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4 Posts
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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Damn, that very significant. I feel bad for the people who got laid off, and hopefully they can find some new careers quickly.
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Yeah that definitely sucks...however I'm pretty sure blizzard employees should have a decently easy time finding work :D hopefully at least haha
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I've been waiting for diablo II forever!
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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.
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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.
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Probably mostly Gamemasters getting fired, with millions of subscribers quitting you don´t need that many.
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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.
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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 : (
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600 out of how many is the only question i have. *shrugs
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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.
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It's certainly nothing to do with WoW you silly people. You do not fire customer service before releasing a new expansion.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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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600 employees out of like ~4,500 is a pretty big deal. Best of luck to them finding new jobs!!!
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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
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Did they 'release' Greg Street yet?
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I thought this was already happening in their HR department.
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Man gotta suck being one of those that got fired but oh well people come and go in business corporates
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It makes sense that they're cutting jobs in the short term to cushion the loss of revenue from Diablo 2, StarCraft II: WoL and WoW. The first two because they're about to be infused with new content (always darkest before the dawn and such) and the last one because it's just not aging well anymore, and Mists of Pandaria is clearly just a last ditch effort to squeeze some more money out of it before they finally let it die.
In the long run, with the release of Diablo 3 and HotS, as well as the announcement of Titan and whatever else they might be doing over there, I'm sure they'll end up rehiring and continue to grow.
Just my perspective.
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I think the funniest post I've seen develop from this was "The 600 people fired were the ones who thought Pandas were a great idea." HAHAHA!
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On March 01 2012 03:57 Mattchew wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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They wanna cut employees to make more money? Fine. But it's dumb when they give you horse shit like this. They just want to maximize profits. It's common knowledge the biggest expense of companies is salaries.
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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
Just out of curiosity:
1. Where you working at Blizzard headquarters as GM or from home?
2. How much information do you get about Blizzard projects, like unannounced titles and such?
I'm just curious on what job you have to have at Blizzard in order to know "everything". Like if you are a developer on Starcraft 2. Do you know whats going on with Titan, when Diablo 3 is going to release, other unannounced stuff?
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On March 01 2012 04:02 papaz wrote:Show nested quote +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 Just out of curiosity: 1. Where you working at Blizzard headquarters as GM or from home? 2. How much information do you get about Blizzard projects, like unannounced titles and such? I'm just curious on what job you have to have at Blizzard in order to know "everything". Like if you are a developer on Starcraft 2. Do you know whats going on with Titan, when Diablo 3 is going to release, other unannounced stuff?
You know releasing any of that info on Titan would be a lawsuit right? lol
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This is good news!
With WOW on the decline, Blizzard has to pay even more attention to its other IPs.
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It isnt fired its made redundant
There is a huge difference between being fired and redundancy.
I hate people that don't get the difference.
You get fired because you are a dick, you get made redundant because the people controlling the money are dicks.
The answer to the ho wmuch will people know willb e not that much. THey will get internal press releases but if you are on a team for a particular project rather than a person who manages several projects you will not have mental capacity or time to worry about other things. The amount of work these guys have to do in the time constraints they have is nothing short of hilarious - for every person at the company there are probably 1000 who could do and want that job. Also why spread info on projects that are shrouded in secrecy?
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Indeed feels like this is mainly because of the decrease in the maintainence for WoW...
But Diablo 3.... Soon....
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We'll have exciting news to share in the coming weeks regarding Diablo III's release date,
I found it sad this is all I took away from this.
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On March 01 2012 04:02 papaz wrote:Show nested quote +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 Just out of curiosity: 1. Where you working at Blizzard headquarters as GM or from home? 2. How much information do you get about Blizzard projects, like unannounced titles and such? I'm just curious on what job you have to have at Blizzard in order to know "everything". Like if you are a developer on Starcraft 2. Do you know whats going on with Titan, when Diablo 3 is going to release, other unannounced stuff?
1. It was not possible for Game Masters to work from home, we all worked from the office.
2. There isn't really anything I can say about this for Legal reasons.
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Stuff like this has to happen sometimes. So nice to hear some of the stories of the employees and all are taking it well. Best of luck to them all.
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So sad for the ones that will be laid off, but then again, having worked in Blizzard in your resume is definitely a huge plus in applying for new jobs.
Tough times indeed.
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They could just sell another WoW mount and make enough salary for those employees that were let go for a year...
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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.
You ready to bring out the baseball bat, get out your boombox, play Geto Boys - Still, and just start beating on their fax machine? 
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I'm in the same boat as Masada714. Felt like I've had a hidden identity. Lol.
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On March 01 2012 04:13 Zerothegreat wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 04:02 Masada714 wrote: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. You ready to bring out the baseball bat, get out your boombox, play Geto Boys - Still, and just start beating on their fax machine?
Oh Office Space, such a great movie! Too bad we didn't use any fax machines
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Hope to see those employees get back on their feet relatively quickly. This was bound to happen eventually since Activision Blizzard grew exponentially the past few years. Nevertheless, good luck to those who were let go.
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On March 01 2012 04:15 dbosworld wrote:
I'm in the same boat as Masada714. Felt like I've had a hidden identity, but now I can say it. Lol.
User was warned for this post
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On March 01 2012 04:12 musai wrote:
They could just sell another WoW mount and make enough salary for those employees that were let go for a year...
Lol, I think they've milked that cow far too much over the past several months. I don't know if they can still get away with that anymore.
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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.
I don't really have much else to say other than I'm sorry to hear you lost your job And similar goes to the other 599 people who caught in the middle of this.
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The irony I find in this whole thing, is that it happened on my birthday, which of course is today. Not only to be laid off on your birthday but it is a Leap year that only happens once every 4 years. Doh ><
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It must be tough in the game industry when cuts are made, since there wouldn't be much attrition through retirement (or lateral movement in Blizzard's case). The place where I work "red-circled" some employees, eliminating their jobs, but moving them into other lower responsibility jobs at the same pay-grade. This is because we didn't have the capital lying around to afford to pay so much severance at all once. I wonder how Blizzard's Q4 will look as a result of this, severing 600 employees might cost them some significant bucks.
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On March 01 2012 04:12 musai wrote:
They could just sell another WoW mount and make enough salary for those employees that were let go for a year...
This isn't how companies work. You won't find many companies that keep unneeded employees.
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Probably sacking a bunch of GMs from WoW because of the decline in subscriptions. I wonder if anybody was fired over the Diablo 3 "fiasco"?
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On March 01 2012 03:53 andrewlt wrote:
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.
Exactly what I was thinking.
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On March 01 2012 04:18 Masada714 wrote:
The irony I find in this whole thing, is that it happened on my birthday, which of course is today. Not only to be laid off on your birthday but it is a Leap year that only happens once every 4 years. Doh ><
Well happy birthday! Now you got 2 reasons to drink today! But on a serious note, I wish you the best and hope you find something soon!
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On March 01 2012 03:49 ZaplinG wrote:
I've been waiting for diablo II forever!
Ohh I think you'll be happy to hear that it got released a decade ago!
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I feel bad for those who had to part from the amazing Blizzard company. But, on the other hand, what could you possibly want more as a fresh face on the job market than to have Blizzard on your Resume'. :D
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The good news however is that Blizzard will announce a release date of Diablo II in a few weeks.
OP edit the diablo II to 3 =)
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Whats 'blizzard' and why should i care?
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On March 01 2012 04:07 MrTortoise wrote:
It isnt fired its made redundant
There is a huge difference between being fired and redundancy.
I hate people that don't get the difference.
You get fired because you are a dick, you get made redundant because the people controlling the money are dicks.
I think that distinction might be lost in translation, I don't know for other countries but the Dutch translation for "being fired" doesnt make any distinction to wether it's your own fault or not. Until this thread I didn't even know there was a distinction in the US.
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On March 01 2012 04:17 TheRhox wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 04:12 musai wrote:
They could just sell another WoW mount and make enough salary for those employees that were let go for a year... Lol, I think they've milked that cow far too much over the past several months. I don't know if they can still get away with that anymore.
The most recent one (like 2-3 weeks old) mount had a 60k+ queue when my gf tried to buy it at night... so imagine EU + NA, and the ones that were sold prior.
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On March 01 2012 04:25 thezanursic wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 03:49 ZaplinG wrote:
I've been waiting for diablo II forever! Ohh I think you'll be happy to hear that it got released a decade ago!
Rofl.
On March 01 2012 04:26 Soulstice wrote:
Whats 'blizzard' and why should i care?
A very serious weather storm. When one sets 600 people on fire, it's definitely cause for concern.
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On March 01 2012 04:25 StarStrider wrote:
I feel bad for those who had to part from the amazing Blizzard company. But, on the other hand, what could you possibly want more as a fresh face on the job market than to have Blizzard on your Resume'. :D
Good luck trying to find a job when 599 others in the same field and area are also looking, it sucks but expect most of them to end up working at a retail store rather than anywhere near the gaming industry for the next few years.
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I just uninstalled wow like 2 hours ago and then I read this, I just feel sorry for the 600 people, hope it will all turn out well for them in the end...
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On March 01 2012 04:32 Terrifyer wrote:
blizzard droned too hard
More like they're suiciding their drones to free up supply!
WoW doesn't need a small army to support it anymore; why overstaff a game on the decline?
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Hopefully one of them is bashiok. ><
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On March 01 2012 04:34 bonifaceviii wrote:More like they're suiciding their drones to free up supply! WoW doesn't need a small army to support it anymore; why overstaff a game on the decline?
true. there is no question the numbers are going down and the play time. feel sorry for the 600 though, but hey they will have a great resume that says they worked at Blizz...
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Fired employees who thank their employer for being nice. How strange...
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I don`t know why, but hearing this makes me think it`s Activision was pressing on the matter. (even though it`s more likely that with a decrease of WoW subscriptions they have to cut their WoW Community staff ... GMs etc.) Good Luck finding a new job to all the former employees.
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On March 01 2012 04:41 Macpo wrote:
Fired employees who thank their employer for being nice. How strange...
I'm sure they got a decent handshake, and would like to be considered for future opportunities at Blizzard later.
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On March 01 2012 04:41 Macpo wrote:
Fired employees who thank their employer for being nice. How strange...
Apparently you've never worked for Blizzard. They're not Foxconn, they know how to treat their employees.
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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
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OP copypasta:
[...] 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.
This sounds very interesting! The new MMO rumor, maybe? (dunno if it has been confirmed unofficially yet?)
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no big surprise, subscription numbers are down and they need less support staff.
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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
That's a lot less than I thought it would be.
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On March 01 2012 04:50 vgijamven wrote:Show nested quote +OP copypasta:
[...] 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.
This sounds very interesting! The new MMO rumor, maybe? (dunno if it has been confirmed unofficially yet?)
It common knowledge that Blizzard is working on an unannounced MMO unrelated to its current universes. Speculation that it will be announced in 2013 with the return of BlizzCon is already rampant.
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On March 01 2012 04:41 Macpo wrote:
Fired employees who thank their employer for being nice. How strange...
there is allot you don' seem to understand about a big corporation and down cutting. There is a differences between down cutting and getting fired.
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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.
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On March 01 2012 04:52 Chargelot wrote:Show nested quote +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 That's a lot less than I thought it would be.
I agree when you compare to other CEO it is substantially lower, most of his salary rests in restricted stock options and incentive plans which is good and a model more companies should use.
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I hope they fired Greg Canessa 600 times.
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I love how he goes from firing people to exciting "Diablo 3 release", PR 101.
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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.
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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.
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Are these probably World of Warcraft Support Crew Members? It would be logical that with recent subscriber loss less support is needed
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United States12235 Posts
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.
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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.
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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?
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...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.
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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.
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yeah... your right... 1.2 billion dollars anual income from WoW is too little to pay your workers...
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And that's how today's worlds rolls Make millions of profits ? Fire people.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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Dammit now my WoW GM Tickets will take twice as long!!!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Has anyone heard from Dustin Browder or David Kim since this announcement?
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On March 01 2012 03:50 CyDe wrote:
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.
Likely, marketing and production
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im so sorry to ask this but who is mike boy in blizzard?
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In times like this, I think it's a good idea to be introspective and think about yourself and where you are in your career. What role are you performing in your company and also whether there are opportunities to move up. Also, how well are you performing in relation to your peers and how much they're paying you, too.
