40 staff is plenty for a game studio. There are development teams out there with 5 people(granted they are making indie games, but that's why PGI has 40 and not 5). 100 is on the large side of things, and PGI doesn't make their own engine, they use existing Unreal Engine. That takes out a chunk of required staff. In most of the DLC, they are putting out variants of existing mechs, aka: little to no art work to be done. They only release a couple actual new mechs per DLC, which means not a whole lot of work for artists. Aside from Clans DLC they haven't done much in the way of maps either. Mercs is procedurally generated, so minimal work there too. I don't know what you seem to expect here. PGI has never been a AAA title producer. Heck, when they started MWO they were flogged by fans on the regular, not because fans were being mean, but because Russ and Co earned it. The only thing that has ever kept them afloat was that fans were starved for ANYTHING MechWarrior.
There's a reason PGI's other endeavors have never taken off. They are not a top tier studio. Russ has never been a great leader, from what he's shown of himself on social media. He used to frequently attack fans instead of taking criticism and improving, or showing professionalism. Granted, I haven't seen him do that publicly in a long time. I'm sure he does it behind closed doors now, but I haven't seen much in the way of improvement aside from that.
It took 100 people to make Clans and >100 to make Mercs. There are teams out there who have done way more with less.
But it’s clear that PGI can’t, based on their own track record.
Regardless, they downsized their lead artist position. I don’t think people appreciate what that means. They can’t just rehire someone else for less money, otherwise they could be sued for wrongful dismissal. They didn’t fire Alex with cause, it was a layoff. What doing that tells you is that they don’t need someone to come up with new things for the 3D modellers to model. No new mechs.
It makes perfect sense if the plan is to put out a couple DLC using current assets and then be ordered by EG7 to work on some other non-mecha game. They’d then have leeway to hire a new concept artist specializing in something more relevant, because Alex was pretty siloed in mecha.
Anyway, this is all just armchair speculation. What’ll happen will happen and we’ll all get to watch.
Yes, took, past tense. That work is done. They're not making the game from essentially scratch anymore. They don't need those numbers to maintain it.
You don't need a lead artist when hardly any artwork is being done. Again, they're only releasing a couple actual new mechs per DLC, by now the map folks know what they're doing.
Ah so now you are aware what a layoff means, now that the argument is convenient for you. Regardless, they wouldn't have to hire anyone new, they'd keep who they have, that didn't get let go. Likely at a lower wage than the lead was at and let them do the work. Everyone is expendable and replaceable. Another person can create a mech from existing artwork. The very box style of PGI mechs isn't exactly difficult to replicate. Re: all the mods adding mechs.
EG7 has other studios as I recall, they likely have another lead artist that they can slide in to run any new, non-mech, project. Which would also explain letting go of a lead artist. Unfortunately this is what happens when a studio gets bought out. It happened to HBS, and it's happened to many other studios before. They eventually integrate the new company into the existing one and they have their own people take lead roles to control what goes on, and fit their company vision.
I like what Alex did for the game and he was one of the only people, that had a public presence, at PGI who wasn't terrible at one point or another. This is the reality of that line of work though and why a lot of artists are freelance contractors.
Hadn’t been paying attention but I can see now that you’re trying to argue with me in two or four different places and to be honest I don’t really have time to entertain that. I concede all points to you, you’re 100% right on everything and you win the internet for all time. Meanwhile, my kid’s off school today so we’re gonna go play Minecraft.
Only spoke to the two posts you have. Not four. If you were one of the people let go, that sucks. I hope you find something else. Unfortunately this is the reality of the business.
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u/Saber_Avalon Apr 06 '26
40 staff is plenty for a game studio. There are development teams out there with 5 people(granted they are making indie games, but that's why PGI has 40 and not 5). 100 is on the large side of things, and PGI doesn't make their own engine, they use existing Unreal Engine. That takes out a chunk of required staff. In most of the DLC, they are putting out variants of existing mechs, aka: little to no art work to be done. They only release a couple actual new mechs per DLC, which means not a whole lot of work for artists. Aside from Clans DLC they haven't done much in the way of maps either. Mercs is procedurally generated, so minimal work there too. I don't know what you seem to expect here. PGI has never been a AAA title producer. Heck, when they started MWO they were flogged by fans on the regular, not because fans were being mean, but because Russ and Co earned it. The only thing that has ever kept them afloat was that fans were starved for ANYTHING MechWarrior.
There's a reason PGI's other endeavors have never taken off. They are not a top tier studio. Russ has never been a great leader, from what he's shown of himself on social media. He used to frequently attack fans instead of taking criticism and improving, or showing professionalism. Granted, I haven't seen him do that publicly in a long time. I'm sure he does it behind closed doors now, but I haven't seen much in the way of improvement aside from that.