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Blizzard Announces Staff Reductions

Forum Index > General Forum
286 CommentsPost a Reply
1 2 3 4 5 13 14 15 Next All
TL.net ESPORTS
Profile Joined July 2011
4 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-02-29 20:09:11
February 29 2012 18:46 GMT
#1
Press release (http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120229005855/en/Blizzard-Entertainment-Announces-Staff-Reductions):

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that it has conducted a review of its business based on current organizational needs. Following a completion of the review, the company is conducting a global reduction in workforce of approximately 600 employees. The company anticipates approximately 90% of the affected employees will come from departments not related to game development. The World of Warcraft® development team will not be impacted.

“Constant evaluation of teams and processes is necessary for the long-term health of any business. Over the last several years, we've grown our organization tremendously and made large investments in our infrastructure in order to better serve our global community. However, as Blizzard and the industry have evolved we've also had to make some difficult decisions in order to address the changing needs of our company,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “Knowing that, it still does not make letting go of some of our team members any easier. We’re grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the people impacted by today’s announcement, we’re proud of the contributions they made here at Blizzard, and we wish them well as they move forward.”

Blizzard's current development and publishing schedules will not be impacted. The company will announce specific release plans for Diablo® III in the near future, and it’s continuing to drive aggressively toward beta testing for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria™, Blizzard DOTA, and StarCraft® II: Heart of the Swarm™. Blizzard also remains committed to maintaining its high standards of quality for customer service delivery. In addition, Blizzard is still recruiting and looking to hire qualified developers for a number of open positions. Further details are available at http://jobs.blizzard.com.

For press inquiries, please contact Lisa Jensen in Blizzard Entertainment public relations at ljensen@blizzard.com.

The accounting charges associated with Blizzard's reduction in workforce are not anticipated to be material to Activision Blizzard, Inc. and were included in the 2012 financial outlook that was provided on February 9, 2012.


Message from Mike Morhaime on Battle.net forums: (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4079626833#1):
Everyone,

We announced today that we’re in the process of cutting a number of active positions, mostly non-development, throughout the company. I'm sure this announcement has sparked some questions from all of you, so I want take this opportunity to address those as best I can. Over the past several years, the company has grown rapidly and evolved to better serve you and the rest of our global community. Thanks to all of your support, we continue to serve by far the biggest subscription-based MMO community, as well as the most passionate eSports and online gaming communities, in the world.

In order to keep making epic game content while serving players effectively, we have to be smart about how we manage our resources. This means we sometimes have to make difficult decisions about how to best maintain the health of the company. We’re in the process of making some of those hard decisions now.

After evaluating our current organizational needs, we determined that while some areas of our business had been operating at the right levels and could benefit from further growth, other areas had become overstaffed. As a result, we need to scale down some of our departments and part with some of our colleagues and friends here at Blizzard. I know that you all understand how difficult this type of situation can be for anyone who might be affected, so I want to assure you that we'll be offering each impacted employee a severance package and other benefits.

I also want to emphasize that we remain committed to shipping multiple games this year, and that our development teams in particular remain largely unaffected by today's announcement. We're continuing to develop, iterate, and polish Blizzard DOTA, Diablo III, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, as well as other, unannounced projects. We'll have exciting news to share in the coming weeks regarding Diablo III's release date, and will soon be holding a private media event to showcase the latest work on Mists of Pandaria. It goes without saying that we're working hard to get all of these games in your hands as soon as possible.

You've all come to expect Blizzard to live up to our mission statement with every game, and deliver the most epic entertainment experiences ever. You can continue to expect that and nothing less from us as we move forward.