Because if you are paid relatively high for your position but your contribution isn't really that much more than the guy sitting next to you, how does the company see that when times are tight or they need to tighten their belt(for any reason?). Support staff are vulnerable because you're not adding to the bottom line. You're consuming it, where as Sales staff and other income-generator type roles who add to the bottom line...unless you're not making your quota...you'll be safer.
What also bears mentioning is whether your particular job can be off-shored(done by someone else in a different continent altogether for about 1/10th of your salary). If it can...that's something to be looked at as well. Remember the good ol' days a few decades ago, where being an engineer was just...the thing to do? Now these days engineers are all accessible throughout the world, never mind software developers.
I'm sorry for this depressing talk but it just goes to show that if it comes to all of us just waitering tables, it's nothing to be ashamed about. At least it's a job where they need you to be physically present to serve the customer.
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Really sucks a close friend of mine also lost his job at Blizzard today and he worked there for almost 8 years really sucks. Best of luck to those 600 employees
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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
he get 16 million dollars per year???
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On March 01 2012 05:23 ShadowWolf wrote:Show nested quote +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.
A severance package is usually about a week's pay+benefits per year of service. I doubt that Blizzard is letting go of many long tenured employees.
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On March 01 2012 05:44 Mawi wrote:
im so sorry to ask this but who is mike boy in blizzard?
founder and ceo of Blizzard. Mike Morhaime.
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On March 01 2012 05:49 papaz wrote:Show nested quote +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 he get 16 million dollars per year???
not quite... a lot of it is in terms of stock and incentives. These will change in value over time. Could go up or down, but it gives more motivation to keep making the company grow and perform better. The day you see them cash out is the day you should worry about blizzard
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On March 01 2012 04:59 Condor Hero wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Pretty inappropriate to say when 600 people lost their jobs.
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Kennigit
Canada19447 Posts
On March 01 2012 05:29 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
Has anyone heard from Dustin Browder or David Kim since this announcement?
Possibilities
1) The have zero insight on the layoffs, because they aren't involved in Blizzard's business decisions at that level. They know some people who were laid off and obviously can't publicly comment on it.
2) They were both laid off
One of these is very likely. One of these is very unlikely.
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On March 01 2012 05:54 Kennigit wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 05:29 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
Has anyone heard from Dustin Browder or David Kim since this announcement? Possibilities 1) The have zero insight on the layoffs, because they aren't involved in Blizzard's business decisions at that level. They know some people who were laid off and obviously can't publicly comment on it. 2) They were both laid off One of these is very likely. One of these is very unlikely.
OMG.... Browder and Kim were laid off!!! That must be it!!! Starcraft is....
Poll: Starcraft is....Saved (46) 68% Doomed (22) 32% 68 total votes Your vote: Starcraft is.... (Vote): Saved
(Vote): Doomed
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i wonder how long it will take activision to ruin every blizzard franchise?
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Let Bobby Kotick be the first to assure you, there will be no reduction in the standard of dividends Customer Service.
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On March 01 2012 05:54 Kennigit wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 05:29 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
Has anyone heard from Dustin Browder or David Kim since this announcement? Possibilities 1) The have zero insight on the layoffs, because they aren't involved in Blizzard's business decisions at that level. They know some people who were laid off and obviously can't publicly comment on it. 2) They were both laid off One of these is very likely. One of these is very unlikely.
A man can always hope!
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:/ Always a bitter time.
Wishing the best to those affected.
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I'm going to assume this mostly, or entirely, support positions directly related to WoW.
As WoW declines, so does the requirement for people to directly support that game- account management, game masters, things like that.
Pretty normal for the product life cycle, surprised they wouldn't keep them on until the new "Titan" game. Unless they're starting to get wary about the economic climate for another MMO (frankly, I'm not entirely sure I can ever play another MMO the way I played WoW. I think I'm just MMO'd out)
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pretty easy to understand that they were getting ahead of anyone being unhappy about being let go. Additionally with WoW coming to the end of it's lifespan it makes sense they are cutting back on customer support type positions. From what I can tell it's largely where the lay offs are coming from.
Does it suck for people being let go? yes, of course it does.
Is it realistic to keep lots of GM's around and support staff for a game that is near the end of it's lifespan? no, it'd be wasteful spending on blizzards part.
In the end a lot of people need to be less gloom and doom about lay offs. It happens all the time especially in the MMO market even with a successful game. Blizzard was just making a PR move to explain what's going on before it becomes rumors and conjecture. Not that it will stop all rumors (obviously), but most people should be able to figure out what's going on and not panic about it.
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I wonder what these "un-announced" projects are o.0,they already have an mmorpg, an rpg and an rts and a moba... blizzard fps?
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Rob Simpsons twitter has remained silent all day
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On March 01 2012 05:23 Zaqwert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 05:16 Chargelot wrote: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.
Blizzard hasn't been owned by a few guys since the middle 90s. They were bought by Davidson and Associates in 1994, before they even released Warcraft 1. The company was later acquired by CUC International, which became Cendant. CUC, in the late 90s, was the source of the biggest corporate accounting scandal in US history, at the time.
If you think Bobby Kotick is bad, Blizzard's parent company's CEO in the late 90s, during the time of Diablo 2 and SC:BW actually went to prison because of an accounting scandal. Their best games came with a criminal in charge of the company.
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I guess they are going to outsource their jobs to India.
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And I'm sure there will be a nice fat bonus/pay raise for the CEO/higher ups this year.... It sickens me that guys make 16million dollars a year to put in the same, or less hours, as your average employee and it's not like they are 100 times smarter than the average joe or something, usually they got their position through lucky timing or by being more ruthless than everyone else. No one is worth 100+ times more than another human being, in my opinion. Sigh, capitalism sucks sometimes. Heart goes out to all the people laid off in this shit economy while CEOs buy ferraris and their 5th vacation home etc.. disgusting world we live in where greed is a positive trait.
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On March 01 2012 06:45 darkest44 wrote:
And I'm sure there will be a nice fat bonus/pay raise for the CEO/higher ups this year.... It sickens me that guys make 16million dollars a year to put in the same, or less hours, as your average employee and it's not like they are 100 times smarter than the average joe or something, usually they got their position through lucky timing or by being more ruthless than everyone else. No one is worth 100+ times more than another human being, in my opinion. Sigh, capitalism sucks sometimes. Heart goes out to all the people laid off in this shit economy while CEOs buy ferraris and their 5th vacation home etc.. disgusting world we live in where greed is a positive trait.
people aren't just handed the title of CEO. they work their ass off to get it, and more often than not they were the ones there from the beginning when the company was nothing more than a startup.
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On March 01 2012 06:44 Sufficiency wrote:
I guess they are going to outsource their jobs to India.
They're not needed anymore; there's nothing to outsource.
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On March 01 2012 06:52 Terranist wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 06:45 darkest44 wrote:
And I'm sure there will be a nice fat bonus/pay raise for the CEO/higher ups this year.... It sickens me that guys make 16million dollars a year to put in the same, or less hours, as your average employee and it's not like they are 100 times smarter than the average joe or something, usually they got their position through lucky timing or by being more ruthless than everyone else. No one is worth 100+ times more than another human being, in my opinion. Sigh, capitalism sucks sometimes. Heart goes out to all the people laid off in this shit economy while CEOs buy ferraris and their 5th vacation home etc.. disgusting world we live in where greed is a positive trait. people aren't just handed the title of CEO. they work their ass off to get it, and more often than not they were the ones there from the beginning when the company was nothing more than a startup.
That changes nothing. Everyone "works their ass off". He did not work 300+ times harder or put in 300+ times more hours than the dude risking his very sanity doing customer support all day (people can be real big dicks) who might have been in the company just as long and still makes 40,000 max a year or something. But hey we're brainwashed in America to believe capitalism is all roses and rainbows and greed is a good thing. So go ahead and believe one human being is worth hundreds or sometimes thousands of times (in the case of billionaires) more than another human being, it's your right to believe whatever you want.
I'm fine with someone getting paid tens of times more than another person because there needs to be some incentive to get higher degrees and work hard etc, but not hundreds or thousands times as much. It's sad how all the benefits and stock bonuses etc go all to the guys who already get paid the most, while the average employees usually get diddly squat and then gets fired in mass lay offs so the stock holders/ceos/execs can make higher profits. I am not looking for arguments, I was simply stating my opinion and sending my thoughts out to those who are losing their jobs in the all consuming interest of more profits for the stockholders/owners.
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On March 01 2012 06:29 killerdog wrote:
I wonder what these "un-announced" projects are o.0,they already have an mmorpg, an rpg and an rts and a moba... blizzard fps?
There's a new MMORPG coming from Blizzard. It's codenamed "Titan" and it will be based on a new universe (so no WoW2, World of Starcraft or World of Diablo). That's pretty much all that has been announced.
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On March 01 2012 05:07 Silidons wrote:Show nested quote +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
if only someone had told MLG that
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On March 01 2012 05:57 Blasterion wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 05:54 Kennigit wrote:On March 01 2012 05:29 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
Has anyone heard from Dustin Browder or David Kim since this announcement? Possibilities 1) The have zero insight on the layoffs, because they aren't involved in Blizzard's business decisions at that level. They know some people who were laid off and obviously can't publicly comment on it. 2) They were both laid off One of these is very likely. One of these is very unlikely. OMG.... Browder and Kim were laid off!!! That must be it!!! Starcraft is.... Poll: Starcraft is....Saved (46) 68% Doomed (22) 32% 68 total votes Your vote: Starcraft is.... (Vote): Saved
(Vote): Doomed
WHOA...
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/XNf34.jpg)
The last time I checked Way more votes went to doomed!
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On March 01 2012 06:55 darkest44 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 06:52 Terranist wrote:On March 01 2012 06:45 darkest44 wrote:
And I'm sure there will be a nice fat bonus/pay raise for the CEO/higher ups this year.... It sickens me that guys make 16million dollars a year to put in the same, or less hours, as your average employee and it's not like they are 100 times smarter than the average joe or something, usually they got their position through lucky timing or by being more ruthless than everyone else. No one is worth 100+ times more than another human being, in my opinion. Sigh, capitalism sucks sometimes. Heart goes out to all the people laid off in this shit economy while CEOs buy ferraris and their 5th vacation home etc.. disgusting world we live in where greed is a positive trait. people aren't just handed the title of CEO. they work their ass off to get it, and more often than not they were the ones there from the beginning when the company was nothing more than a startup. That changes nothing. Everyone "works their ass off". He did not work 100 times harder or put in 100 times more hours than the dude breaking his back scrubbing toilets all day or something. But hey we're brainwashed in America to believe capitalism is all roses and rainbows and greed is a good thing. So go ahead and believe one human being is worth 100 or sometimes thousands of times (in the case of billionaires) more than another human being. I'm fine with someone getting paid 10s of times more than another person maybe, but not 100s or thousands. It's sad how all the benefits and stock bonuses etc go all to the guys who already get paid the most, while the average employees usually get diddly squat. I am not looking for arguments, I was simply stating my opinion and sending my thoughts out to those who are losing their jobs in the all consuming interest of more profits for the stockholders/owners.
If the ceo was there from the start, he took the risk of starting a business and now it's paying off.
Those people more often than work nearly every hour they're awake compared to most 9-to-5ers(yes there are unfortunate souls who have to work just as much and hardly earn anything but that's a different topic).
edit: I do agree that the bonuses in top companies are way too high.
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On March 01 2012 06:55 darkest44 wrote:
That changes nothing. Everyone "works their ass off". He did not work 300+ times harder or put in 300+ times more hours than the dude risking his very sanity doing customer support all day (people can be real big dicks) who might have been in the company just as long and still makes 40,000 max a year or something. But hey we're brainwashed in America to believe capitalism is all roses and rainbows and greed is a good thing. So go ahead and believe one human being is worth hundreds or sometimes thousands of times (in the case of billionaires) more than another human being, it's your right to believe whatever you want.
He took the risk to start the company in the first place. If Blizzard fails back in the day, the employees may lose their jobs, but the founders lose *everything* because they need to declare bankruptcy. You can knock him all you want for making as much as he does, but he's the one who put it all on the line to start the company, not the employees.
