with PA.
But it's really simple, as I said more people in a team has diminishing returns. As you and others constantly (happily?) state, PA isn't the best selling game there is. So Uber cannot sustain a big team on it and is cutting it down to the highest efficiency they can get per $. A year or so ago Uber hired more people to accelerate work (the lower efficiency of a big team was accepted to speed up development at additional cost) on PA, as sales were good. Now sales might not be as good anymore so they cant justify keeping the people they hired back then on PA.

Why are you and others so eager to constantly tell the whole world that Uber is making bad decisions and PA is a bad game? If PA is no fun to you and you think that will never change why do you waste your time on trying to hurt further development of PA by spreading negative publicity?
Can't you look for somebody you know in reality and focus your lust to search for mistakes on them?

No, I don't believe that. I'm near certain they had already began some form of work, why is that? Because it would be simple, they'd already had the engine up and running. I'm sure they had graphical artists making basic renders and possibly a few engineers working on making flat maps.

I don't see why you believe they won't continue development, considering they have been. All data we have right now supports the notion they'll continue development. They're track record does as well! What, blasphemy you might say, what of MNC and SMNC? Ah well... I want you to know that they worked on one of them (I believe MNC) for months after everyone stopped buying it, and they were completely bankrupt.

Armchair speculation about "what's next for Uber?" is an interesting subject, but you know this thread is going to be derailed into "I'm an Armchair CEO - Ask Me Anything!"

I will say though - Uber have never been quitters. I look forward to seeing their next move. I hope Uber finds a way to do a ton more with Planetary Annihilation. I was kinda hoping that the HR hopefuls would have moved on to improving the biomes...

Also, just because I like to NUKESPAM arguements like this, riddle me this:

You claim Uber is going to ween all it's staff off working on PA and abandon it ASAP if HR succeeded. Boycott. Success. HR failed.

Well, PA still released offline and ranked matchmaking, without the HR staff.

Well, PA is still planning and releasing patches, without the HR staff they said they would not need, via getting rid of that staff altogether.

Well, now you are wrong. So, you said we would never get offline, or servers, or ladders. That was wrong, you look like liars.

So, am I right, and your "safety net" is moving on from 1 lie to another, and saying "Despite PA delivering on continued content, that laying off staff is proof of failure"? Because, once this is proven a lie, and you are liars again, first for saying servers and ladders aren't coming, next for thinking the HR staff is just taking away development for PA, and soon to come for saying their loss is PA failing, then you will just look even worse.

Or you will just move on to another doomsayer prediction. I mean, if y2k didn't work, and 12/21/12 didn't work, then just create a new date and for some reason nobody will have the balls to criticize your bad previous predictions. On that note, why? Why does nobody call PA haters and end of world predictions out on their crappy wrong-till-this-very-date predictions?

@cola_colin I'm not trying to moderate you but this thread is starting to get into personal opinions and some really blunt and forward negative impact. I'd lock this down.

And this exists in another recent first thread. I'd lock this for the previous reason, then delete and warn any posts that start to spill into the other original and on topic thread that spill over from this one which was requested to stop and use the correct thread for the correct reason.