Niantic to lay of 8% of staff - Is the Ingress team affected?
InvestigateXM
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I assume that the Ingress team cannot comment on internal matters that much, but it would be reassure a lot of people if we'd know if any of the Ingress team is affected by the lay offs.
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really sad to hear they cut so many. ☹️ hope ingress live for many more years
The canceled projects include Heavy Metal, a Transformers game that Niantic announced last year, and Hamlet, a collaboration between Niantic and Punchdrunk, the theatrical company behind the popular interactive play Sleep No More. The other two projects were called Blue Sky and Snowball.
Disclaimer: Just my opinion, you can disagree or agree but just stating out the below points.
Doubt that ingress will be cancelled(for now):
Reason 1 : year X pack still on going
Reason 2 : Upcoming sony X ingress collaboration
Reason 3: Events were announced for Q3
Reason 4: With the recent start up purchases, they might decide to close down some of the project (it might not be game projects, rather other form of business projects) from those startup to streamline their business.
Though in terms of staff wise, given that it's a small team(20 the last I recall), assuming the worst case scenario based on % it could be at most 1-2 staff who got let go from the team(which I hope not).
Seriously? That's shocking, they've been making millions to billions
Peoples salaries costs a lot.
But glad to see that Ingress has survived the cull, again.
Well if those salaries actually went towards developing something that players want.. wild idea, heh?
Ingress soon will be turned off with the help of the kitera mechanism. It is clear and true. There is no plot for a long time, new updates are not planned, and the fact that there are no next events announced after the summer anomaly is another confirmation of the above. and ingress almost does not bring profit.
Might I suggest that you change your agent name to OneNoteVam? Or perhaps find a different deceased equine to flagellate?
Move them to ingress and pokemon go then, they clearly need more help with stopping the bugs and adding innovations. In this current climate, it's a bad thing releasing workers
Nothing material is eternal, ingress too.
There will be a "Finale" anomaly for the year 10 anniversary.
It will only be hosted in one location, everyone has to fight over a single battle beacon portal.
The ENL will win.
The reward for ENL winning will be the game is shut down. Congratulations for winning!
We will have never witnessed an ENL XM color on the ground or a badge for winning a series, still.
Not quite sure why it's shocking any more to people that companies that make money like to reduce the largest expense on their books, people. That's how you make more money without new products.
Seems about on par with our usual rewards for winning.
So, not a great surprise. TBH the PoI database, is really only suited to games like Ingress where it's more strategy than anything else.
Wizards was OK, but it's like a artificial squeeze to shove "Towers" all over the place and pubs like that. It always felt like an awkward fit.
Pokemon, not so bad, they spawn all over the place and yeah maybe "gyms" are too numerous for realism, its a much more artificial situation in the first place. I'm still not actually sure what Pokestop is but its a made up thing anyway so the fits not as bad.
Ingress has been interesting with the growth in portal density. IMHO the huge increase over 10 years ago is a negative, it's starting to feel more false without the storyline tie in especially. (IE X change has led to increased leaks of XM into the world, or acts of creativity and leading to more leakage).
(IE they were special places before where XM leaked into the world etc). Now we have every friggin street tile, lamp pole, traffic control box etc...
For play, useful. For game design/lore, not so good.
Try not to be too flabbergasted to see Ingress being shutdown in the future even if you see things are still being sold in Ingress shop and don't think it possible. Companies in recession would do anything.
*Laughs sarcastically //Russian agent
@Pixelbytes Another reason Ingress is relatively in clear waters: Ingress is no purchased franchise, it's of their own creation. They don't need to pay license fees to the likes of Warner Bros, J.K. Rowling, Hasbro, Nintendo, Pokemon company, etc.
I wonder how things will be when the Wayfarer app gets released, though. Maybe there's one little less reason to keep Ingress afloat, although PoGo has taken on many Wayfarer functions already, with much larger audience..
We could get creative with the de.ath of ingress.
Year 10 could introduce a new virus that starts taking out portals one by one until none are left. OPR disabled for ingress.
Ingress will be the last to go, where else will Niantic find thousands of willing beta testers?!
I'm honestly surprised they haven't leveraged us more for new ideas. We are the original free testbed for the company. some of us balk at scanning, while others go overboard. Same for portal reviewing or submitting, ect.
I don't think Ingress is likely to be shut down but it will spend a lot of time in maintenance mode with minimal attention, not much in the way of new development except to test stuff before it gets rolled out to other games, minimal events that are either automated or are player-driven...
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So like those few years where nothing really happened with the game? Grind on!
Sadly, I wish it wouldn't collapse their posts and just make it seem like they never existed.
Step outside of Russia, you'll see the game working
Without going to political, I'd guess its cause I'm "left wing" amd think that people, workers, should matter more than making more profit than you already make when the profit being made is already obscene
Oh, I don't disagree with the moral aspect. But I'm just surprised that people are 'shocked'.
@gazzas89 How much profit do you think Niantic is making? They're privately held so I well and truly have no idea.