Whether he makes 50 trillion dollars or 1 dollar doesn't matter, people would still be laid off, because in every company there is fat that needs to be trimmed, and they trimmed that fat. That's part of how business works.
If I have a problem with any CEO it's the serial CEO's that jump to established companies, ruin them, get the golden parachute and then jump to the next one. Those people are the scum. Mike Morhaime built this thing from the ground up and is still there. Give the guy some credit.
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much respect to the WoW GMs who are getting released, i've always appreciated your customer service in game. best of wishes to you.
it's definitely not an issue of simply being able to pay the employees, since their job listing page is still loaded with open positions. I'm glad that the company is still taking care of these employees getting released with what i hear to be rather generous severance packages and bonus benefits.
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Nowadays GM tickets take several hours or up to a day..... now it'll be so much longer >.<".
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On March 01 2012 06:55 darkest44 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 06:52 Terranist wrote:On March 01 2012 06:45 darkest44 wrote:
And I'm sure there will be a nice fat bonus/pay raise for the CEO/higher ups this year.... It sickens me that guys make 16million dollars a year to put in the same, or less hours, as your average employee and it's not like they are 100 times smarter than the average joe or something, usually they got their position through lucky timing or by being more ruthless than everyone else. No one is worth 100+ times more than another human being, in my opinion. Sigh, capitalism sucks sometimes. Heart goes out to all the people laid off in this shit economy while CEOs buy ferraris and their 5th vacation home etc.. disgusting world we live in where greed is a positive trait. people aren't just handed the title of CEO. they work their ass off to get it, and more often than not they were the ones there from the beginning when the company was nothing more than a startup. That changes nothing. Everyone "works their ass off". He did not work 300+ times harder or put in 300+ times more hours than the dude risking his very sanity doing customer support all day (people can be real big dicks) who might have been in the company just as long and still makes 40,000 max a year or something. But hey we're brainwashed in America to believe capitalism is all roses and rainbows and greed is a good thing. So go ahead and believe one human being is worth hundreds or sometimes thousands of times (in the case of billionaires) more than another human being, it's your right to believe whatever you want. I'm fine with someone getting paid tens of times more than another person because there needs to be some incentive to get higher degrees and work hard etc, but not hundreds or thousands times as much. It's sad how all the benefits and stock bonuses etc go all to the guys who already get paid the most, while the average employees usually get diddly squat and then gets fired in mass lay offs so the stock holders/ceos/execs can make higher profits. I am not looking for arguments, I was simply stating my opinion and sending my thoughts out to those who are losing their jobs in the all consuming interest of more profits for the stockholders/owners.
Don't post a controversial opinion/whine if you're not looking for an argument. It's pretty annoying that people post their opinion and want other posters to treat it as sacrosanct.
And Mike Morhaime is a founder of the company. He was one of the people who started it. What he does is way more valuable than the positions that were laid off. Those positions, to be frank, are mostly used by people as stepping stones to get the positions they really want.
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On March 01 2012 06:29 killerdog wrote:
I wonder what these "un-announced" projects are o.0,they already have an mmorpg, an rpg and an rts and a moba... blizzard fps?
Titan, there replacement for wow.
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On March 01 2012 06:55 darkest44 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 06:52 Terranist wrote:On March 01 2012 06:45 darkest44 wrote:
And I'm sure there will be a nice fat bonus/pay raise for the CEO/higher ups this year.... It sickens me that guys make 16million dollars a year to put in the same, or less hours, as your average employee and it's not like they are 100 times smarter than the average joe or something, usually they got their position through lucky timing or by being more ruthless than everyone else. No one is worth 100+ times more than another human being, in my opinion. Sigh, capitalism sucks sometimes. Heart goes out to all the people laid off in this shit economy while CEOs buy ferraris and their 5th vacation home etc.. disgusting world we live in where greed is a positive trait. people aren't just handed the title of CEO. they work their ass off to get it, and more often than not they were the ones there from the beginning when the company was nothing more than a startup. That changes nothing. Everyone "works their ass off". He did not work 300+ times harder or put in 300+ times more hours than the dude risking his very sanity doing customer support all day (people can be real big dicks) who might have been in the company just as long and still makes 40,000 max a year or something. But hey we're brainwashed in America to believe capitalism is all roses and rainbows and greed is a good thing. So go ahead and believe one human being is worth hundreds or sometimes thousands of times (in the case of billionaires) more than another human being, it's your right to believe whatever you want. I'm fine with someone getting paid tens of times more than another person because there needs to be some incentive to get higher degrees and work hard etc, but not hundreds or thousands times as much. It's sad how all the benefits and stock bonuses etc go all to the guys who already get paid the most, while the average employees usually get diddly squat and then gets fired in mass lay offs so the stock holders/ceos/execs can make higher profits. I am not looking for arguments, I was simply stating my opinion and sending my thoughts out to those who are losing their jobs in the all consuming interest of more profits for the stockholders/owners.
There are plenty of people that lines up to just "work" however there are very few who are ready to lead, give vision and to take responsibility of something goes wrong. The people who are working doesn't really lose that much if a company goes out of business as in they could had done a superb job and the company still died and they will simply go work for another company where as the CEO who has all responsibility not only failed his "work" by not leading a successful company, he also carries all the responsibility as in any economical consequences falls on him. By forming and being responsible for a company you take the risk, if the company fails, to be forced to payback whatever the financial drawback might be. And this could in worse case scenarios be severe where the person in question has to spend his lifetime trying to pay back the debts that the failed company left behind.
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I've had experience doing customer service and believe me, blizzard is doing these people a favor by firing them. Their soul is now saved. And I dealt with regular people. These guys are dealing with wow customers... lol. They should go on one of those reality shows that testifies surviving bear attacks and hurricanes. "I survived wrath of the wow fans".
Wow is clearly waning. Loss of subs and this. Doesn't mean end of wow just yet but you can't be on top forever. Doesn't seem all that surprising. They've been dealing with that game just expanding year after year and now are catching up to current situation. They'll consolidate and stay afloat as long as they can. Good for them.
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For all this Kotick bashing going on...
bottom line is he led the purchase of activision when it was worth almost nothing and on the verge of bankruptcy...
he brought activision back from the edge of a cliff and the only value he really had was the brand power of the name "Activision".
Kotick has a track record of burying IP fast with no more life left in it. (Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, .. Bizzare Creations...)
he cuts costs where needed in order for the healthy parts of the company to continue to grow.
The Activision brand is still one of the strongest brands in the minds of mainstream consumers...
burned in the memory of every middle aged american who now buys games for their kids are titles like Chopper Command and Pitfall.
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Hmm, sucks for those people i guess.
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On March 01 2012 06:55 darkest44 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 06:52 Terranist wrote:On March 01 2012 06:45 darkest44 wrote:
And I'm sure there will be a nice fat bonus/pay raise for the CEO/higher ups this year.... It sickens me that guys make 16million dollars a year to put in the same, or less hours, as your average employee and it's not like they are 100 times smarter than the average joe or something, usually they got their position through lucky timing or by being more ruthless than everyone else. No one is worth 100+ times more than another human being, in my opinion. Sigh, capitalism sucks sometimes. Heart goes out to all the people laid off in this shit economy while CEOs buy ferraris and their 5th vacation home etc.. disgusting world we live in where greed is a positive trait. people aren't just handed the title of CEO. they work their ass off to get it, and more often than not they were the ones there from the beginning when the company was nothing more than a startup. That changes nothing. Everyone "works their ass off". He did not work 300+ times harder or put in 300+ times more hours than the dude risking his very sanity doing customer support all day (people can be real big dicks) who might have been in the company just as long and still makes 40,000 max a year or something. But hey we're brainwashed in America to believe capitalism is all roses and rainbows and greed is a good thing. So go ahead and believe one human being is worth hundreds or sometimes thousands of times (in the case of billionaires) more than another human being, it's your right to believe whatever you want. I'm fine with someone getting paid tens of times more than another person because there needs to be some incentive to get higher degrees and work hard etc, but not hundreds or thousands times as much. It's sad how all the benefits and stock bonuses etc go all to the guys who already get paid the most, while the average employees usually get diddly squat and then gets fired in mass lay offs so the stock holders/ceos/execs can make higher profits. I am not looking for arguments, I was simply stating my opinion and sending my thoughts out to those who are losing their jobs in the all consuming interest of more profits for the stockholders/owners.
If there's one thing I just can't stand is people who come in, give their uneducated opinion and say they're not looking for arguments.
Mike Morhaime has built and created more wealth and well-being for the general public than 99.9% of this world ever will, but that's not even the logic behind his compensation package.
What people need to understand is that Activision Blizzard generated 4.44 billion in revenues in 2010, and most probably even more in 2011.
Now how much do you think Mike's idea's contributed to that 4.44 billion ? How likely do you think it is that his ideas, his border-line genius and pioneer insight into the gaming industry, his management skills and his day to day activities had a lot to do with the profitability of the Blizzard subsidiary ?
Well I can tell you now, that according to the board of compensation, his contribution was far ahead of 16 million.
What people need to squeeze into their brains is that compensation is nothing more than a cost for a business, and how much would you pay to get the skills of a Mike Morhaime ? Well clearly you'd pay quite a lot.
It has nothing to do with working more hours, or being a better person, its about a return on investment, and that's the reason CEO's get obscene packages, its because more likely than not, the business got a good return on its investment by hiring them in the first place.
I'm sick of people criticising CEOs, its getting out of control, even Richard Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers, now considered the worst CEO of all time, turned a 1993 loss of $102 million into a 2007 profit of $4.2 billion. These people are extremely rare, valuable and key assets for a company, and executive pay is nothing more than the result of simple supply and demand.
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I hope the severance package came with a free ticket to blizzcon 2013 and collector editions of each game released. I'd be content with that.
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blizzards golden years were over about 5 years ago. they have lost almost all of their good employees. matt ueleman, the people who are now at arena net that made blizzard. i'm just wondering how long they can keep going before they wane out of existence. they will last a while longer i guess considering the standards of the gaming industry these days.
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"Uneducated" rofl. You know nothing about me, nor my education and my job, you'd be very fucking surprised. Just because I don't buy into the brainwashing we've been put through that CEOs are all incredible people worth hundreds and thousands of other people, doesn't mean I'm not educated. Did you know that there have been studies showing that CEOs are very likely to be undiagnosed psychopaths with lack of empathy often surpassing criminals given the same tests? These are the type of people we worship in capitalism. But it's cool, I'm used to the same reactions like this in America where we worship the rich. No human being is worth hundreds or thousands of other human beings putting in the same hours. That is my opinion. You have your opinion, that is fine. Calling me uneducated is just a pathetic and hilarious joke, when you know nothing about me and quite typical really.
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On March 01 2012 06:55 darkest44 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 06:52 Terranist wrote:On March 01 2012 06:45 darkest44 wrote:
And I'm sure there will be a nice fat bonus/pay raise for the CEO/higher ups this year.... It sickens me that guys make 16million dollars a year to put in the same, or less hours, as your average employee and it's not like they are 100 times smarter than the average joe or something, usually they got their position through lucky timing or by being more ruthless than everyone else. No one is worth 100+ times more than another human being, in my opinion. Sigh, capitalism sucks sometimes. Heart goes out to all the people laid off in this shit economy while CEOs buy ferraris and their 5th vacation home etc.. disgusting world we live in where greed is a positive trait. people aren't just handed the title of CEO. they work their ass off to get it, and more often than not they were the ones there from the beginning when the company was nothing more than a startup. That changes nothing. Everyone "works their ass off". He did not work 300+ times harder or put in 300+ times more hours than the dude risking his very sanity doing customer support all day (people can be real big dicks) who might have been in the company just as long and still makes 40,000 max a year or something. But hey we're brainwashed in America to believe capitalism is all roses and rainbows and greed is a good thing. So go ahead and believe one human being is worth hundreds or sometimes thousands of times (in the case of billionaires) more than another human being, it's your right to believe whatever you want. I'm fine with someone getting paid tens of times more than another person because there needs to be some incentive to get higher degrees and work hard etc, but not hundreds or thousands times as much. It's sad how all the benefits and stock bonuses etc go all to the guys who already get paid the most, while the average employees usually get diddly squat and then gets fired in mass lay offs so the stock holders/ceos/execs can make higher profits. I am not looking for arguments, I was simply stating my opinion and sending my thoughts out to those who are losing their jobs in the all consuming interest of more profits for the stockholders/owners.
what are you talking about? Have you even joined the workforce yet? "Everyone "works their ass off". He did not work 300+ times harder or put in 300+ times more hours than the dude risking his very sanity doing customer support all day (people can be real big dicks) who might have been in the company just as long" . Matter of fact, yes, these people who are CEOs very likely DID work their asses off 300+ times more to get to those positions. You don't just 'get' a CEO position, sure some might have a lucky leg up through connections and joined the company in some entry level position but they still fought their way up the corporate ladder, but afaik, no company hires their CEO by just picking some bloke off the street "lucky you, you walked past just when we needed a new CEO" - style.
