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Activision-Blizzard Fires 800 staff to cut costs

Juanitology

Looks like Blizzard's strategy of cutting costs while producing more (lower quality) games is finally going into full force

 

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Publisher Activision Blizzard has begun its long-rumored layoff process, informing employees this afternoon that it will be cutting staff. On an earnings call this afternoon, the company said that it would be eliminating 8% of its staff. In 2018, Activision Blizzard had roughly 9,600 employees, which would mean nearly 800 people are now out of work.

 

Feelsbad for those people who through no fault of their own will find themselves out of work, as well as for those who are staying on and will have to deal with higher stress levels and probably having to choose between delivering work that doesn't meet their standards or overworking themselves to death under Activision-Blizzard's new corporate direction. 

 

Quote

The news follows months of rumors about layoffs at the publisher, which heated up early last week as word began to spread that hundreds of people across Activision Blizzard’s various divisions might lose their jobs. Leading up to today, some of the publisher’s employees had been coming to work with no clue as to what might happen. One person at Blizzard told me this morning that as employees arrived, they cried and exchanged hugs in the parking lot.

 

What do you think this means for the studios' future game plans? Are we going to see more of a title-churning company instead of the quality we're used to expect from blizzard? 

 

Edit: source https://kotaku.com/activision-blizzard-begins-massive-layoffs-1832571288

Edited by Juanitology
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1 minute ago, Juanitology said:

Looks like Blizzard's strategy of cutting costs while producing more (lower quality) games is finally going into full force

 

 

Feelsbad for those people who through no fault of their own will find themselves out of work, as well as for those who are staying on and will have to deal with higher stress levels and probably having to choose between delivering work that doesn't meet their standards or overworking themselves to death under Activision-Blizzard's new corporate direction. 

 

 

What do you think this means for the studios' future game plans? Are we going to see more of a title-churning company instead of the quality we're used to expect from blizzard? 

every game in the near future will become like overwatch. dying very quickly because of the constant 'balance' changes that ruin the game LOL 

 

but yeah, i feel very bad for the 800 who now lost jobs. but yeah, blizz just messed up really badly. 

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RIP 

 

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1 minute ago, TH3R34P3R said:

every game in the near future will become like overwatch. dying very quickly because of the constant 'balance' changes that ruin the game LOL 

Pretty much...

Quote

In the future, Kotick said Activision-Blizzard will invest primarily in live services, Battle.net, and esports, with a focus on the following franchises: Candy Crush, Call of Duty, Overwatch, Warcraft, Diablo, and Hearthstone. For those franchises, Activision actually expects to increase, not reduce, development resources in 2019.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/02/activision-blizzard-lays-off-775-people-after-record-results-in-2018/

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800 people laid off? Blizzard, you f**ked up.

The only reasons they would do it imo would be: A. Blizzard are in financial trouble or B. they're just trying to spend as little money as possible.

Either way, Blizzard's games will probably decrease in quality.

Looks like they're going on the path of becoming an EA clone tbh.

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The One Question Man

                                                                                                                          - 800 fired staff, probably

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I just imagine someone at Blizzard going

 

"Aight guys! We did amazing this quarter! Keep up the good work!... oh but I'm gonna have to fire 700 of you. Starting you George."

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They're laying off non dev people and are hiring more for dev teams to increase which that is good though. 

https://www.wowhead.com/news=290236/activision-blizzard-quarter-4-2018-earnings-report-8-of-employees-laid-off-in-ye

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3 minutes ago, 1kv said:

Either way, Blizzard's games will probably decrease in quality.

I think it lowered the quality so much that fans couldnt bear (Played and owned d3+exp , overwatch,wow bfa) now you want diablo you go to poe without doubt, want wow (really? wow is messed with gated loot , you only need to play 1 day and wait till next week) and overwatch community seems too young like fortnite :( , just waiting for w3 remastered but not for blizzard, just to play again w3 competitive games :D 

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so... i just saw this same thing on discord... where someone made a joke article about them giving OW loot boxes to every employee. those with a pink "slip" were fired. also saw another article with the same aspect but just IRL with regular plain boxes with a fateful slip. 

 

thank you for existing discord. 

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(before i sold the WD drive and MSI gpu - https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/11946219 171 gaming. felt good.)

