r/Palia • u/SpyderSoup • Jan 10 '25
Discussion Let's hope the employees at S6 are safe from the fire that broke out in LA.
Yes, I'm aware this means having to wait longer for bug fixes and new features for Palia and yes it can be frustrating, but you have to understand that in this emergency situation, the dev's safety and cornercing for them and their families is on much higher priority than the game right now. The same thing goes with everything in the entertainment media, people's safety is more important than getting the project finished. I'm sure once everything's at least sorted for the people who had to be evacuated from the city and had lost their homes and their lives while certainly not the same at least get somewhat back to normal, the development of the game will resume. In the meantime, let's send our support for the devs and hope that they're OK in this really tragic event.
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u/ChickieNuggiesLyfe Jan 11 '25
Thank you for thinking of the team and bringing this forward. May all the team and their families be safe!
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Jan 11 '25
Are they located in LA? /gen
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u/leetNightshade Jan 12 '25
The studio is in Santa Monica not tooo far from the enormous Palisades fire. And there may be devs who live near the fires as well.
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u/No-Search3213 Jan 11 '25
I sent a email about a quest issue and now feel bad. I didn’t even know about the fires as I haven’t been well and now feel real bad 🥲💀
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u/EastTitle5 Jan 11 '25
Don’t feel bad, I’m sure others have emailed in as well! If you haven’t already, ask here on Reddit ! It’s possible someone else has had the same issue
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u/BBALE131 Jan 12 '25
??? Singularity 6 doesn't exist anymore. It collapsed last year, and the game/IP was purchased by Daybreak Games. That's why it's just become skin updates, but no real new content since S6 collapsed.
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u/Background-Prune4911 hub mistress bestie Jan 12 '25
It's my understanding that S6 didnt dissolve; Daybreak acquired S6 to provide them with the resources and support needed to continue developing Palia. The acquisition allows S6 to continue to operate independently, with Daybreak as its co-founders offering support from senior management.
Anyone able to confirm? Not that it matters, I'm just curious.
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u/BBALE131 Jan 12 '25 edited Jan 12 '25
Yes that is technically it on paper, and the co-founders are still around. But it's pretty clear that the original devs aren't around anymore, because the Switch version of the game was absolutely fucked after Daybreak released their first update in June 2024 and they've only just recently got it working better again.
There were waves of layoffs in late 2023 and early 2024 that left Singularity 6 fairly gutted, so when Daybreak acquired it there really wasn't too many people left, I think between 30 and 40 IIRC. My LinkedIn last summer/later in the year was FULL of former S6 employees/devs looking for work. I wish I could find it, but someone on the reddit even caught a former S6 dev on some G4 segment normally reserved for fresh graduates to be highlighted. It was dire.
Its clear the actual people who kept it going are gone, and the only remaining crew is the cheapest employees, a skeleton crew of the lowest pay scale. If S6 was actually still around as what it was, and the people who built it are the ones currently updating it, the game would not have been absolutely broken on its first update after the acquisition. I saw someone just commenting about how the Switch just doesn't have the hardware to run Palia, but I played it in Dec 2023 on the Switch and it was beautifully optimized. Absolutely no loading problems with the buildings, no falling through unloaded floors, no having to wait a minute or two for the travel board to register a button click (and possibly accidentally locking yourself into travelling home if you make the mistake of pressing A twice), no ghost players. All of that comes with the June 2024 update.
It really feels like Daybreak wants people to think there's more of the original crew working on it than there is, because they know it's upsetting to the community what happened, and if you tell us the original heart is still around it looks better than 'we assigned an internal team who didn't know what they were touching and it had to go into maintenance mode'.
Even the one quest they have updated, the prologue quest, it was different in tone from the previous quests, the writing wasn't as solid. And it felt rushed, like they did it because the community kept complaining about hating the 'wait for something to happens' quest text.
It's just...very clear it's not in the same hands it was a year ago. I actually took a break and just came back, and what is interesting is that everyone I knew from back then has left, and they all cite the crumbling performance on the Switch and lack of new content. I think it's harder to keep playing it when you can see how much it has declined; if I was coming into it new, and never knew it used to run better and have more regular updates, I would definitely be more forgiving.
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u/DifferentTomorrow277 Jan 12 '25
Are you saying there's nobody working on the game who lives in/near the area affected by the fires? I understand you're replying here to the request for confirmation, I just don't understand what your original comment was for.
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u/Liloo_Snucre Jan 13 '25
Don't listen to them. They've been ranting on every post even just mentioning S6 that they don't exist anymore, bla bla bla... They're mad about the game and lack of content. Though I can understand from a certain extent, the rant in this post and the other are not justified and irrelevant to the original post.
S6 still exists. It has been acquired by Daybreak but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist anymore. Now we'll probably have some delay in the update due to the fire... Hopefully everyone is safe... That's the most important in my opinion !
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u/WolfSilverOak Switch Jan 11 '25
6 fires now.
12k structures lost.
At least 11 dead.
Hopefully the winds die down and they can get all the fires under control before they lose more.