Also, that person doing customer support, what sort of qualifications do you think you need for that? All CEOs of long-standing companies afaik, have at least a uni degree + years of experience in their field. That's your 300+ times hardwork right there. Hard fact is, yes to the company, the CEO IS worth 300+ - 1000 times more than "the dude risking his very sanity doing customer support all day", that dude isn't forced to work there, he chose when he joined, that 'yes I am okay getting paid this much to do this job'. If not, there's always the option of leaving and finding a more suitable role. The dude himself accepts the price the company valued him at by continuously working there.
Fact is, it's your attitude of 'QQ ceo's and execs gets paid so much more than me QQ" that is killing us, maybe instead of sitting there qq'ing about how much CEOs get paid, go do something, get a degree or get a job or both and think of what you can do and to be worth that much to a company.
On March 01 2012 07:54 darkest44 wrote:
...CEOs are all incredible people worth hundreds and thousands of other people...
....In a vaccum, yes, no life is worth more than another, but at a company, with people doing a specialised job, yes matter of fact the CEO IS worth more to the company than Average Joe working on the floor. Average Joe accepts that and so continues to work there.
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On March 01 2012 07:54 darkest44 wrote:
"Uneducated" rofl. You know nothing about me, nor my education and my job, you'd be very fucking surprised. Just because I don't buy into the brainwashing we've been put through that CEOs are all incredible people worth hundreds and thousands of other people, doesn't mean I'm not educated. But it's cool, I'm used to the same reactions like this in America where we worship the rich. No human being is worth hundreds or thousands of other human beings putting in the same hours. That is my opinion. You have your opinion, that is fine. Calling me uneducated is just a pathetic and hilarious joke, when you know nothing about me and quite typical really.
What about the president?
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On March 01 2012 05:23 Zaqwert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 05:16 Chargelot wrote: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.
ye things like this makes me really sad and i think taht most of the people dont understand the meaning of this they are like "im palying my game i dont care about the world around me i have a good game and i dont give a shit who owns the company"which is really sad because soon everything will be capitals and stocks and big companies who choke the little ones...soon no1 will really be able to open a new and sucsessfull buisness,but dont bother knowing stuff lile this because when you dont its much easier to live your life,work to be "midclass" and just breathe and survive your way trough your life.
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Rich companies =/= shit games.
This is why money is awesome - self-interest promotes quality. Blizzard has a large amount of money, and a community (or, rather, three) that are fueling this pot of money in exchange for three awesome series. So with the obscene amount of money Mike Morhaime is making, he'll want to either make more or at least keep that flow going. And to keep the flow going, Blizz needs to stay quality.
Let's say they are purely money-centric, and starting today, they abandon their current stance on SC2 for a cheap, mass-market tactic. Maybe they'll get a new community who will lap that up, but in the meantime they just lost the old community who wanted quality StarCraft. You can hear it in people who are waiting for HotS, that they are okay with Blizz delaying the game because they want product quality over faster release dates. That's why we waited 12 years for SC2 to come out.
TL;DR - Blizz isn't trying to be a mean greedy corporation because the moment they do, we stop giving them our money.
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On March 01 2012 07:51 lpstroggoz wrote:
blizzards golden years were over about 5 years ago. they have lost almost all of their good employees. matt ueleman, the people who are now at arena net that made blizzard. i'm just wondering how long they can keep going before they wane out of existence. they will last a while longer i guess considering the standards of the gaming industry these days.
I was thinking more of 2003-2004 right before everyone jumped shipped with wow 99% done, started rushing out unfinished products not giving a damn about anything but their stock holders
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Cool, we're getting even less community involvement
Not blaming them, just observing.
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don't worry guys, I heard EA is hiring.
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On March 01 2012 08:10 NotSorry wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 07:51 lpstroggoz wrote:
blizzards golden years were over about 5 years ago. they have lost almost all of their good employees. matt ueleman, the people who are now at arena net that made blizzard. i'm just wondering how long they can keep going before they wane out of existence. they will last a while longer i guess considering the standards of the gaming industry these days.
I was thinking more of 2003-2004 right before everyone jumped shipped with wow 99% done, started rushing out unfinished products not giving a damn about anything but their stock holders
With WoW being the biggest cash cow ever and people going crazy over the release of Diablo 3 not to mention the next two installments of SC2, call me crazy but I think blizzard is gonna be juuusssstttt fine.
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I imagine these employees could not continue with them for the 2012 Battle.net World Championships. I can imagine an obscene amount of new ESPORTS employees will be necessary to conduct a tournament of this magnitude!
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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.
It makes a big difference on your résumé. Because, y'know, being fired/dismissed and being released/made redundant are totally different.
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good to know blizzard think 24-48 hour wait times on support tickets while they rake in millions is too much flab on the company ;/
really disapointing.
if it was mcdonalds or whatever laying off people i would obviously understand, they are in the business of making money and everyone knows it, but companies like blizzard try to convey themselves as being part of their own communities and someone who is almost a friend. if they dont prioritize support staff then it shows they arent actually interested in communities or friendships and are only in it for the money.
dont normally like to be part of the tin foil hat team but it really feels like since they partnered with activision their priorities have completely changed
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On March 01 2012 08:21 turdburgler wrote:
good to know blizzard think 24-48 hour wait times on support tickets while they rake in millions is too much flab on the company ;/
really disapointing.
if it was mcdonalds or whatever laying off people i would obviously understand, they are in the business of making money and everyone knows it, but companies like blizzard try to convey themselves as being part of their own communities and someone who is almost a friend. if they dont prioritize support staff then it shows they arent actually interested in communities or friendships and are only in it for the money.
dont normally like to be part of the tin foil hat team but it really feels like since they partnered with activision their priorities have completely changed
Because they just gave away their games for free before they partnered with activision? "For the Community!"
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Aw, that sucks to hear. I feel bad for those that got laid off, and I wish them the best in finding a new job. Hopefully, it won't be too hard for them to find one.
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What it basically comes down to, video games are an art form, like music or sculpting or painting.
There is a strong correlation between quality and profit, but not always. Sometimes lesser quality will produce maximum profit.
When a small, upstart gaming company gets going, it's usually by a few people who truly appreciate the art form. They want to make great games, and that's their #1 goal, they figure if they make a great game they will also make money.
Contrast that with a large public corporation run by drones who don't care about the art form, just the end result ($). They always attempt to maximize profit. To them the game is simply product, simply widgets to be churned out and sold.
It seems counter intuative, but as companies get larger and more succesful the quality of their product often decreases. It becomes homoginzed, safe, and predictable.
There are still people at Blizzard who are passionate gamers and very idealistic, however they don't run the show anymore. At the end of the day they give their input but if compromising the game's quality will produce more profit, that's what will happen now unfortunately.
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Aw damn, sorry for the employees that were let go. I hope not too many of them are going to have a tough time.
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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
Why wouldn't Morhaime make as much money as he does? He's one of the original founders. He's one of the people who made Blizzard what it is today. It's like saying Bill Gates does not deserve his huge paycheck.
Believe it or not, some people deserve to get paid well.
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and that our development teams in particular remain largely unaffected by today's announcement
Sam Yan, Blizzard 3d artist for Diablo just posted he got fired on his facebook
Its a sad day for 600 of us today including myself at Blizzard, Thank you to those of you who had been there with me for the 4 years on StarCraft II..not just as a fellow employee but have treated me as a friend outside of the workplace. My time at Blizzard has given me such an eye opening industry experience I will hold onto for the rest of my career. Today is not a loss, but the start of a brand new chapter towards my entrepreneurship that I've always dreamed of for those who know me personally, SO FRIGGIN CHEERS TO THAT!! :D WOOoooooo!!!!!! I really look forward to finally be able to spend more time with my family and friends again back in Vancouver. See you all soon =)
I guess no one is safe.
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This is perfect I'm doing a paper on human resources of Blizzard Entertainment due on Tuesday :D
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On March 01 2012 06:55 darkest44 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 06:52 Terranist wrote:On March 01 2012 06:45 darkest44 wrote:
And I'm sure there will be a nice fat bonus/pay raise for the CEO/higher ups this year.... It sickens me that guys make 16million dollars a year to put in the same, or less hours, as your average employee and it's not like they are 100 times smarter than the average joe or something, usually they got their position through lucky timing or by being more ruthless than everyone else. No one is worth 100+ times more than another human being, in my opinion. Sigh, capitalism sucks sometimes. Heart goes out to all the people laid off in this shit economy while CEOs buy ferraris and their 5th vacation home etc.. disgusting world we live in where greed is a positive trait. people aren't just handed the title of CEO. they work their ass off to get it, and more often than not they were the ones there from the beginning when the company was nothing more than a startup. That changes nothing. Everyone "works their ass off". He did not work 300+ times harder or put in 300+ times more hours than the dude risking his very sanity doing customer support all day (people can be real big dicks) who might have been in the company just as long and still makes 40,000 max a year or something. But hey we're brainwashed in America to believe capitalism is all roses and rainbows and greed is a good thing. So go ahead and believe one human being is worth hundreds or sometimes thousands of times (in the case of billionaires) more than another human being, it's your right to believe whatever you want. I'm fine with someone getting paid tens of times more than another person because there needs to be some incentive to get higher degrees and work hard etc, but not hundreds or thousands times as much. It's sad how all the benefits and stock bonuses etc go all to the guys who already get paid the most, while the average employees usually get diddly squat and then gets fired in mass lay offs so the stock holders/ceos/execs can make higher profits. I am not looking for arguments, I was simply stating my opinion and sending my thoughts out to those who are losing their jobs in the all consuming interest of more profits for the stockholders/owners.
He's not paid for working 300x harder, he's paid to be 300x more accountable, I think
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On March 01 2012 08:52 Chunhyang wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 06:55 darkest44 wrote:On March 01 2012 06:52 Terranist wrote:On March 01 2012 06:45 darkest44 wrote:
And I'm sure there will be a nice fat bonus/pay raise for the CEO/higher ups this year.... It sickens me that guys make 16million dollars a year to put in the same, or less hours, as your average employee and it's not like they are 100 times smarter than the average joe or something, usually they got their position through lucky timing or by being more ruthless than everyone else. No one is worth 100+ times more than another human being, in my opinion. Sigh, capitalism sucks sometimes. Heart goes out to all the people laid off in this shit economy while CEOs buy ferraris and their 5th vacation home etc.. disgusting world we live in where greed is a positive trait. people aren't just handed the title of CEO. they work their ass off to get it, and more often than not they were the ones there from the beginning when the company was nothing more than a startup. That changes nothing. Everyone "works their ass off". He did not work 300+ times harder or put in 300+ times more hours than the dude risking his very sanity doing customer support all day (people can be real big dicks) who might have been in the company just as long and still makes 40,000 max a year or something. But hey we're brainwashed in America to believe capitalism is all roses and rainbows and greed is a good thing. So go ahead and believe one human being is worth hundreds or sometimes thousands of times (in the case of billionaires) more than another human being, it's your right to believe whatever you want. I'm fine with someone getting paid tens of times more than another person because there needs to be some incentive to get higher degrees and work hard etc, but not hundreds or thousands times as much. It's sad how all the benefits and stock bonuses etc go all to the guys who already get paid the most, while the average employees usually get diddly squat and then gets fired in mass lay offs so the stock holders/ceos/execs can make higher profits. I am not looking for arguments, I was simply stating my opinion and sending my thoughts out to those who are losing their jobs in the all consuming interest of more profits for the stockholders/owners. He's not paid for working 300x harder, he's paid to be 300x more accountable, I think
I dont think that they are more accountable, theres been a lot of CEOs who still drive their companies to the ground and have the golden parachute kick in. There is no risk at all for the people high up.