-Mike Morhaime


A few comments by someone who was released:
On March 01 2012 03:54 Masada714 wrote:
I can speak from personal experience cause I was one of the Game Masters It is a bummer and I loved working for them. They treated us well and that is just a part of the business. At least now I will have more time to work on my SC2 now and hopefully get out of Plat Thank you Blizzard for everything that you have done for me


On March 01 2012 04:02 Masada714 wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 01 2012 03:57 Mattchew wrote:
On March 01 2012 03:54 Masada714 wrote:
I can speak from personal experience cause I was one of the Game Masters It is a bummer and I loved working for them. They treated us well and that is just a part of the business. At least now I will have more time to work on my SC2 now and hopefully get out of Plat Thank you Blizzard for everything that you have done for me


Can you go into more details about where the positions of the "releasing" occured

Well I was a Game Master, specifically provided Customer support for WoW. I can't really get into details because I just don't know. Unfortunately other Game Masters were let go as well. It was a great experience and something I will never forget. This just means that I can look for new opportunities.


Thanks to TL user Integra for the sources/links.
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Bagration
Profile Blog Joined October 2011
United States18282 Posts
February 29 2012 18:47 GMT
#2
Damn, that very significant. I feel bad for the people who got laid off, and hopefully they can find some new careers quickly.
Team Slayers, Axiom-Acer and Vile forever
Pull
Profile Joined April 2010
United States308 Posts
February 29 2012 18:48 GMT
#3
Yeah that definitely sucks...however I'm pretty sure blizzard employees should have a decently easy time finding work :D hopefully at least haha
Co-Creator of the FRB Grand Tournament...Check out my epic commentaries at YouTube.com/pullsc and twitch.tv/pullsc ESPORTS FIGHTING!
ZaplinG
Profile Blog Joined February 2005
United States3818 Posts
February 29 2012 18:49 GMT
#4
I've been waiting for diablo II forever!
Don't believe the florist when he tells you that the roses are free
CyDe
Profile Blog Joined November 2011
United States1010 Posts
February 29 2012 18:50 GMT
#5
That really sucks. I wonder what positions they mean when they say "non-development." Because that could mean anything from a janitor to website moderator.
youtube.com/GamingCyDe-- My totally abandoned youtube channel that I might revisit at some point
TheRhox
Profile Joined March 2011
Canada868 Posts
February 29 2012 18:50 GMT
#6
On March 01 2012 03:47 Bagration wrote:
Damn, that very significant. I feel bad for the people who got laid off, and hopefully they can find some new careers quickly.


Having "worked for Blizzard Entertainment" on their resume will be a huge help.
RaiderRob
Profile Joined March 2010
Netherlands377 Posts
February 29 2012 18:50 GMT
#7
Probably mostly Gamemasters getting fired, with millions of subscribers quitting you don´t need that many.
People don't want freedom but fair leadership
Arthemesia
Profile Joined May 2011
United States292 Posts
February 29 2012 18:51 GMT
#8
It's gonna be hard to develop all those games at a high quality with less people . I hope we don't see lower quality.
cmen15
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
United States1519 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-02-29 18:51:38
February 29 2012 18:51 GMT
#9
On March 01 2012 03:49 ZaplinG wrote:
I've been waiting for diablo II forever!

LOLOLOLOL that was good. yea sucks for those people : (
Greed leads to just about all losses.
CounterOrder
Profile Joined August 2010
Canada457 Posts
February 29 2012 18:51 GMT
#10
600 out of how many is the only question i have. *shrugs
mrafaeldie12
Profile Joined July 2011
Brazil537 Posts
February 29 2012 18:52 GMT
#11
I hate when people say "release" instead of fired, such alleviation is retarded. I imagine this decision has to do with Koticks 100% profit or hit the road strategy.
"..it all comes thumbling down thumbling down thumblin down"
Jinsho
Profile Joined March 2011
United Kingdom3101 Posts
February 29 2012 18:52 GMT
#12
It's certainly nothing to do with WoW you silly people. You do not fire customer service before releasing a new expansion.

andrewlt
Profile Joined August 2009
United States7499 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-02-29 18:54:43
February 29 2012 18:53 GMT
#13
Seeing how the thread on the official forums devolved, I'm bracing for the avalanche of high school and college kids posting on this thread that are pretending to be business savvy.

