Inside Annapurna Interactive's Mass Walkout

[ChrisArchitect]

Related:

Entire Annapurna Game Team Resigns

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41526074

Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41528266

[redundantly]

I confused Annapurna Interactive with Annapurna Labs. Was lost for a bit there reading the article.

[hilux]

Annapurna is a mountain in Nepal. "Only" tenth highest in the world, but with the highest or second-highest fatality rate.

That makes it an attractive company name, I guess.

[seanhunter]

For reference, Annapurna Interactive are not a mainstream publisher churning out franchise type games, but tend to publish unique games, some of them considered classics:

- Outer Wilds

- Stray

- Lorelei and the laser eyes

- Cocoon

- Neon White

...and others. https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/annapurnainteractiv...

This is a real shame for anyone who cares about really distinctive, original games.

[orlp]

> This is a real shame for anyone who cares about really distinctive, original games.

Is it though? Annapurna is a publisher, they didn't make those games. The games you listed were made by:

  - Outer Wilds: Mobius Digital  
  - Stray: BlueTwelve Studio  
  - Lorelei and the laser eyes: Simogo  
  - Cocoon: Geometric Interactive  
  - Neon White: Angel Matrix

I'm confident that creators of distinctive, original games will be able to find other publishers.

[johnnyanmac]

Depending on the team that walked, this may be a new opportunity. Sounds like this all happened because they worked pretty well without Ellis, but Ellis would come in every now and then and cause a tornado of everything when she did. There's a name for this kind of manager, but it eludes me.

Shame they lose the name, but the talent is what makes the company. And I'm sure any small dev will be following them closely on their next venture.

[plg94]

> considered classics

Great games, but all you listed are barely 3 years old – can something that young already be considered a "classic"?

[ekianjo]

Stray is not made by Annapurna. Its just published by them. Devs can easily find other alternatives. Publishers are everywhere.

[lofaszvanitt]

In gamedev, the only thing that matters, once you have a good product is how to market it. Without exposure your project is dead, no matter the quality of it.

Who will talk/write about it and for how much? Yters have steep pricing, and they usually don't give a F about your project.

That's why Steam and other similar platforms are a trap. And yet, people protect/love them, like it's the 8th wonder of the world.

[dxuh]

I feel like actually good indie games have a much better chance, because from all I have heard the Steam algorithm actually wants to make money. It will show the game to a bunch of people regardless of the number of wishlists and if it does well, it will show it to more people. Of course Steam can not even do half the work for you, but it's still a much better system than just needing to have enough followers on Twitter or knowing someone at Kotaku or IGN.

[saghm]

> That's why Steam and other similar platforms are a trap. And yet, people protect/love them, like it's the 8th wonder of the world.

Sure, if you only look at it from the developer perspective. From the player perspective, having a centralized location to find and download games is massive. I'm not saying there aren't tradeoffs, but looking at it from only one side ignores all of the reasons that it's successful in the first place.

[antimemetics]

I’ll take YouTube and Steam over the olden days of game „journalism“ any day.

[penguin_booze]

I'm wondering what the genesis of the name Annapurna is. Clearly, it has some Indian grains to it. Pun intended? Maybe.

[titanomachy]

It’s the name of a famous mountain in Nepal which is a popular tourism and climbing destination.

[btown]

"You need to think of [Megan] Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about [Annapurna]." -- Bryan Cantrill, on the sins of the father, heavily editorialized.

https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=38m24s

[lofaszvanitt]

He talks about Larry Ellison.

[ethbr1]

This seems like a very different scenario -- don't be part of a hobby business that's so low on the owner's radar that they aren't willing to bleed for it.

Because if they lose interest and everything explodes, you're out of a job and they're still a billionaire.

[hinkley]

Doesn’t seem to be much information here except maybe that the next “Runic Games” but with Annapurna alumni will be called Verset.

[johnnyanmac]

you get the entire story of a collapse of one of the most renowned indie game publishers over the course of ~7 years, a situation where the entire staff of the house walks out, and all you get out of this is "well we'll see what game they release next"?

It's a long story, so if you are just wondering about their portfolio, you can skip to the end section "The Future of Annapura".

[neonsunset]

Unfortunately, with the recent coverage of Concord by IGN, I don't think any content they put out is to be taken seriously.

[cen4]

There is more content being produced than there are eyeballs and time to consume it all.

How does such an industry survive? In a very round about manner that has nothing to do with what they say they do.

General rule in life - Don't focus on the drama a fucked up environment produces.

[johnnyanmac]

> How does such an industry survive? In a very round about manner that has nothing to do with what they say they do.

can you clarify this statement? I just read this as "companies need to make money, creatives aren't focused on money".

> Don't focus on the drama a fucked up environment produces.

if you somehow found this politics/drama free work environment with no creative tensions whatsoever, congratulations I suppose. Most of us don't have that and are only one whim away from those "dramas" costing us our jobs, even if we keep our heads down.

[rcxdude]

> There is more content being produced than there are eyeballs and time to consume it all.

There's more than one person can ever experience. But the ratio of production to consumption is still quite small. Most stuff put on the internet is going to be seen by someone (e.g. 95% of youtube videos have at least one view).

[Sakos]

This affects gamers who want indie games worth playing. So, yeah, why wouldn't we care? They're at least partly responsible for a handful of the best games I've played in the past decade. Their loss can't be understated.