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How many game masters at the peak? About how many now?
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Im sure this is mostly customer service staff like World of Warcraft GM's, maybe forum moderators, etc.
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On March 01 2012 08:57 Crellos wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 08:52 Chunhyang wrote:On March 01 2012 06:55 darkest44 wrote:On March 01 2012 06:52 Terranist wrote:On March 01 2012 06:45 darkest44 wrote:
And I'm sure there will be a nice fat bonus/pay raise for the CEO/higher ups this year.... It sickens me that guys make 16million dollars a year to put in the same, or less hours, as your average employee and it's not like they are 100 times smarter than the average joe or something, usually they got their position through lucky timing or by being more ruthless than everyone else. No one is worth 100+ times more than another human being, in my opinion. Sigh, capitalism sucks sometimes. Heart goes out to all the people laid off in this shit economy while CEOs buy ferraris and their 5th vacation home etc.. disgusting world we live in where greed is a positive trait. people aren't just handed the title of CEO. they work their ass off to get it, and more often than not they were the ones there from the beginning when the company was nothing more than a startup. That changes nothing. Everyone "works their ass off". He did not work 300+ times harder or put in 300+ times more hours than the dude risking his very sanity doing customer support all day (people can be real big dicks) who might have been in the company just as long and still makes 40,000 max a year or something. But hey we're brainwashed in America to believe capitalism is all roses and rainbows and greed is a good thing. So go ahead and believe one human being is worth hundreds or sometimes thousands of times (in the case of billionaires) more than another human being, it's your right to believe whatever you want. I'm fine with someone getting paid tens of times more than another person because there needs to be some incentive to get higher degrees and work hard etc, but not hundreds or thousands times as much. It's sad how all the benefits and stock bonuses etc go all to the guys who already get paid the most, while the average employees usually get diddly squat and then gets fired in mass lay offs so the stock holders/ceos/execs can make higher profits. I am not looking for arguments, I was simply stating my opinion and sending my thoughts out to those who are losing their jobs in the all consuming interest of more profits for the stockholders/owners. He's not paid for working 300x harder, he's paid to be 300x more accountable, I think I dont think that they are more accountable, theres been a lot of CEOs who still drive their companies to the ground and have the golden parachute kick in. There is no risk at all for the people high up.
Labeling everyone in a group by the actions of a few...hmm. Plenty of CEO's have lost everything.
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If I were to make a guess(maybe even stupid), I'd say this all has to do with the PT-BR Wow thing. They hired a new blue recently, and they probably hired a good amount of portuguese speaking GMs in order to support the income of brazilian players(who, by themselves, fully loaded five servers). With the hiring of extra portuguese speaking GMs, they got too many of them and had to dismiss a certain number in order to keep things balanced.
Or maybe I'm just dead wrong. This makes sense to me IMO.
Sad news for those who worked there, but unfortunately that's how things work
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It's always sad to hear about so many people losing their jobs.
Good luck to them.
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Hmm, if an average server on wow has 15.000 people (just guessing), and they dropped 1,8 million subs last year or two, that's around 120 servers, uhm, let me do some more math here guyz!!
5-6 gm's who lose their job in each of those xD
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... Didn't blizzard do the same thing after diablo 1, diablo 2, and BW? I was never a fan of blizzard and I don't think I ever will be.
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On March 01 2012 08:27 D4V3Z02 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 08:21 turdburgler wrote:
good to know blizzard think 24-48 hour wait times on support tickets while they rake in millions is too much flab on the company ;/
really disapointing.
if it was mcdonalds or whatever laying off people i would obviously understand, they are in the business of making money and everyone knows it, but companies like blizzard try to convey themselves as being part of their own communities and someone who is almost a friend. if they dont prioritize support staff then it shows they arent actually interested in communities or friendships and are only in it for the money.
dont normally like to be part of the tin foil hat team but it really feels like since they partnered with activision their priorities have completely changed Because they just gave away their games for free before they partnered with activision? "For the Community!"
are you just trying to bait me into flaming you? im not saying that at all
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On March 01 2012 09:40 turdburgler wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 08:27 D4V3Z02 wrote:On March 01 2012 08:21 turdburgler wrote:
good to know blizzard think 24-48 hour wait times on support tickets while they rake in millions is too much flab on the company ;/
really disapointing.
if it was mcdonalds or whatever laying off people i would obviously understand, they are in the business of making money and everyone knows it, but companies like blizzard try to convey themselves as being part of their own communities and someone who is almost a friend. if they dont prioritize support staff then it shows they arent actually interested in communities or friendships and are only in it for the money.
dont normally like to be part of the tin foil hat team but it really feels like since they partnered with activision their priorities have completely changed Because they just gave away their games for free before they partnered with activision? "For the Community!" are you just trying to bait me into flaming you? im not saying that at all
Activision didn't change Blizzard, Blizzard wanted them as a partner because they know how to go in that direction.
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That's a shame people lost their jobs because blizz could certainly afford it. They were probably pressured by investors after losing so many wow subscriptions.
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They need to decrease the size of the massive money funnel that they're already getting. It can really be the only reason haha.
Wildly successful company, arguably the most successful company of all time, needs to cut costs? LOL thats a joke if I've ever heard one
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Man I hope those people manage to get jobs really quickly.
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On March 01 2012 09:50 Playguuu wrote:
That's a shame people lost their jobs because blizz could certainly afford it. They were probably pressured by investors after losing so many wow subscriptions.
Exactly. They'd rather fire these people and make 300 million than keep them on board and say make 270 million.
(these are just made up numbers but you get the point)
It's not a matter of profitable vs. not profitable, it's "ya if we keep them on board we make a ton of money, but if we fire them we make a ton plus more, so...."
It's just the cold reality of a publicly traded company, success is growing revenue and profit every quarter and every year.
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I keep picturing that famous scene in Office Space when thinking about Blizzard's company evaluation period before they decided who was to be axe'd. One by one the Gamemasters enter an office and are asked by an evaluation team "So what would you say you do here?"
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Someone in upper management wants a bonus. That's how these things usually work.
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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.
i dont understand why your angry, i thought being released and being fired are the same thing? o.0
its unfortunate for the people being laid off, but i would rather this than seeing the company going 'under' and laying off all their staff.
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On March 01 2012 08:52 Chunhyang wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 06:55 darkest44 wrote:On March 01 2012 06:52 Terranist wrote:On March 01 2012 06:45 darkest44 wrote:
And I'm sure there will be a nice fat bonus/pay raise for the CEO/higher ups this year.... It sickens me that guys make 16million dollars a year to put in the same, or less hours, as your average employee and it's not like they are 100 times smarter than the average joe or something, usually they got their position through lucky timing or by being more ruthless than everyone else. No one is worth 100+ times more than another human being, in my opinion. Sigh, capitalism sucks sometimes. Heart goes out to all the people laid off in this shit economy while CEOs buy ferraris and their 5th vacation home etc.. disgusting world we live in where greed is a positive trait. people aren't just handed the title of CEO. they work their ass off to get it, and more often than not they were the ones there from the beginning when the company was nothing more than a startup. That changes nothing. Everyone "works their ass off". He did not work 300+ times harder or put in 300+ times more hours than the dude risking his very sanity doing customer support all day (people can be real big dicks) who might have been in the company just as long and still makes 40,000 max a year or something. But hey we're brainwashed in America to believe capitalism is all roses and rainbows and greed is a good thing. So go ahead and believe one human being is worth hundreds or sometimes thousands of times (in the case of billionaires) more than another human being, it's your right to believe whatever you want. I'm fine with someone getting paid tens of times more than another person because there needs to be some incentive to get higher degrees and work hard etc, but not hundreds or thousands times as much. It's sad how all the benefits and stock bonuses etc go all to the guys who already get paid the most, while the average employees usually get diddly squat and then gets fired in mass lay offs so the stock holders/ceos/execs can make higher profits. I am not looking for arguments, I was simply stating my opinion and sending my thoughts out to those who are losing their jobs in the all consuming interest of more profits for the stockholders/owners. He's not paid for working 300x harder, he's paid to be 300x more accountable, I think
You're completely right^
To be fair though, you're being brainwashed here bro. You talk about money as if it was money that defines a humans worth. That's ridiculous and prepostrous to say. The CEO is more or less the single most important person in a company. I don't think that you actually personally know any CEOs or leaders on bigger companies, they've got a fuckton of shit they need to take care of that the "average" customer supporter guy doesn't have to deal with.
So ofcourse he's going to be paid a lot more. However have you even SEEN blizzard raize the CEOs bonus with ANYTHING? NOPE you haven't. So why the hell do you jump on someone who so far hasn't actually done anything of what you've mentioned? You're just badmouthing one of the _best_ companies who have made some of the _best_ games in history. For fucks sake, the GM who got quoted said that it was a pleasure working there etc. Doesn't seem like he was treated badly or anything. That actually means that the CEO is doing a pretty damn good job.
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lol...i like this article...we just fired 600 people...but we're still hiring! sounds like they cut an entire department or something...probably the "African Sc2 Promotional/Advertising department" ;p
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According to someone in the Reddit thread, one of the SC2 programmers got laid off, specifically one that was working on the tools team with all the map editor improvements and stuff, and that it seems that the tools team took an overall hit during these layoffs. I find this disappointing considering how awesome I think the SC2 map editor tools are, even though they are stifled by a really bad custom games B.net interface. Plus, the most recent Blizzcon panel showed off a ton of exciting new features that they had planned for the editor.
Also, someone else claims to know a couple of artists that got laid off.
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looks like the potential GFC 2 can hit any industry, not just the financial industry.
hope Blizz gets through this soon
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I don't get how firing that amount a people does any good to Blizzard. They have to give compensation, to explain why they fire people and reassure on the quality of their games, etc. Oh and layed-off people all have to find a job in the same field at the same time.
Why not just tell people to try to find another job as time goes and as wow suscribers diminish? And if you really have to fire then do it slowly to avoid breaking the teams apart.
They know what they're doing obviously but I just don't get it.
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United States12235 Posts
To be fair to Bashiok, he probably had no concrete information since he's not operating at a management level. What's more than that, budgets are typically re-evaluated quarterly and management likely didn't pull the trigger until they received their most recent financial report from the previous quarter.
It's unfortunate that some artists and programmers were cut. I wonder how much redundancy existed in each project's departments and how much downtime each individual employee had. It is mathematically true that if each of your team's 10 members has 10% downtime then you can afford to distribute one person's responsibilities to the rest of the team and cut that person, but sometimes it's not as simple as that... anyway, this is just silly speculation.
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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.
DING DING DING, WE HAVE A WINNER
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There is a difference between fired and laid off though.
Fired = you sucked at your job and are being let go for that, your position is going to be filled after you leave by hopefully someone more competent.
Let go = the job you had is eliminated so you are no longer needed, nobody is going to be hired to replace you because the job no longer exists.
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one of my friends was one of those let go :[
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I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon.
While it is sad that some programmers and artists were cut, that is also a fact of the buisness, teams shrink and grow all the time, depending on what the company is doing (and planning to do) in the near future.
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On March 01 2012 03:50 TheRhox wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Just like a pro player getting laid off from their SC2 team, I agree that these guys will have no problem finding a new place to work. Wish them the best of luck in finding a new company.
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600 people is a lot of people. I bet Activision is pulling the strings on this. Hopefully this doesn't impact the quality of their games.
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On March 01 2012 08:15 Hoodlum wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 08:10 NotSorry wrote:On March 01 2012 07:51 lpstroggoz wrote:
blizzards golden years were over about 5 years ago. they have lost almost all of their good employees. matt ueleman, the people who are now at arena net that made blizzard. i'm just wondering how long they can keep going before they wane out of existence. they will last a while longer i guess considering the standards of the gaming industry these days.
I was thinking more of 2003-2004 right before everyone jumped shipped with wow 99% done, started rushing out unfinished products not giving a damn about anything but their stock holders With WoW being the biggest cash cow ever and people going crazy over the release of Diablo 3 not to mention the next two installments of SC2, call me crazy but I think blizzard is gonna be juuusssstttt fine.
they are doing fine moneywise, but their game quality has clearly dropped since 1999. Sc2 storyline was laughably bad in sc2 compared to the original, and the sc2 multiplayer had nothing new, except a few units were changed around. Its mind blowing that people can take 7 years to make exactly the same game.