I'm guessing most of these are support staff as well. And let's face it, WoW is a mature game that is considerably less buggy than what it was in the past. Most of its player base is experienced in the game as well. The number of tickets being submitted to GMs must be plummeting. Not to mention many of the ones hired when WoW was massively expanding must be temps or contract workers.
ThatBronyGuy
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United States169 Posts
February 29 2012 18:53 GMT
#14
So....I shouldn't be looking for jobs in blizzard? Job searching is the suck right now. Anyway, that must be extremely upsetting for the people they let go. I wonder why they would go to those lengths since, to my knowledge, Activision Blizzard aren't hurting for funds. Good luck to those out there now. Hey, maybe we'll have a new developer spring up out of this.
Integra
Profile Blog Joined January 2008
Sweden5626 Posts
February 29 2012 18:53 GMT
#15
On March 01 2012 03:52 mrafaeldie12 wrote:
I hate when people say "release" instead of fired, such alleviation is retarded. I imagine this decision has to do with Koticks 100% profit or hit the road strategy.

"Fired" is due to bad conduct from the person in question, as in he didn't do his job properly, there is a distinction.
"Dark Pleasure" | | I survived the Locust war of May 3, 2014
Masada714
Profile Joined March 2011
United States89 Posts
February 29 2012 18:54 GMT
#16
I can speak from personal experience cause I was one of the Game Masters It is a bummer and I loved working for them. They treated us well and that is just a part of the business. At least now I will have more time to work on my SC2 now and hopefully get out of Plat Thank you Blizzard for everything that you have done for me
StyLeD
Profile Joined January 2011
United States2965 Posts
February 29 2012 18:55 GMT
#17
On March 01 2012 03:51 Arthemesia wrote:
It's gonna be hard to develop all those games at a high quality with less people . I hope we don't see lower quality.

Are you just stupid or did you not read the OP before posting? =/ Mostly non-developmental...

User was warned for this post
"Even gophers love Starcraft" - Tasteless. || Davichi | IU <3
Krowser
Profile Joined August 2007
Canada788 Posts
February 29 2012 18:55 GMT
#18
On March 01 2012 03:52 mrafaeldie12 wrote:
I hate when people say "release" instead of fired, such alleviation is retarded. I imagine this decision has to do with Koticks 100% profit or hit the road strategy.


Well, when someone is ''fired'', they leave in disgrace. They lost their job because they did something wrong. I was fire for being mean to customers, or for stealing from the company account.

Released is probably the correct form of ''let go''.

It sounds like they expanded very quickly because of WoW and now they are optimizing/sharpening the company's infrastructure. It makes sense. Play any tychoon game and you'll find yourself doing the exact same thing.
D3 and Pho, the way to go. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=340709
Zerothegreat
Profile Joined September 2010
United States787 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-02-29 19:08:52
February 29 2012 18:56 GMT
#19
Error in topic, Diablo 3 not 2 lol!

Also, I think a lot of it has to come from when they first implemented server transfers etc. It used to be a long hard process that took a few days but now the coding is there and it happens instantly (a press of a button basically) and being able to trade dropped items without having to put in a ticket gives less customer service work to be done. Activision probably wants them to be less lucrative with how they throw their money around as well.
TheRhox
Profile Joined March 2011
Canada868 Posts
February 29 2012 18:57 GMT
#20
On March 01 2012 03:54 Masada714 wrote:
I can speak from personal experience cause I was one of the Game Masters It is a bummer and I loved working for them. They treated us well and that is just a part of the business. At least now I will have more time to work on my SC2 now and hopefully get out of Plat Thank you Blizzard for everything that you have done for me


That's good, I've always enjoyed hearing stories of employees being treated well by their employers, even in difficult situations such as these.
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