There has been a lot of negative reporting about the SF-MMO WildStar lately. Now, two of the responsible parties are speaking out.
In a conversation with eurogamer.net, two of the heads of Carbine Studios, Chad “Pappy” Moore and Mike Donatelli, discuss the negative headlines that WildStar has accumulated lately: The departure of prominent figures, complaints about bugs, allegedly declining player numbers, negative reports from former employees, and most recently, the layoff of 60 employees by the publisher NCSoft.
A lot of sales at launch, but then likely a significant decline
It all started so well. The launch of WildStar went excellently. They had no clear idea before the release of how often they would sell the game. Donatelli never thought, “Sure, we’ll hit a quarter of a million players.” Then they actually reached that number and exceeded it by far.
But after that, the conversation about WildStar, the hype surrounding the game, faded and disappeared.
Neither of the two wanted to comment on the current numbers of how many players WildStar still has. In a conversation a few weeks ago, they spoke vaguely about “several hundred thousand players,” so at least 200,000. NCSoft did not want to specify this number when asked by the US magazine massively.
271 employees before release – now 60 have been laid off
Recently, Mike Donatelli sat down and talked with the publisher of NCSoft. They are experts and specialize in MMOs. They believe in a future for the game and want to continue supporting WildStar. Carbine wants to hold the Korean publisher to that word, as stated in the conversation with eurogamer.
The layoffs at Carbine by NCSoft were confirmed by Donatelli. No official numbers were known before. According to a source from the US site Polygon, 60 employees of Carbine have been laid off. The number seems correct according to Donatelli: “So in that range, yes.” Before the launch of WildStar, they had significantly increased the team, at its peak employing 271 people.
Even now, hundreds are still working on WildStar. Layoffs are tough, but they are part of the business.
Negative employee reviews were the result of frustration over layoffs
The negative reports from former employees on the “Employees rate their company and management” site Glassdoor are, according to Chad Moore, also the result of these layoffs. They have nonetheless addressed each individual criticism, taken it seriously, and learned a lot from it. Overall, they have become a different, better studio since the launch of the game.
With the current update, they have primarily addressed the numerous bugs. Fixing them was a priority. Looking to the future and with the next content drop, they have set the goal of continuing to work on the game and, above all, offering more to solo players and smaller groups in the endgame. This is currently seen as the biggest challenge. Players should also be rewarded richer in WildStar.
On our WildStar topic page you can find a lot of information about the MMO, although – lately – often rather bad news. These have been dominant in recent months, as can be seen from the course of this conversation. Hopefully, happier times will come again soon.
