Gamestop, Best Buy, Walmart, Target, etc etc etc. For every 1 copy you see on the shelf, 10 more are printed that probably get DWC'd at the end of the game's life. Every Walmart in America has a copy of Starcraft II Battlechest on the shelf right now still probably, whether or not anyone buys it. And there are probably 20 of those in a case. And you're Walmart. You have more than one case because you have to support the other nearby walmarts in case they run out, and be able to fill online sales (They dropship out of local stores/warehouses to compete with Amazon's Prime delivery). And don't forget the holidays. Grandma doesn't call and ask for your Steam username when she's buying you a gift for Christmas. Stores stock right the fuck up on physical copies. They get credit back from the company if they don't sell. One of my ex clients used to go to store closings and buy boxes and boxes and boxes of old games from the 90s and resell them on ebay because of the nostalgia market. Made a small fortune off of CompUSA/Circuit City/Office Max/Office Depot/Staples/Toys R' Us closings.
Edit to add: Physical copies are just one example though. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is on list 2 and 3.
Last edited by Stumplicker; 02-13-2019 at 10:38 AM.
You had better pay your guild dues before you forget. You are 113 months behind.
Hahaha
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. ~ Marcus Aurelius“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”
― George Orwell, 1984
“The urge to shout filthy words at the top of his voice was as strong as ever.”
― George Orwell, 1984
From my experience (and I do work in the gaming software development industry) when a major project completes, gaming companies tend to lay off the majority of the staff because they don't have work for them. You can have an awesome year, but if the next project the company is starting is already staffed, requires less staff, or requires a different set of skills - you fire your current staff.
The same thing happened when Bioware released Star Wars: KOTOR - my current co-worker was staffed for that project, it finished, went into support mode, the entire staff other than the support staff was let go. Not because the game did terrible (it did pretty well out the gate), but because the company had nowhere to assign the staff.
It's a pretty common cycle in gaming...