
Rovio Employee Negotiations Concluded - lmnt
http://www.rovio.com/en/news/press-releases/587/rovio-employee-negotiations-concluded
======
putzdown
I worked on Crush the Castle for Armor Games in the late 2000s. Angry Birds
took the same game concept, added much cuter characters and art, and blew us
out of the water with it. (No offense: we took it from someone else.) Now I
feel kinda sad, kinda smug that their glory is fading a bit. Rovio seems to
have forgotten the lesson that the greater your success, the more likely you
are not to be able to repeat it. People tend to assume their best days are
ahead, and thus expansion proves to be overexpansion when the best days turn
out to be behind.

~~~
munificent
> Rovio seems to have forgotten the lesson that the greater your success, the
> more likely you are not to be able to repeat it.

Well said.

Another way to look at it is if your company can grow very quickly from almost
nothing, it's vulnerable to shrinking almost as quickly too.

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bhouston
I guess they were not able to innovate enough. It was a good franchise, but it
hasn't had the longevity of things like Minecraft or Halo.

Details:

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=angry%20birds%2C%20mi...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=angry%20birds%2C%20minecraft%2C%20clash%20of%20clans%2C%20halo&cmpt=q)

I wonder what they could have done differently? They sure licensed enough IP
to create Star Wars, Rio, etc variants. They tried expanding into freemium
racing games. I wonder if there was a way forward for them that they missed?

Q: How does this affect the Angry Birds movie expected in July 2016?
[https://www.pehub.com/2014/08/angry-birds-creator-rovio-
ceo-...](https://www.pehub.com/2014/08/angry-birds-creator-rovio-ceo-hed-to-
step-down/)

~~~
debacle
Angry Birds had excellent design (Visually), something that has made both
Rovio and King stand out.

I think Rovio just tried to monetize (and merchandize) too hard, in a way not
fitting the mobile model. They should have tried to focus on growing
horizontally and making the Rovio brand bigger than the Angry Birds brand.

~~~
minimaxir
They did try that by publishing apps under the Rovio Stars brand. None of the
published apps became as big as Angry Birds though, so it was moot.

~~~
debacle
That's when you maybe reconsider hiring 800 employees behind the success of a
single mobile game.

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zeograd
This post was an opportunity to discover that Rovio had much more employee
than what I expected.

Angry bird looks so much like one of those flash games you can create with a
single coder and a single designer I never imagined they had more than 800
people now. I would have guessed a small dozen max...

~~~
angersock
I like how they never even gave money to the guy that built the physics engine
powering their whole schtick. He only asked for a shirt--when they finally
sent him one, it wasn't the one he'd asked for. Stay classy Rovio!

~~~
Kiro
I didn't know you were supposed to pay for using free software. Regarding the
color he didn't ask for anything, they just sent him a red one after which he
said that he didn't like the color.

~~~
angersock
When you've made as much money as they did off of something that is largely a
tech demo for somebody's free software project, I think it's only right to
show your appreciation for that person--at least offering a well-paying job or
fellowship or something. Otherwise, you're just being mooches.

~~~
Kiro
Definitely but I'm pretty sure the maker of Box2D has no problem finding jobs.
Would you really give money if you were Rovio? How much? Genuine question.
Would you do the same for every author of free software you were using? I'm
guessing that would be thousands of people.

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pkaye
I was wondering why they would need employee negotiations until I realized
this was in Finland. In the US, you would come in one day to work and you
badge would no longer work!

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chii
the press release doesn't give much context to what this is about - why are
they reducing headcount? what's the story here?

~~~
kristianc
Inability to find / produce / buy another Angry Birds.

~~~
jasonkostempski
My kid and I would still be playing Angry Birds and he would still be asking
for the merch this Christmas if I hadn't become extremely disgusted with the
constant push to make in-app purchases and buy other apps. It's before, during
and after every board, every retry. I stopped playing, encouraged him to play
other things and I eventually removed it from all our devices, it hasn't been
missed since. They should have stuck with a free app (no ads, no in-app
purchases) and made money from merchandise. They had a good thing going with
the Star Wars TelePods except after spending an embarrassing amount on the
figures to scan in we still had to deal with ads to buy weapons and tools.

~~~
Spooky23
I never appreciated how awful the modern gaming environment was until I had a
kid. For little kids in particular, it's incredibly difficult for them to deal
with accidentally clicking the "buy X now" buttons and back out of the
purchase process.

Personally, I shifted my son and nephews/nieces to old video game consoles.
They love the NES, N64 and ColecoVision that we found in my parent's attic,
and there's no nickel and diming within the games!

~~~
acveilleux
I can't get behind it, I prefer to pay 5-75$ upfront for a full game
(depending on platform) and no in-game purchases.

If I can't play the whole game without in-game purchases, then it's not a
game, it's an interactive ad. If on top of that I have to pay for the
privilege of playing the ad, it's downright criminal.

(I'm excluding expansion-type DLC, I don't mind paying for more _optional_
content.)

~~~
chii
it's unfortunate that the market has spoken - a studio earns more money doing
IAP than traditional selling. I don't like IAP model either, but because it
simply out-earns the old model, it's either do it or die for most studios.

I really wish more people would paid for a game the traditional way.

