Eutechnyx's Darren Jobling has issued a warning to the industry about America's domination of publishers and developers over the rest of the gaming industry, saying that both the creative and business side of the European games industry is in dire straights thanks to the constant closures and buyouts of a oversaturated market.

"The games industry is currently a US dominated industry, everything we had left in Europe has pretty much been decimated," he said, speaking to GamesIndustry.biz recently

"I was talking about it on the publishing side, obviously there's only Ubisoft and Eidos of any size and I think that's pretty much it."

"What concerns me, is that if you look at publishing what happened was Infogrames came in buying up Ocean, buying up Gremlin, and the whole thing collapsed, and that just worries me about these people coming in buying developers."

Tags : Buyouts : Closures : Darren Jobling : European Industry : Eutechnyx : PlayStation 3 : Wii : Xbox 360

Comments

By: Evren

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On: 11:03 Jun 24th, 2008
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Hooray, Lets make me move to America to do ANY games related jobs that I will be qualified to do.
...I agree, it's bloody annoying that people buy up smaller companies, then move them somewhere else.*glares at EA*

By: Gamoc

On: 11:41 Jun 27th, 2008
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Hold on, Media Molecule are making the most original game I've heard of for a long time, and they are UK based.

By: Dragonsoul

On: 12:16 Jun 27th, 2008
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I agree that when companies buy up other companies and ship the labor, etc. elsewhere, it's really bad for the consumer.

In interest of the business of the country, perhaps the governments should put regulation on buy-outs and mergers and acqusitions to ensure that it dosen't kill the industry's economy locally.

This is no better than companies coming into Canada and buying the local companies and shipping the jobs to lower-paid countries like China or Mexico. Governments really ought to look after their countries economic welfare after all.

By: Dragonfly

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On: 12:42 Jun 27th, 2008
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Dragonsoul;52377

This is no better than companies coming into Canada and buying the local companies and shipping the jobs to lower-paid countries like China or Mexico.

You might be surprised to learn that a number of games developers have actually been getting relocated *to* Canada. It's become something of a development hotspot in recent years.

By: ManicGamer

On: 10:50 Jul 2nd, 2008
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That is part of the Capitalist BULLS#!t that makes up much of my country. It is sad. BUT it takes TWO to tango.

For instance;

If a UK based company DIDN'T decide to sell out to a larger one.. then these complaints would not exist. No company is required to sell themselves to EA. I think it also shows some serious integrity (a la Take Two) to have pride in what you do, and decide to keep control of what you create.

I'm not defending EA... but they are only responsible for HALF of the "decimation".