The reason blizzard is successful now is not the same reason they were succesful 12 years ago.
much like the movie industry remakes anything these days and they know there people will watch it, because there were fans of the original
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On March 01 2012 10:01 Zaqwert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 09:50 Playguuu wrote:
That's a shame people lost their jobs because blizz could certainly afford it. They were probably pressured by investors after losing so many wow subscriptions. Exactly. They'd rather fire these people and make 300 million than keep them on board and say make 270 million. (these are just made up numbers but you get the point) It's not a matter of profitable vs. not profitable, it's "ya if we keep them on board we make a ton of money, but if we fire them we make a ton plus more, so...." It's just the cold reality of a publicly traded company, success is growing revenue and profit every quarter and every year.
Privately traded companies have layoffs all the time, too. Especially in the tech/gaming industry - being publicly traded just means you hear about these, but it doesn't mean they don't happen all the time with even privately traded companies.
I know in the VC fund that used to own the company for which I work, in their portfolio of over 100 companies (of which many you've heard), over 90 of them did some form of layoff or budgetary reductions at least once over the last 3 years. All 100 are showing at least 5% EBITDA growth year over year.
The problem isn't as much whether they're public or private, but rather being unable to look beyond the horizon to reasonably forecast need. A big issue that many companies (mine included) run in to is they cut all this salary space and then 2 years later spend 2 times what they saved trying to hire back and re-attract people.
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Laying off employees is never fun news for everyone. At least they have a good resume for working at Blizzard (I would imagine its hard to get a job at the company for being a bit more prestigious).
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Yeah private companies can be soulless too, but it's at least owner dependent. For public companies it's almost impossible.
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On March 01 2012 11:23 Tula wrote:
I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon.
While it is sad that some programmers and artists were cut, that is also a fact of the buisness, teams shrink and grow all the time, depending on what the company is doing (and planning to do) in the near future.
This. Blizzard got too bloated with WoW. Now that stuff stabilized they probably realized they didn´t need so many decisions. Still sucks for the people who got laid off but well thats business
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On March 01 2012 11:24 Scorm wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 03:50 TheRhox wrote: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. Just like a pro player getting laid off from their SC2 team, I agree that these guys will have no problem finding a new place to work. Wish them the best of luck in finding a new company.
Wow, if you are laid off from your SC2 team, you are pretty much screwed! Think about it, SC2 is one of the only available gaming position that one can gain financial security. One must have done some terrible act to get laid off. No other company would want someone with bad reps to represent the team.
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Looks like they released a lot of their GMs. I heard their CSD is huge.
"BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON! *POOF*"
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The company's wallowing in cash and they fire 600 employees. Typical -.-
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On March 01 2012 13:02 Scarecrow wrote:
The company's wallowing in cash and they fire 600 employees. Typical -.-
Boss needs a new yacht. They don't pay for themselves!
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On March 01 2012 13:05 Ownos wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 13:02 Scarecrow wrote:
The company's wallowing in cash and they fire 600 employees. Typical -.- Boss needs a new yacht. They don't pay for themselves!
You guys do realize that if officers and members of the board don't look after the financial interests of the company they are violating their fiduciary duties, right?
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Great news, very good for the investors.
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On March 01 2012 13:39 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 13:05 Ownos wrote:On March 01 2012 13:02 Scarecrow wrote:
The company's wallowing in cash and they fire 600 employees. Typical -.- Boss needs a new yacht. They don't pay for themselves! You guys do realize that if officers and members of the board don't look after the financial interests of the company they are violating their fiduciary duties, right?
Yes, but that standard is so broad that unless the company does something egregious they do not in fact violate those duties.
And in fact if they hired some consultant who said "fire 600 people, keep more money 'to reward high flyers'" and the company points to that it is a o k. high flies =C level employees who 'add value'
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I want people who work at blizzard to stop using the word epic. They use it too much. When will this happen.
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On March 01 2012 13:02 Scarecrow wrote:
The company's wallowing in cash and they fire 600 employees. Typical -.-
Yeah, they should continue to pay employees who have nothing to do for 4 hours a day all for the sake of satisfying your wierd notion of how businesses should be run.
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when you're losing millions of wow subscribers obv you don't need as much customer support/gm and all that stuff
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Shame David Kim isn't one of the 600 people.
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For a minute, I thought they were going to fire their esports division. *phew
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On March 01 2012 15:19 Sub40APM wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 13:39 cLutZ wrote:On March 01 2012 13:05 Ownos wrote:On March 01 2012 13:02 Scarecrow wrote:
The company's wallowing in cash and they fire 600 employees. Typical -.- Boss needs a new yacht. They don't pay for themselves! You guys do realize that if officers and members of the board don't look after the financial interests of the company they are violating their fiduciary duties, right? Yes, but that standard is so broad that unless the company does something egregious they do not in fact violate those duties. And in fact if they hired some consultant who said "fire 600 people, keep more money 'to reward high flyers'" and the company points to that it is a o k. high flies =C level employees who 'add value'
Yea, you are clearly conflating moral and legal obligations. While the legal bar is quite low, they still should strive to do what is best for their shareholders.
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So...
What does this mean?
Why should I care? Every company has internal stuff going on.
How does this affect me?
Why is this public, and why is Blizz making such a huge annoucement of it? Would this have been a huge scandal if they never publicly addressed it or something?
I'm a bit confused here.
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On March 01 2012 13:39 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 13:05 Ownos wrote:On March 01 2012 13:02 Scarecrow wrote:
The company's wallowing in cash and they fire 600 employees. Typical -.- Boss needs a new yacht. They don't pay for themselves! You guys do realize that if officers and members of the board don't look after the financial interests of the company they are violating their fiduciary duties, right?
Look up the "Business Judgment Rule" and you'll realize why that's a terrible argument.
And yes, I actually do know corporate law. Short of murder, dereliction of duty, or egregious self-dealing, the courts will uphold nearly any action by a board.
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On March 01 2012 15:53 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 15:19 Sub40APM wrote:On March 01 2012 13:39 cLutZ wrote:On March 01 2012 13:05 Ownos wrote:On March 01 2012 13:02 Scarecrow wrote:
The company's wallowing in cash and they fire 600 employees. Typical -.- Boss needs a new yacht. They don't pay for themselves! You guys do realize that if officers and members of the board don't look after the financial interests of the company they are violating their fiduciary duties, right? Yes, but that standard is so broad that unless the company does something egregious they do not in fact violate those duties. And in fact if they hired some consultant who said "fire 600 people, keep more money 'to reward high flyers'" and the company points to that it is a o k. high flies =C level employees who 'add value' Yea, you are clearly conflating moral and legal obligations. While the legal bar is quite low, they still should strive to do what is best for their shareholders.
...i guess...of course unless they announce a dividend that returns the money that went to those 600 people they arent doing anything for their shareholders...
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On March 01 2012 10:11 Asol wrote:
You're completely right^
To be fair though, you're being brainwashed here bro. You talk about money as if it was money that defines a humans worth. That's ridiculous and prepostrous to say. The CEO is more or less the single most important person in a company. I don't think that you actually personally know any CEOs or leaders on bigger companies, they've got a fuckton of shit they need to take care of that the "average" customer supporter guy doesn't have to deal with.
So ofcourse he's going to be paid a lot more. However have you even SEEN blizzard raize the CEOs bonus with ANYTHING? NOPE you haven't. So why the hell do you jump on someone who so far hasn't actually done anything of what you've mentioned? You're just badmouthing one of the _best_ companies who have made some of the _best_ games in history. For fucks sake, the GM who got quoted said that it was a pleasure working there etc. Doesn't seem like he was treated badly or anything. That actually means that the CEO is doing a pretty damn good job.
do YOU know any CEOs? I know one pretty well, he used to be CEO of a company with 1500 people, now he is my CEO in a smaller company. This guy is utterly clueless, if he'd drop dead, the impact on our company would be negligible, possibly even beneficial.
Before that, I was working at Deloitte, the higher up people were completely removed from reality, some of them even malevolent, crushing employees who dared not cower before their might.
Company before that, the owner was friendly, but borderline alcoholic and no idea what was going in on the company, the board consisted - among others - of his personal secretary who was a full alcoholic and constantly interfering in peoples' private lives and a sleazy guy who used to be a fridge salesman.
/end of rant. If needed, I can start with the CEOs of other people I know
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On March 01 2012 16:00 Sub40APM wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 15:53 cLutZ wrote:On March 01 2012 15:19 Sub40APM wrote:On March 01 2012 13:39 cLutZ wrote:On March 01 2012 13:05 Ownos wrote:On March 01 2012 13:02 Scarecrow wrote:
The company's wallowing in cash and they fire 600 employees. Typical -.- Boss needs a new yacht. They don't pay for themselves! You guys do realize that if officers and members of the board don't look after the financial interests of the company they are violating their fiduciary duties, right? Yes, but that standard is so broad that unless the company does something egregious they do not in fact violate those duties. And in fact if they hired some consultant who said "fire 600 people, keep more money 'to reward high flyers'" and the company points to that it is a o k. high flies =C level employees who 'add value' Yea, you are clearly conflating moral and legal obligations. While the legal bar is quite low, they still should strive to do what is best for their shareholders. ...i guess...of course unless they announce a dividend that returns the money that went to those 600 people they arent doing anything for their shareholders...
if they pay out a dividend that large then i certainly wish i owned some of their shares
edit ~ as for the CEOs do nothing argument, they do a lot or else the shareholders wouldn't compensate them for it. it takes a lot of time and stress to run one of these massive companies
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On March 01 2012 13:47 xertion wrote:
Great news, very good for the investors.
It's hardly "good".
I think the investors would prefer to hear: Blizzard is expanding like hell and need to hire 600 more because the company can't keep up with the demand.
There are so many people in this thread making awful comments.
Sure, it's business, this is how business works etc. But show some freaking decency when 600 people lost their jobs. If you were one of the people losing a job and not having an income you hardly want to hear "hey, buddy. it's business, that's life. suck it up" even if that is the truth.
I can't believe this thread isn't being moderated more. If someone would have passed away and people would write comments such as "oh, well who cares he/she died. that's life. move along" bans would be handed out left and right.
But when people lose jobs it's ok to say things like "well, this is business. This is in fact good news for investors, share holders. Mike should even get a raise for making good calls like this".
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On March 01 2012 15:54 Belial88 wrote:
So...
What does this mean?
Why should I care? Every company has internal stuff going on.
How does this affect me?
Why is this public, and why is Blizz making such a huge annoucement of it? Would this have been a huge scandal if they never publicly addressed it or something?
I'm a bit confused here.
The world isn't centered around you. 600 peple out of roughly 4500 lost their jobs at one of the most successful game companies in the world.
The game company which more or less is the reason teamliquid even exists and you are here posting.
So don't be confused. It's news and some of us are interested in knowing how the company creating the games we love to play do.
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On March 01 2012 16:19 papaz wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 13:47 xertion wrote:
Great news, very good for the investors. It's hardly "good". I think the investors would prefer to hear: Blizzard is expanding like hell and need to hire 600 more because the company can't keep up with the demand. There are so many people in this thread making awful comments. Sure, it's business, this is how business works etc. But show some freaking decency when 600 people lost their jobs. If you were one of the people losing a job and not having an income you hardly want to hear "hey, buddy. it's business, that's life. suck it up" even if that is the truth. I can't believe this thread isn't being moderated more. If someone would have passed away and people would write comments such as "oh, well who cares he/she died. that's life. move along" bans would be handed out left and right. But when people lose jobs it's ok to say things like "well, this is business. This is in fact good news for investors, share holders. Mike should even get a raise for making good calls like this".
You can be a humanist or an economist about it.
TeamLiquid news discussions rarely lean towards the former when the alternative is an available option. Active discussion is better than emotional bandwagoning any day of the week. Please do not discredit the opinions of those in this thread begging for "moderation" because they do not agree with your own. With the exception of loltrolls, these threads make progress from conversation (If they really do anything at all.)
