Game Designer Sandy Petersen: "We Don't Need To Save ANY Game Company"

Game designer Sandy Petersen, who worked on Age of Empires, Doom, and Halo Wars, has no problem with video game companies dying off.

Petersen shared his thoughts on social media. He responded to a post that showed an image of Blizzard staff promoting disordered LGBTQ+ lifestyles and asked, “How do we save Blizzard?”

He answered, “We don’t need to save Blizzard. We didn’t need to save MicroSoft or id Software or Ensemble Studios or Atari. We don’t need to save ANY game company.”

“If they die, they die. They will be replaced with new, likely superior game companies,” he continued. “Yes Ensemble Studios gave great value to gamers. It was murdered, rather than dying naturally. But its death produced Robot Entertainment, Boss Fight, NewToy, and Petersen Games. Gaming continues.”

Petersen’s comments come in the wake of a multitude of companies laying off employees as well as others being completely shut down.

Here’s just a few examples over the past two years:

• EA shut down Cliffhanger Games earlier this year after it spent years working on a Black Panther game.

• Warner Bros. Games shut down Monolith Productions, the developer of the Shadow of Mordor series that was developing a Wonder Woman game.

• Ubisoft shut down its Leamington studio in the United Kingdom.

• Microsoft closed The Initiative after it spent years working on Perfect Dark.

• Avalance Studios shut down its Liverpool office after canceling its Contraband game.

• Fantastic Pixel Castle is on the verge of shutting down after NetEase pulled its financial backing. It was developing a MMO codenamed Ghost.

• Microsoft shut down Arkane Austin after Redfall was a commercial failure.

• Sony pulled the plug on Firewalk Studios after Concord’s abysmal release.

• Paradox Interactive shut down Paradox Tectonic and canceled its Life by You game.

NEXT: Myles MacKenzie In ‘Metroid Prime 4’ - Who He Is, Why He Exists, And Why Players Are Pushing Back