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Blizzard Announces Staff Reductions - Page 5

Forum Index > General Forum
286 CommentsPost a Reply
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Shockk
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Germany2269 Posts
February 29 2012 19:58 GMT
#81
Let's hope they didn't fire those people only to replace them with outsourced tech support from India. Take a look at all the hilarious / sad customer chats from people having issues with EA games.
Condor Hero
Profile Blog Joined August 2009
United States2931 Posts
February 29 2012 19:59 GMT
#82
On March 01 2012 04:50 royal.cze wrote:
I wonder if Mikey boy took a salary cut.

Compensation for 2010
Salary $749,665.00
Bonus $381,950.00
Restricted stock awards $5,583,600.00
All other compensation $23,908.00
Option awards $ $2,473,817.00
Non-equity incentive plan compensation $7,331,214.00
Change in pension value and nonqualified deferred compensation earnings $0.00
Total Compensation $16,544,154.00

Lol who gives a fuck what he makes.
Blizzard is obviously wildly successful, you expect his salary to be janitor level?

He should probably give himself a raise for reducing costs after firing all 600 people.
That's how business works.
Ramuh
Profile Joined February 2011
Germany238 Posts
February 29 2012 20:00 GMT
#83
Are these probably World of Warcraft Support Crew Members? It would be logical that with recent subscriber loss less support is needed
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12267 Posts
February 29 2012 20:02 GMT
#84
I suppose this makes sense, and yeah it fits that it was mostly GM and Tech Support staff. That would also explain why they're looking to expand the ranks of the MVPs (unpaid but essentially support staff). Knowing Blizzard they probably had some pretty generous severance packages, so best of luck to you who were laid off in finding a new job.
Moderator
Irave
Profile Joined October 2010
United States9965 Posts
February 29 2012 20:04 GMT
#85
On March 01 2012 04:54 royal.cze wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 01 2012 04:51 Masq wrote:
no big surprise, subscription numbers are down and they need less support staff.


LoL surpassed WoW in active players late last year and with the continuing stream of good MMOs being released they are bleeding but with the expansion interests will be reborn and it will retake the top of the mountain in player base.

Wow still has over 10.5 million active subs, I wouldn't consider it near risk of being dead. Like you said the expansion will bring back the people that have quit this expansion. LoL is a beast in its own right, in fact I think its almost bigger than sc2 in Korea now.
Zaqwert
Profile Joined June 2008
United States411 Posts
February 29 2012 20:04 GMT
#86
It is rather offputting that a company posting record profits is laying people off.

Anyone still honestly believe that Activision has no say over Blizzard's operations?
DarkPlasmaBall
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States46554 Posts
February 29 2012 20:04 GMT
#87
...lead personnel from StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty will be replaced by destructible rocks...


Great job guys. All your balance whining got Dustin Browder and David Kim fired.

I hope you're all happy.

But on a more serious note, it's always sad when a business downsizes.
"There is nothing more satisfying than looking at a crowd of people and helping them get what I love." ~Day[9] Daily #100
Arisen
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
United States2382 Posts
February 29 2012 20:06 GMT
#88
That sucks. I understand that sometimes companies are forced to trim the fat to get by, but with a company as large and successful as Blizzard that has a lot of fat to go around, It's unfortunate that they turned to staff cuts.

Gl to all those let go.
"If you're not angry, you're not paying attention"
iloveav
Profile Joined November 2008
Poland1484 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-02-29 20:07:28
February 29 2012 20:06 GMT
#89
yeah... your right... 1.2 billion dollars anual income from WoW is too little to pay your workers...
aka LRM)Cats_Paw.
RouaF
Profile Joined October 2010
France4121 Posts
February 29 2012 20:07 GMT
#90
And that's how today's worlds rolls Make millions of profits ? Fire people.
Silidons
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
United States2813 Posts
February 29 2012 20:07 GMT
#91
On March 01 2012 05:06 iloveav wrote:
yeah... your right... 1.2 billion dollars anual income from WoW is too little to pay your workers...

unnessecary spending is not how to run a successful business
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon Bonaparte
darkscream
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
Canada2310 Posts
February 29 2012 20:09 GMT
#92
To me, this is a natural conclusion to many of the features they started to add in WoW. Eventually GMs just weren't needed for as many tasks, the game wasn't as buggy, nor as popular. I wouldn't worry about it much, it really doesn't make sense to pay for as many customer service people as they did.
eviltomahawk
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
United States11135 Posts
February 29 2012 20:13 GMT
#93
Sad news for those who will be losing their jobs soon . I hope they find a good future ahead of them.

