Sony to Shut Down Oscar & Emmy-Winning VFX Studio Pixomondo ('Hugo', 'Game of Thrones' and 'The Boys') Affecting 500+ Workers. Sony Acquired 100% of Pixomondo in 2022.

I tried to join the 3D industry in the early 2000s. I had no idea how brutal and cutthroat it was.

While I don't blame us for it, more broadly it's a viewer expectation problem. Amazing VFX used to sell movies. If you could put in the amount of spectacle (relative other movies) of a Lord of the Rings or Avatar there was a good chance that investment would pay off. Which meant that studios could afford to pay VFX houses more and expect a good return. That started to change around the first Avengers for movies and Game of Thrones for TV. Audiences stopped viewing great VFX not as a selling point, but as a baseline requirement for blockbusters. Just look at any Reddit discussion around a Marvel project where the CGI isn't completely perfect. The devaluation of VFX itself, alongside the general devaluation of movies and TV, makes it harder (but far from impossible) for studios to pay VFX houses what they're worth. While VFX workers absolutely deserve the same union protections similar film industry jobs have, the whole system is so precarious right now that it would probably lead to even more studio closures. And not (just) for the typical union-busting reasons.

Maybe I am just a naive idiot, but what stops the VFX houses from forming an union?

Take the tech of the VFX house, teach someone else the skills to do this cheaper, then close the house that made them what they were

I just watched the Chinese version of The 3 Body Problem and was shocked to see it was 30 episodes compared to only 8 for the Netflix adaptation. It’s absurd how short western series are now.

Started the same time like clockwork too, mid-April. I was ending my first year of uni when the first season aired and it was kinda neat that Game of Thrones premiering would always mark the end of the school year.

That's very anecdotal - like using a couple of hot days to argue against climate trends. A few standout series don’t really disprove the overall decline of production turnaround & that the industry is overall producing less.

Bungie absolutely *fleeced* Jim Ryan and Sony. Anyone that's paid attention to Bungie since they left Microsoft would know that was batshit insane.

This whole week has been a mess. Crunchy roll got hacked so everyones credit card information was leaked. They shut down another game studio I think they closed one last month. Marathon is apprently not doing well. They canceled their Car collab with Honda. They are the 20th ranked publisher I believe both Nintendo and Xbox are ranked better. A whole week of L's like this is crazy imo.

Still crazy to read that.... what an absolute waste of money for a studio that was already burning through so much cash that even Microsoft wouldn't touch them.

Who had a profitable property in destiny and just launched a new live service game to nearly perfect reviews. Investments take time to pay off sometimes.

Throw in Borders Books deciding to completely outsource its online presence to this new company, Amazon, instead of building out their own online presence.

A big reason it was huge is because it released on Netflix first

So long as they get SAROS released, 's all I care about this year.

Yeah marathon is shaping up to not be the hit they needed.

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Their car venture with Honda just got shut down, too. That can't have been c****.

A subsidiary is still going to feel the impact. Sony Group Corporation is the overhead.

Same damn hydra. Aren't they selling half of the TV unit to TCL, too? Jesus.

There are always risks; the difference is that it belongs to the Sony Group, unlike Paramount and Warner, which had enormous debts and were independent.

At th very least, SPE is. Can see Samsung making Tokyo an offer it can't refuse. Apple as well, if it's on the c**** side.

I mean, they're still doing fine. They still have a shit ton of cash. They were fine after the Wii U and the GameCube. This is nothing compared to that. They aren't shuttering developer's companies. They aren't laying off hundreds of people. They aren't investing hundreds of millions to BILLIONS into buying studios that are churning out mediocre trash that gets abandoned right away. Denying they're okay is delusional.