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Comment by Andrex | Hacker News Reader

Things don't always ramp up after 2-4 years. Sometimes MS just kills the project or company after that period of time.

See also their moves in the gaming industry.

Heh, I was working at 2 of those gaming companies when they were acquired by m$. I almost fear taking another job in the gaming industry, there seems to be some kind of bastardised version of Murphy's law that any gaming company that hires me will be acquired by ms 6 months later.

I mean, that's obviously not the case, but it's weird that it happened twice!

Very weird it happened twice! But that's a kind of a cool factoid to tell people haha.

Even with devs and publishers that don't die or are killed, they still lay hundreds off when a game is done. Then the studio limps along in pre-production mode on their next game for 4-5 years it seems like...

Maybe the only job stability in the industry is with indies, and... Nintendo?

I'd add the hugely successful studios to that list. Even after ms acquisition, to the best of my knowledge neither of the 2 studios I worked at had any layoffs.

But they boast the most sold video game in the history of videogames (Tetris a close-ish second), and most downloaded free mobile game, respectively. Each have player bases larger than the population of the country they're from!

Here's to hoping ms is hesitant to gut either!

> But they boast the most sold video game in the history of videogames (Tetris a close-ish second), and most downloaded free mobile game, respectively.

Just out of curiosity, I guessed Minecraft which tracks, and Subway Surfers respectively, rather than Candy Crush Saga. Is CCS actually the most downloaded free mobile game ever?

Hmm... My source here is internal king communications, they were very proud of it. But I left there years ago, so I guess it might've changed?

Pretty sure it was the biggest at the time at least.

Call of Duty and Candy Crush I would say (if you count Farm Heroes as CCS because it's just a reskin for APAC then it's probably not even close).

Common misconception that. I also thought the hardcore gamer games would be in the top. They're not even close.

Minecraft has sold 350 million copies. Call of duty: black ops a measly 43 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_gam...

I would have said that the OP meant the Call of Duty series in general, rather than a specific instance.

Given the mobile thing mentioned also, it's most likely to be Activison (which has been acquired by Microsoft).

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