Shocking. Satisfactory, which you let develop at their own pace, listened to fans for years, and were upfront and honest with expectations did extremely well. Vs the other online crap they forced.
Wow, it's almost like they fired all their developers, cancelled every good game they were working on, and underfunded the crap out of the rest so they were destined for failure.
Remember when Aspyr released a hotly anticipated remake of Battlefront and it failed because Embracer gave them no time to fix the bugs and no money to run servers? Yeah, like that.
Do you know who used to be part of Embracer? Sabre. Who just released Space Marine 2, a game that sold absolute gangbusters (because it's fucking awesome).
Embracer are the cause of all of Embracer's ills. They hoovered up excellent mid-shelf studios, fucked them over, and then cried foul when consumers rejected the second rate slop that came out.
The only waste they need to cut is the CEOs job. Clearly clueless and his decisions fucked the company. Though the board probably pushed for it or signed it off
I wouldn't blame the devs (not just them at least). In so many cases, it's corporate who decides what kind of game the devs are doing. They want money, so they go with the latest shit that makes money, squeezing it until they kill the formula before moving on.