Talking about the Hi-Rez layoffs...

My heart goes out to all those who lost their jobs today and I hope they know we all appreciate the work they put in, regardless of their position at the company. Please keep things civil in the comments!

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► Outro Song: Allen Lande - The Forgotten Ones

[Intersct]

My heart goes out to all those who lost their jobs today and I hope they know we all appreciate the work they put in, regardless of their position at the company. Please keep things civil in the comments!

[thatnickwalker]

Man I can't believe Tina is gone :/

[Magnum__Dong]

I'm not surprised. Hi Rez is doing a horrible job handling Smite. Won't be surprised if 2024 ends up being one of the worst years financially for Hi Rez.

They should have never made Smite 2 public. They were never going to attract new players with paid early access when the game is lacking so much when compared to the F2P Smite 1.

Killing off the Smite 1 pro league but doing tournaments for Smite 2 alpha just feels like a bad move. Smite 2 is not in a state where competitive play can be taken seriously.

Essentially the Smite 2 announcement caused people to lose interest in Smite 1 and Smite 2 is not in a state where it can attract new players. At the rate that they are adding gods to Smite 2, it will take over 3 years for them to add all current Smite 1 gods to Smite 2.

Smite 1 does need the engine upgrade but they should have announced it once it was ready for open beta, not after a small dev team created what was essentially a proof of concept.

[jtak]

everyone i knew including myself kinda expected something like this to happen. Smite had a niche following of players and they announced smite 2 wanting that niche following and new players to come in. but all thats happening is both games are now slowly bleeding players. I understand they wanted to revitalize the community but im not sure if this was the way

[wandererchan]

People need to understand that Epic DOES NOT support unreal engine 3 at all. It using program language that is not used any where else(unreal scripts). The current unreal engine 3 is heavily modded. I am pretty sure Hirez was the one trying to keep the engine alive without proper support from Epic. Plus programmers are not learning unreal scripts no more. No point in it, being it not supported by Epic.

[RexToeEnjoyer]

Yikes. Not surprised seeing as the CEO has shown on multiple occasions his incompetence.

[fatcat]

DOTA 2 and League of Legends: Does absolutely nothing, millions of dollars and players
Hi-TitanForge-Rez: make half a dozen trend chasing cash grabs that all flop instead of supporting their main game, make sequel to their main game instead of upgrading or supporting the original, dies.
How?

[dangerbeans]

I'm not surprised. So many people have been playing Smite for so long and invested so much time and money into that game that it's a hard sell to leave all that behind for a sequel. Esspeccially a sequel that doesn't have all the cosmetics that Smite has.

[Godfadda]

Love it when he says that its his responsibility these people got laid off but Im sure upper management didnt get cut at all.

[johnnyshoes]

Ive been saying ever since they announced smite 2 that it was going to be released too early and they needed to wait and keep people entertained with smite 1 for a while until smite 2 was actually ready

[Jimmyvdpost]

Never gonna work. Better start posting about other games soon Inters3ct. Sad for all of the people who got fired.

[ibrosyndicate]

While this is incredibly unfortunate news for those affected at least we know the company is focusing on what really matters, content. The fact that cross gen skins have been made for gods that aren't even in smite 2 yet is a massive mismanagement. Hopefully this restructuing will get smite 2 on track.

[Ninkavbed]

I doubt it’s a “heart breaking decision” it’s probably just to save money but what can you expect from a company like hi rez I’ve always hated this company. They never give back to content creators that keep their games relevant. They also have been fumbling for many years now like realm royale they heads at hi rez are really out of touch with their game communities. I feel bad for the ppl getting laid off. I hope the best for the people getting laid off . Hi rez is gonna get karma served so hard in the future. Support the creators and devs not the soulless corporation that just wants your money.

Edit: The devs and the smite team literally say to buy from currency and gems from creators nexus page which shows how hi Rez employees feel about their own company. 😅

[BrotherShaw]

Bad decisions up top, negative consequences for everyone below. My heart goes out to all the devs and the rest on the team.

[MrWEST]

Hopefully Hi-Rez makes it, on their current track its do or dont now. In a few years we'll look back and be sad of what could've been because it failed, or we"ll be playing Smite 2 complaining about bugs but having fun playing

[lumpytoad]

Oh wow. I hope they are right, that they have a good grip on transitioning gods from 1 to 2, and release new gods soon.

Smite 2 will be kind of crazy, constant new game mode updates and new characters flooding the game for the next year at least. I think it could gain momentum, and content creators could have their hands full. It's a gamble for sure.

[skylarutd]

Smite 2 was supposed to be exciting but the way hirez are moving, it's actually baffling

[WShoup]

Smite 1 3v3 is what I loved to play until predecessor released and it's been my baby since (i did play paragon). Smite 1 was fun but two didn't feel the same and I didn't like it. I don't know why probably because it doesn't feel diverse as smite maybe or something. I feel bad people lost their jobs but I personally always had issues with hi-rez. They make rip off crash grabs and fail to maintain them or just keep building on faulty code (paladins).

[Jeraco]

My heart goes out to tina i loved her and when she would show

[AmLycanThat]

Honestly saw this coming a mile away.
I love Smite 2 don't get me wrong, but it's simply, just not ready.

People who can play Smite 2 aren't returning to Smite 1, and those that can't play Smite 2 are abandoning Smite 1 as they know any monetary or time investment they make is pointless.
For example; I've put near to 6k hours into Smite 1, the second I could play Smite 2 I deleted Smite 1 instantly and never looked or plan on going back, even with the vastly inferior god pool.
And those that play Smite 2 are being turned away by the relatively slow or unimpactful updates, the game breaking bugs or lacking content (alpha stage aside).
HiRez fucked themselves attempting to appease the skin-nuts by promising to support Smite 1 alongside Smite 2, they're just competing with themselves which is stupid business practice and pleasing neither side.

This 'focus' Chisam is talking about should've been the notion from day 1, not almost 2 months into Smite 2's life, as there's no gain to be had monetizing a game that nobody wants to play.
It's sad really, because I do enjoy playing Smite 2, the god changes are great, the 2 new gods are insane, the revamped item system makes building actually fun, the mastery changes are amazing and I fucking love the active items. It's clear the design team behind the game, actually care, are talented and are trying new and exciting things to spice up the game.

But once again, akin to Smite 1, and almost every other HiRez title, the leadership is failing it and causing the game to die.
Smite 2's alpha should never have released, Smite 1 should've had 1 more year - end on a banger of a competitive season with the $1 million prize pool coming back, like it had in S2-S3, make some buzz for the game, then use that buzz and attention to announce and reveal Smite 2. Then release the Beta midway 2025 and shutdown Smite 1 at the end of 2025.
And don't even get me started on how fucked MM is, not like that should really matter in an Alpha, but it's clearly a huge topic within the community and is turning what's left of the regular player base off the game alongside newer players.


I guarantee by the end of the year, if Smite 2's situation has not improved we'll either see HiRez abandon this sinking ship entirely, or jump ship to Paladins as it appears to be their last bastion of relative stability.
It would suck for it to end like this, but fuck it, I have Spacemarine 2 and Helldivers 2 to be enjoying over the mess that is Smite 2.