As has been reiterated: Elimination of redundant positions is a businesses job. They are not a charity. Those in redundant positions can understand that, regardless of if they agree with that position. If Mike Morhaime is correct in stating they got good severance packages, then life moves on as happily as it can Turnover happens all the time across the marketplace -- it's the fundamental of how our system works, and it means there's positions out there as well.
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On March 01 2012 07:51 lpstroggoz wrote:
blizzards golden years were over about 5 years ago. they have lost almost all of their good employees. matt ueleman, the people who are now at arena net that made blizzard. i'm just wondering how long they can keep going before they wane out of existence. they will last a while longer i guess considering the standards of the gaming industry these days.
lol wut?
Matt Uelmen is just one of blizzard music composer. People who really made Blizzard what it is today are Rob Pardo,Chris Metzen,Samwise Didier,Mike Morhaime,Frank Pearce,Allen Adham. All of these people are still at Blizzard except Allen Adham.
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Companies always announce when they fire people, they never announce when they gradually grow. Shareholders love to hear this stuff.
Also, any company who doesn't periodically review head count is probably a poorly run company. If ouve ever worked in a medium-lare company soul know that person who nobody knows what they do. That person either leaves because they are bored or get sacked because they do nothing. A bad company keeps them on because they don't know how to run their company.
Anyway, it looks like they are sacking support staff etc, not development staff.
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On March 01 2012 16:02 Rimstalker wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 10:11 Asol wrote:
You're completely right^
To be fair though, you're being brainwashed here bro. You talk about money as if it was money that defines a humans worth. That's ridiculous and prepostrous to say. The CEO is more or less the single most important person in a company. I don't think that you actually personally know any CEOs or leaders on bigger companies, they've got a fuckton of shit they need to take care of that the "average" customer supporter guy doesn't have to deal with.
So ofcourse he's going to be paid a lot more. However have you even SEEN blizzard raize the CEOs bonus with ANYTHING? NOPE you haven't. So why the hell do you jump on someone who so far hasn't actually done anything of what you've mentioned? You're just badmouthing one of the _best_ companies who have made some of the _best_ games in history. For fucks sake, the GM who got quoted said that it was a pleasure working there etc. Doesn't seem like he was treated badly or anything. That actually means that the CEO is doing a pretty damn good job.
do YOU know any CEOs? I know one pretty well, he used to be CEO of a company with 1500 people, now he is my CEO in a smaller company. This guy is utterly clueless, if he'd drop dead, the impact on our company would be negligible, possibly even beneficial. Before that, I was working at Deloitte, the higher up people were completely removed from reality, some of them even malevolent, crushing employees who dared not cower before their might. Company before that, the owner was friendly, but borderline alcoholic and no idea what was going in on the company, the board consisted - among others - of his personal secretary who was a full alcoholic and constantly interfering in peoples' private lives and a sleazy guy who used to be a fridge salesman. /end of rant. If needed, I can start with the CEOs of other people I know
I love stories like these. I don't know why, but I think they're funny. Please tell more.
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I heard Blizzard is making record profits kind-of odd to see them fire 600 employees and quite sad. Although if they were redundant and were no longer needed thats how good ole capitalism works.
At-least they got a nice severance package probably.
I don't know why but i wonder if Activision is calling the shots.
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You might want to include this in the OP
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/blizzard-laying-off-600-6360584
Diablo III studio cuts 60 developers as well as substantial support staff as part of global reduction of staff due to "changing needs" of company.
There's sour news out of Irvine this morning, as Activision Blizzard subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment announced that it will reduce its global workforce by 600 employees. The company noted that 10 percent of its staff cuts--or about 60 people--were actively involved in game development.
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On March 01 2012 16:22 papaz wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 15:54 Belial88 wrote:
So...
What does this mean?
Why should I care? Every company has internal stuff going on.
How does this affect me?
Why is this public, and why is Blizz making such a huge annoucement of it? Would this have been a huge scandal if they never publicly addressed it or something?
I'm a bit confused here. The world isn't centered around you. 600 peple out of roughly 4500 lost their jobs at one of the most successful game companies in the world. The game company which more or less is the reason teamliquid even exists and you are here posting. So don't be confused. It's news and some of us are interested in knowing how the company creating the games we love to play do.
600 people now have the largest gaming company as a part of their resume, and likely had a lot going on for them when they got accepted. Don't be a jerk, I could bring up a ton of sob stories much sadder than this. Some well-off people losing part time jobs is hardly the worst thing in the world.
On the other hand, sure, it's sad. Is that blizzard's fault, or a politician's fault, or some law's fault? It could go on forever, but I get it.
And yes, I'm aware Blizzard created SC2. I'm well aware of that.
But there is a lot of shit going on behind the scenes at blizzard. So I'm asking, why was this announcement ever made public. What is the impact of this annoucement. Does it mean production will be slower? Because it sounds like it won't be. Who did they even fire? Wow game masters? Does that even count as a job int he first place?
So yea. I'm kind of confused. I get it, it's news. But why is there a memo by Mike on every forum and on the front page of TL. Why is there a ton of blue posts on the matter? Isn't this an internal matter? Why do I get the impression, from the posts made by corporate, that some huge scandal occurred?
Am I crazy here? Does it not feel like you could replace some of the words, like every time they said "let go" or "fired" with "killed a baby"?
It's odd. Get it? It's odd. Or are you so dense that you just completely do not understand what I'm getting at? Are you just going to be so, so oblivious to what I'm saying? Because I don't think I'm saying something that complicated.
It's a business. Sure, it sucks when people lose their jobs. But it happens every day, every where, we don't even know the circumstances of what's going on. Please don't force me to be on a 'side' here, I'm not here to make a point. I'm just asking, why the fuck, is this such a big deal, and what impact will this have.
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On March 01 2012 15:54 BluePanther wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 13:39 cLutZ wrote:On March 01 2012 13:05 Ownos wrote:On March 01 2012 13:02 Scarecrow wrote:
The company's wallowing in cash and they fire 600 employees. Typical -.- Boss needs a new yacht. They don't pay for themselves! You guys do realize that if officers and members of the board don't look after the financial interests of the company they are violating their fiduciary duties, right? Look up the "Business Judgment Rule" and you'll realize why that's a terrible argument. And yes, I actually do know corporate law. Short of murder, dereliction of duty, or egregious self-dealing, the courts will uphold nearly any action by a board.
If you read my 2nd post you would know that there are higher obligations than what the law merely prescribes. Just because someone is not legally required to do something does not mean that they should not. A CEO has a moral and ethical obligation to look out for the long term health and profits for his shareholders.
On March 01 2012 16:00 Sub40APM wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 15:53 cLutZ wrote:On March 01 2012 15:19 Sub40APM wrote:On March 01 2012 13:39 cLutZ wrote:On March 01 2012 13:05 Ownos wrote:On March 01 2012 13:02 Scarecrow wrote:
The company's wallowing in cash and they fire 600 employees. Typical -.- Boss needs a new yacht. They don't pay for themselves! You guys do realize that if officers and members of the board don't look after the financial interests of the company they are violating their fiduciary duties, right? Yes, but that standard is so broad that unless the company does something egregious they do not in fact violate those duties. And in fact if they hired some consultant who said "fire 600 people, keep more money 'to reward high flyers'" and the company points to that it is a o k. high flies =C level employees who 'add value' Yea, you are clearly conflating moral and legal obligations. While the legal bar is quite low, they still should strive to do what is best for their shareholders. ...i guess...of course unless they announce a dividend that returns the money that went to those 600 people they arent doing anything for their shareholders...
Dividends, sure, or perhaps they anticipate lean times, are going to make a few significant capital investments, are simply restructuring and want to hire people with different skillsets, or a whole host of other reasons.
Like I've been saying, the corporate leadership clearly felt this was a necessary change, and all indications)and rumors) are that this change has been coming for years, and many of the people laid off should be happy they had a job the last 3 years during one of the leanest hiring periods in American history.
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as someone who's been playing WoW for a while, laying off gamemasters seems like a bad idea considering the 3 day wait time when you put in a ticket X.X
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The gaming industry, and therefore the games, has really turned to shit lately.
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On March 01 2012 17:18 Hyuzak wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 16:02 Rimstalker wrote:On March 01 2012 10:11 Asol wrote:
You're completely right^
To be fair though, you're being brainwashed here bro. You talk about money as if it was money that defines a humans worth. That's ridiculous and prepostrous to say. The CEO is more or less the single most important person in a company. I don't think that you actually personally know any CEOs or leaders on bigger companies, they've got a fuckton of shit they need to take care of that the "average" customer supporter guy doesn't have to deal with.
So ofcourse he's going to be paid a lot more. However have you even SEEN blizzard raize the CEOs bonus with ANYTHING? NOPE you haven't. So why the hell do you jump on someone who so far hasn't actually done anything of what you've mentioned? You're just badmouthing one of the _best_ companies who have made some of the _best_ games in history. For fucks sake, the GM who got quoted said that it was a pleasure working there etc. Doesn't seem like he was treated badly or anything. That actually means that the CEO is doing a pretty damn good job.
do YOU know any CEOs? I know one pretty well, he used to be CEO of a company with 1500 people, now he is my CEO in a smaller company. This guy is utterly clueless, if he'd drop dead, the impact on our company would be negligible, possibly even beneficial. Before that, I was working at Deloitte, the higher up people were completely removed from reality, some of them even malevolent, crushing employees who dared not cower before their might. Company before that, the owner was friendly, but borderline alcoholic and no idea what was going in on the company, the board consisted - among others - of his personal secretary who was a full alcoholic and constantly interfering in peoples' private lives and a sleazy guy who used to be a fridge salesman. /end of rant. If needed, I can start with the CEOs of other people I know I love stories like these. I don't know why, but I think they're funny. Please tell more.
Your experiences sound horrible, but I assure you I've had the benefit of working under a couple of great CEOs. They DO exist.
Good luck, hope you discover a CEO or executive you actually like.
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On March 01 2012 17:50 Zerothegreat wrote:You might want to include this in the OP ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/blizzard-laying-off-600-6360584 Diablo III studio cuts 60 developers as well as substantial support staff as part of global reduction of staff due to "changing needs" of company. There's sour news out of Irvine this morning, as Activision Blizzard subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment announced that it will reduce its global workforce by 600 employees. The company noted that 10 percent of its staff cuts--or about 60 people--were actively involved in game development.
I hate to be callous, but I have friends in the gaming industry at working on triple-A games. And they'll all admit there is a lot of dead weight.
Cutting 60 developers out of a company as large as Blizzard is not that big a deal.
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On March 01 2012 18:23 Defacer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 17:18 Hyuzak wrote:On March 01 2012 16:02 Rimstalker wrote:On March 01 2012 10:11 Asol wrote:
You're completely right^
To be fair though, you're being brainwashed here bro. You talk about money as if it was money that defines a humans worth. That's ridiculous and prepostrous to say. The CEO is more or less the single most important person in a company. I don't think that you actually personally know any CEOs or leaders on bigger companies, they've got a fuckton of shit they need to take care of that the "average" customer supporter guy doesn't have to deal with.
So ofcourse he's going to be paid a lot more. However have you even SEEN blizzard raize the CEOs bonus with ANYTHING? NOPE you haven't. So why the hell do you jump on someone who so far hasn't actually done anything of what you've mentioned? You're just badmouthing one of the _best_ companies who have made some of the _best_ games in history. For fucks sake, the GM who got quoted said that it was a pleasure working there etc. Doesn't seem like he was treated badly or anything. That actually means that the CEO is doing a pretty damn good job.
do YOU know any CEOs? I know one pretty well, he used to be CEO of a company with 1500 people, now he is my CEO in a smaller company. This guy is utterly clueless, if he'd drop dead, the impact on our company would be negligible, possibly even beneficial. Before that, I was working at Deloitte, the higher up people were completely removed from reality, some of them even malevolent, crushing employees who dared not cower before their might. Company before that, the owner was friendly, but borderline alcoholic and no idea what was going in on the company, the board consisted - among others - of his personal secretary who was a full alcoholic and constantly interfering in peoples' private lives and a sleazy guy who used to be a fridge salesman. /end of rant. If needed, I can start with the CEOs of other people I know I love stories like these. I don't know why, but I think they're funny. Please tell more. Your experiences sound horrible, but I assure you I've had the benefit of working under a couple of great CEOs. They DO exist. Good luck, hope you discover a CEO or executive you actually like.
