Både Ensemble Studios och Pandemic Studios var tvungna att stänga ner under det senaste året. Under GDC fick båda utvecklarna chans att berätta vad som gick snett. Ensemble, som bland annat utvecklade Halo Wars, berättar att man tog för lång tid på sig med projekten:
"The reality is that every single game we shipped took twice as long as we said it was going to take, and cost twice as much to make. We were simply too expensive", berättar Paul Bettner som också menade att man brände ut sin personal:
"This is a horrible vicious cycle. We burn out all our best people. We destroy these precious artists, we wreck their families and we sacrifice their youth. So they leave, and they take all their experience with them."
Pandemic (Mercenaries, The Saboteur) representerades av Carey Chico som pekade på risken med att utveckla spel med "egna pengar":
"We got our own money. That was probably the beginning of the fall... When you have your own money, what happens is that you have to maintain your own accountability internally, and if you don't have that, you just f**k everything up."