 

Rig 2: i7-7700k Stock clocks | MSI Armor GTX 1070 | ADATA DDR4 2400mhz 2x8GB | MSI Z270 A-Pro | WD Green 240GB SSD & 2TB Seagate HDD | Thermaltake Core G21 Tempered Glass Edition | Win 10 Home | 2 HP Omen FHD 144hz 24.5" Monitors 

 

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Rig 4: i7-4770 | EVGA SSC 1050ti | Some random DDR3 ram 2x2gb and 2x4gb sticks | OEM Dell Mobo | Stock Cooler | 1TB WD Black HDD | Win 7 Home 

 

RIP 

 

Rig 5 (dead and dismantled and sold) : i7-7820X OC'd to 4.8ghz all core | MSI DUKE 1080ti | ADATA DDR4 2400mhz 4x8gb | Gigabyte X299 UD4 PRO | Asetek 240mm AIO | WD Green 240gb SSD | Other various components that I can't remember

 

Rig 6 (same fate as rig 5) i7-8700k stock clocks | MSI DUKE 1080ti | ADATA DDR4 2400mhz 2x8gb | MSI Z370 A-Pro | Asetek 550LC 120mm | WD Green 240GB SSD & Toshiba 2TB HDD | Other various components that I can't Remember 

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2 hours ago, Peskanova said:

I think it lowered the quality so much that fans couldnt bear (Played and owned d3+exp , overwatch,wow bfa) now you want diablo you go to poe without doubt, want wow (really? wow is messed with gated loot , you only need to play 1 day and wait till next week) and overwatch community seems too young like fortnite :( , just waiting for w3 remastered but not for blizzard, just to play again w3 competitive games :D 

I find that with overwatch you don't see too many kids once you hit diamond. 

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Record revenues but not infinite revenues.

 

Always more.

 

Always growth.

 

This is why the stock market has fucked everything. No one can infinitely grow.

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1 hour ago, TH3R34P3R said:

so... i just saw this same thing on discord... where someone made a joke article about them giving OW loot boxes to every employee. those with a pink "slip" were fired. also saw another article with the same aspect but just IRL with regular plain boxes with a fateful slip. 

 

thank you for existing discord. 

That would fucking hilarious if that was the case. Sad and ironic, but fucking hilarious.

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But execs will still get their fat bonuses at the end of the year.

Hopefully it means going back to release quality games, but I bet that won't be the case. Quality is no longer a requirement in current year

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I never understand why people bother with these one sided stories. There's hardly any real information aside from the writer's opinion. 

 

What happened to the people being mostly members of non-development team? 

What happened to they are hiring more artists and etc, the real core of what makes a game a game? 

 

Ya, Activision is a crappy company but that's life, get with it or be left in the dirt.

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2 minutes ago, Bcat00 said:

What happened to they are hiring more artists and etc, the real core of what makes a game a game? 

All artists, developers, marketing, networking, PR make a good game, as well as many more jobs. Don't forget Blizzard is probably the number one company involved in e-sports. 

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They have made it perfectly clear to all that they intend too move into the mobile gaming market in ASIA. That means china  "From a business point of view thats good business practice, go where the most money is". They also have made it very clear they are going to throw in ALOT MORE microtransactions onto there existing games like, overwatch,wow etc etc. They are basically telling there PC gamer playerbase we dont give a SHIT about you. We only want your money. They made RECORD profits but still decide to sack 800 employees. 

 

Great company we play our games with and a great company i only wish to join.Hell NO 

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Seriously think that someone should do a Valve/Dell mashup: buy out Blizzard from Activision and take it private. Then rehire the old Blizzard execs and developers that quit or were removed. Make whatever you wanna make. ??. Profit.

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I see the corporate defenders are still running strong in the LTT forums.

 

"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity"

- George Carlin (1937-2008)

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It makes sense because WoW lost a lot of subs which leads to less support staff needed

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Lol they'll hire more chinese devs for their "partnership" for the Diablo mobile game, making "art" for recurring revenue.

 

Lolol if someone thinks they're going to hire NA Jobs in any real quantity

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hahahah they need to cut 800 employees since they are ofsourcing dev  to chinese shit companies

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Quote

 

“While our financial results for 2018 were the best in our history, we didn’t realize our full potential,” Kotick said in the report. 

 

 

 

What's wrong with corporate america in a nutshell. Biggest profits ever, but the increase this year was not new and exceptional. It's not about profiting, it's not even about increasing profits, it's about increasing profits by a larger margin year over year until you implode. 

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Despite Activision-Blizzard previously acting relatively independently of each other, I worry that's not the case anymore. I've got this sense that, after the success of Overwatch and the Overwatch League, Activision is expecting to see this sort of success out of Blizzard more regularly, and Blizzard themselves know this won't be possible. It's unfortunate that they've decided the easiest way to cope with drops in revenue is going to be firing all this staff.

if you have to insist you think for yourself, i'm not going to believe you.

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