Anyways, a guy on Reddit had a really interesting comment about this:
[–]i4ybrid (_) 25 points 1 hour ago (27|1)
As the audience for WoW get more "seasoned", there should be fewer issues they have. You only talk to a CSR when something goes unexpectedly wrong, some billing issue or when you get hacked after all. Bugs get fixed, security gets ramped up for hacking, obviously CSRs won't be as needed.

http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/qbljk/massive_layoffs_at_blizzard/c3waonx

It's not good news, but hopefully actual game development will not be affected, especially that of Starcraft.
ㅇㅅㅌㅅ
j1nzo
Profile Joined February 2012
Germany367 Posts
February 29 2012 20:16 GMT
#94
ea will probably pick up all of them and then release press notes on how unhappy they were at activ. blizzard and how good everything is for them now...
♞ rest in peace Madiba ♞
Chargelot
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
2275 Posts
February 29 2012 20:16 GMT
#95
On March 01 2012 05:07 RouaF wrote:
And that's how today's worlds rolls Make millions of profits ? Fire people.

It's called capitalism. I know this is a difficult concept to understand, but companies exist to make money. That is the purpose of Blizzard, Apple, Microsoft, Starbucks, and every other place in the entire world that provides goods and services that come at some expense to the consumer. If you don't need 600 additional employees, you don't pay for them to sit in the office and not be utilized. You release them. Blizzard gave them all severance packages, and some other additional benefits. Knowing Blizzard, these were most likely wildly generous.

tl;dr
Companies don't make money by paying unnecessary people to fulfill unnecessary duties.
if (post == "stupid") { document.getElementById('post').style.display = 'none'; }
Blasterion
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
China10272 Posts
February 29 2012 20:18 GMT
#96
Dammit now my WoW GM Tickets will take twice as long!!!
[TLNY]Mahjong Club Thread
NotSorry
Profile Blog Joined October 2002
United States6722 Posts
February 29 2012 20:21 GMT
#97
Seems like a lot of people don't understand, it's not that Blizzard couldn't afford to keep them, it's that they could afford to get rid of them and turn a profit out of it.
We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. - Orwell
Zaqwert
Profile Joined June 2008
United States411 Posts
February 29 2012 20:23 GMT
#98
On March 01 2012 05:16 Chargelot wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 01 2012 05:07 RouaF wrote:
And that's how today's worlds rolls Make millions of profits ? Fire people.

It's called capitalism. I know this is a difficult concept to understand, but companies exist to make money. That is the purpose of Blizzard, Apple, Microsoft, Starbucks, and every other place in the entire world that provides goods and services that come at some expense to the consumer. If you don't need 600 additional employees, you don't pay for them to sit in the office and not be utilized. You release them. Blizzard gave them all severance packages, and some other additional benefits. Knowing Blizzard, these were most likely wildly generous.

tl;dr
Companies don't make money by paying unnecessary people to fulfill unnecessary duties.


This is actually the problem with public companies.

Private companies can have a soul, if the owner(s) care more about quality and people than money, the company works that way. I've worked for some private companies who had very generous and wonderful owners.

They would choose to make 100 million and have employees be happy and make wonderful products than make 120 million and have employees be miserably and churn out crap.

However with a publicly traded company, everything is impersonal. The stockholders are the owners and people who buy ActivisionBlizzard stock dont' give a damn about anything other than wanting their stock to go higher.

Once a company goes public they are a slave to the stock price, they exist only to make it go up or to increase dividends.

Everyone should have seen Blizzard's soul departing the second they no longer were owned by a few guys who had hearts and souls and instead owned by millions of faceless people who just see numbers on a spreadsheet.

Such is life.

Give it another decade and things will get really bad. Blizz will be churning out a lot of uninspired crap I fear.
ShadowWolf
Profile Joined March 2010
United States197 Posts
February 29 2012 20:23 GMT
#99
On March 01 2012 05:02 Excalibur_Z wrote:
I suppose this makes sense, and yeah it fits that it was mostly GM and Tech Support staff. That would also explain why they're looking to expand the ranks of the MVPs (unpaid but essentially support staff). Knowing Blizzard they probably had some pretty generous severance packages, so best of luck to you who were laid off in finding a new job.


As much as getting laid off sucks and is really unfair to the people being laid off, nearly everyone who has been let go here has landed a job often times better than the one from which they were let go. Most big/good companies to work for have amazing severance and job placement packages, so it's really likely that most people will land something good.

But for the people let go it's probably really hard to look at that optimistically.
JimmyJRaynor
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Canada17971 Posts
February 29 2012 20:29 GMT
#100
Has anyone heard from Dustin Browder or David Kim since this announcement?
Ray Kassar To David Crane : "you're no more important to Atari than the factory workers assembling the cartridges"
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