Yes, capitalism in the form of "some people who don't do the work and don't understand the product make the key decisions and keep the profits" is a shitty system. A worker owner collective can have better outcomes.

Holy mother of based. I remember when I worked at Activision, and Toys for Bob got spun off by Microsoft. Before they became independent, I DM'd the studio heads articles about how to turn a company into a worker cooperative. Then in 2024 at GDC, there was a very large talk about worker cooperative game studios. I'm glad that this idea is becoming mainstream

They are right, a studio's name is meaningless if they gut it and thus remove the developers that put it on the map to begin with. I don't know why the developers aren't given more reputational value in games media.

Yeah never pull an unknown games. Subnautica makes the worst mistake by going to a publisher. Never give someone power over your ip when you know the default is to be malicious.

This is not just an issue in the Games industry.

I am always reminded of Steve Jobs' "The Lost Interview". In it he details how John Sculley took Apple's visionary tech innovation driven product culture and made "sales & marketing" the primary driver behind Apple. Almost leading to its total collapse. (Steve Jobs got re-hired to Apple shortly after that interview and turned it around.)

Any "manager" that believes they can effectively drive a technology driven company/department/team, without being an (active) engineer in heart and mind, will drive it into the ground.

And none of that, "I used to be a COBOL programmer for 2 years at the start of my career 40 years ago" malarkey. You lose the skills, you lose the mindset, you lose the ability to innovate in technology and will inevitably kill what you're selling with your "KPI's".