It's no lie that the gaming industry in recent years has been crushing. You can do a good job, a bad job, a medium job—it doesn't matter, the sword of Damocles can plunge at any moment. I won't go into my list of examples, partially because I've shared them before, but also because I've got some actual honest-to-god good news. The Lies of P devs not only released a successful expansion, but were then rewarded for it. Imagine!
Per Korean site Thelec (via VGC), Lies of P's recent DLC, Overture, has sold like hotcakes. Three million hotcakes, to be exact—to celebrate, publisher Neowiz has given its employees some solid bonuses.
All staff in developer Round8 Studio—and the publisher's own Lies of P wing—will reportedly get a $7,300 bonus (10 million South Korean won), two weeks' additional paid vacation, and a Switch 2 console.
The report states that this isn't just due to the sales' figures, but also its solid critical reception. The DLC is currently "very positive" on Steam, and has achieved a Metascore of 84 alongside a 7.5 user score on Metacritic.
Honestly, given the amount of times I've seen games—even ones that've done decently for themselves—come out, only for their developers to be shown the door thereafter? This news is a soothing balm to my cooked mind.
That's not to make assumptions that Neowiz is a saint among publishers or anything, and South Korean game development has had its horror stories as well, but it's a solid green flag.
It's become a sad adage in the developer community that "making good, profitable games will no longer keep you safe"—a statement which still continues to hold water.
And while being rewarded for doing a good job is great, I'd also personally like to stop seeing people scrabbling for livelihoods because of missed marks (typically due to mismanagement), or simply being under the shadow of huge $68 billion acquisitions that see you punted out of a studio mid-project before you've even had a chance to prove yourself.
Today, though? The Round8 Studio dev team gets a just reward for a solid DLC. This should be the norm, not the exception—but I'm glad it's happened, anyway.
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