Working for at least 3 different companies might also mean that he and not the CEO's were the problem ;p
Its a shame that people have to lose their jobs but thats business, sometimes you have to make hard decisions to keep your company healthy, I've never met anyone who actually enjoyed letting people go but they all know its sometimes required.
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is dustin browder position open?
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On March 01 2012 17:18 Hyuzak wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 16:02 Rimstalker wrote:On March 01 2012 10:11 Asol wrote:
You're completely right^
To be fair though, you're being brainwashed here bro. You talk about money as if it was money that defines a humans worth. That's ridiculous and prepostrous to say. The CEO is more or less the single most important person in a company. I don't think that you actually personally know any CEOs or leaders on bigger companies, they've got a fuckton of shit they need to take care of that the "average" customer supporter guy doesn't have to deal with.
So ofcourse he's going to be paid a lot more. However have you even SEEN blizzard raize the CEOs bonus with ANYTHING? NOPE you haven't. So why the hell do you jump on someone who so far hasn't actually done anything of what you've mentioned? You're just badmouthing one of the _best_ companies who have made some of the _best_ games in history. For fucks sake, the GM who got quoted said that it was a pleasure working there etc. Doesn't seem like he was treated badly or anything. That actually means that the CEO is doing a pretty damn good job.
do YOU know any CEOs? I know one pretty well, he used to be CEO of a company with 1500 people, now he is my CEO in a smaller company. This guy is utterly clueless, if he'd drop dead, the impact on our company would be negligible, possibly even beneficial. Before that, I was working at Deloitte, the higher up people were completely removed from reality, some of them even malevolent, crushing employees who dared not cower before their might. Company before that, the owner was friendly, but borderline alcoholic and no idea what was going in on the company, the board consisted - among others - of his personal secretary who was a full alcoholic and constantly interfering in peoples' private lives and a sleazy guy who used to be a fridge salesman. /end of rant. If needed, I can start with the CEOs of other people I know I love stories like these. I don't know why, but I think they're funny. Please tell more.
Here you go: When I first met him, it took about 30 seconds of conversation to notice that he clearly did not even have the faintest idea about either the tech or the logic behind what we are doing - that was with < 20 employees, mind you, and our technology is what is setting us apart from the rest of the field.
He was the driving force behind setting up shop in Europe and Asia, which is not anywhere near paying off, and generating loads of problems because of the shitty interconnectivity between data centers.
And of course, thanks to him, I will soon have a 'performance review' for last year, where I am measured against non-existing goals, or alternatively a non-existing job description. With that bullshit initiative alone, he has managed the alienate the whole dev team.
edit: I am actually very happy at my current job, it's just that our CEO is utterly worthless. Thankfully, he is sitting several thousand miles away
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Wow going through these pages there's a lot of people worried of doom and gloom. It was clearly written that the franchises are perfectly safe, and they're over employment even considering their current projects and "Titan" and can't continue to pay people for doing jobs they aren't completely actively taking part of.
By the end of the year, they will be over capacity when Diablo 3 is finally out the doors (especially when most of the development is complete) and HotS coming closer to more major announcements. For the first time, blizzard has a high probability of releasing 3 major titles in one year, which is overkill for such a company when you really think about it.
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On March 01 2012 18:29 Rimstalker wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 17:18 Hyuzak wrote:On March 01 2012 16:02 Rimstalker wrote:On March 01 2012 10:11 Asol wrote:
You're completely right^
To be fair though, you're being brainwashed here bro. You talk about money as if it was money that defines a humans worth. That's ridiculous and prepostrous to say. The CEO is more or less the single most important person in a company. I don't think that you actually personally know any CEOs or leaders on bigger companies, they've got a fuckton of shit they need to take care of that the "average" customer supporter guy doesn't have to deal with.
So ofcourse he's going to be paid a lot more. However have you even SEEN blizzard raize the CEOs bonus with ANYTHING? NOPE you haven't. So why the hell do you jump on someone who so far hasn't actually done anything of what you've mentioned? You're just badmouthing one of the _best_ companies who have made some of the _best_ games in history. For fucks sake, the GM who got quoted said that it was a pleasure working there etc. Doesn't seem like he was treated badly or anything. That actually means that the CEO is doing a pretty damn good job.
do YOU know any CEOs? I know one pretty well, he used to be CEO of a company with 1500 people, now he is my CEO in a smaller company. This guy is utterly clueless, if he'd drop dead, the impact on our company would be negligible, possibly even beneficial. Before that, I was working at Deloitte, the higher up people were completely removed from reality, some of them even malevolent, crushing employees who dared not cower before their might. Company before that, the owner was friendly, but borderline alcoholic and no idea what was going in on the company, the board consisted - among others - of his personal secretary who was a full alcoholic and constantly interfering in peoples' private lives and a sleazy guy who used to be a fridge salesman. /end of rant. If needed, I can start with the CEOs of other people I know I love stories like these. I don't know why, but I think they're funny. Please tell more. Here you go: When I first met him, it took about 30 seconds of conversation to notice that he clearly did not even have the faintest idea about either the tech or the logic behind what we are doing - that was with < 20 employees, mind you, and our technology is what is setting us apart from the rest of the field. He was the driving force behind setting up shop in Europe and Asia, which is not anywhere near paying off, and generating loads of problems because of the shitty interconnectivity between data centers. And of course, thanks to him, I will soon have a 'performance review' for last year, where I am measured against non-existing goals, or alternatively a non-existing job description. With that bullshit initiative alone, he has managed the alienate the whole dev team. edit: I am actually very happy at my current job, it's just that our CEO is utterly worthless. Thankfully, he is sitting several thousand miles away
How did he get the job in the first place when he doesn't even know about the technology he's working with? Did he start the company himself? If he did, why would he start a business in a field he doesn't know anything about? I mean, if anything, hire someone competent in the field to be a business partner with you, while you do something you're actually capable of, like being the one to provide the money to start up the company or whatever.
Anyways, thanks for the stories!
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On March 01 2012 18:26 Defacer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 17:50 Zerothegreat wrote:You might want to include this in the OP ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/blizzard-laying-off-600-6360584 Diablo III studio cuts 60 developers as well as substantial support staff as part of global reduction of staff due to "changing needs" of company. There's sour news out of Irvine this morning, as Activision Blizzard subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment announced that it will reduce its global workforce by 600 employees. The company noted that 10 percent of its staff cuts--or about 60 people--were actively involved in game development. I hate to be callous, but I have friends in the gaming industry at working on triple-A games. And they'll all admit there is a lot of dead weight. Cutting 60 developers out of a company as large as Blizzard is not that big a deal.
That's because Canada distorts the market by their government throwing hundreds of millions at gamecompanies for hiring dead weight....
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Blizzard became a corporation and tried to milk its customers for more money while it produced an inferior product. This led to lower income and the need to reduce employees. Blizzard realized that Diablo 3 is not fixable and therefore fired the developers on it while hoping the fans shell out $60 based on branding.
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On March 01 2012 21:52 PrideNeverDie wrote:
Blizzard became a corporation and tried to milk its customers for more money while it produced an inferior product. This led to lower income and the need to reduce employees. Blizzard realized that Diablo 3 is not fixable and therefore fired the developers on it while hoping the fans shell out $60 based on branding.
Why do people still waste their time with trolling of such magnitude?
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On March 01 2012 22:02 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 21:52 PrideNeverDie wrote:
Blizzard became a corporation and tried to milk its customers for more money while it produced an inferior product. This led to lower income and the need to reduce employees. Blizzard realized that Diablo 3 is not fixable and therefore fired the developers on it while hoping the fans shell out $60 based on branding. Why do people still waste their time with trolling of such magnitude?
sc2 bnet ... have u played d3? its unfixable
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On March 01 2012 17:50 Zerothegreat wrote:You might want to include this in the OP ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/blizzard-laying-off-600-6360584 Diablo III studio cuts 60 developers as well as substantial support staff as part of global reduction of staff due to "changing needs" of company. There's sour news out of Irvine this morning, as Activision Blizzard subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment announced that it will reduce its global workforce by 600 employees. The company noted that 10 percent of its staff cuts--or about 60 people--were actively involved in game development.
If that's not a sign that Diablo III's release is imminent, I don't know what is.
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I thinks its due to the fact that the games are at closing stages, and will have less projects in the future, so why hog so much of the talents in the industry ?
But letting GMs go is srsly crazy, I think my WoW ticket of 21hrs 4min average will go skyrocket to about 1 week ? =S
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I was also laid off. On an upnote, I can stream and play sc2 for whoever and whenever I want now .
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That's supposed to happen when fewer people play.
It is the right move for the business. You won't like it, but it's one of the first cost cutting measures.
Besides that, holy crap. So many generalizations in this thread. X_X
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Of course noone likes to read something like that and i am sorry for everyone they send home but they now have over 2million less customers to support than before. Plus they are near a release of a big title where it is kinda normally that some people have to go. If someone of you guys would run a company and you would have 20% less customers you would have to let someone go too.
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I have a friend who works as a free lance story writer on multiple blizzard projects including titan. He was unaffected by this downsizing.
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On March 01 2012 22:22 PrideNeverDie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 22:02 [F_]aths wrote:On March 01 2012 21:52 PrideNeverDie wrote:
Blizzard became a corporation and tried to milk its customers for more money while it produced an inferior product. This led to lower income and the need to reduce employees. Blizzard realized that Diablo 3 is not fixable and therefore fired the developers on it while hoping the fans shell out $60 based on branding. Why do people still waste their time with trolling of such magnitude? sc2 bnet ... have u played d3? its unfixable I played both SC2 beta (now retail, of course) and D3 beta and I consider both games great games. Since patch 13 I see that Diablo 3 now gets into the final stages of development. Even though the beta limits the char level to 13 and the content to a fraction of Act 1, it is enough to see that it will be an outstandingly successful game because of the polished and vast content.
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"we remain committed to shipping multiple games this year" That kinda scares me. What happend to "when it's ready"? Not saying they won't be good, just that the wording scares me.
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United States12235 Posts
On March 02 2012 00:31 KingHillBilly wrote:I was also laid off. On an upnote, I can stream and play sc2 for whoever and whenever I want now .
Well that explains why you disappeared at least! What was your position?
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I worked in QA for 5 years. Nearly 3 years on SC2 as a functionality tester (Game Balance, replay system, AI, game mechanics), A bit over a year on WoW, during cataclysm I was in charge of combat and pvp (all spells, talents, battlegrounds), most recently I worked on the combat team for Diablo 3.
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Shit I wanna work for Blizzard, sounds so interesting :D
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well well well ... what a coincidence....
1 day after the layoffs are announced we have profit warnings from Vivendi
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On March 01 2012 20:55 Monsty wrote:
Wow going through these pages there's a lot of people worried of doom and gloom. It was clearly written that the franchises are perfectly safe, and they're over employment even considering their current projects and "Titan" and can't continue to pay people for doing jobs they aren't completely actively taking part of.
By the end of the year, they will be over capacity when Diablo 3 is finally out the doors (especially when most of the development is complete) and HotS coming closer to more major announcements. For the first time, blizzard has a high probability of releasing 3 major titles in one year, which is overkill for such a company when you really think about it.
What's written is pertty irrelevant. When have a company ever tried to spin layoffs in a bad light? "We just lay off a lot of people and we anticipate our products to be worse because of it!"
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They are just kicking everyone who isn't bald
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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.
Look at all that is missing from starcraft 2, even with all those people their game comes up short. Regardless laying off people is a bad sign for any company.
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somebody throw a microphone in front of Rob Simpson and get him to talk...
it's interesting that the entire SC2 team is dead silent right now
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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.
They had less people when they released WoW, WC3... and those games were still high quality, don't be afraid.
It's common sense to have staff reduction when you have less suscribers than before, and then hire new staff members when you release new products...
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it's interesting that the entire SC2 team is dead silent right now
they're probably too busy with HotS crunch, and aside from maybe Samwise and Chris Sigaty, they probably aren't afforded the internal managerial ops knowledge to be able to add to anything to what we already know.
I worked in QA for 5 years. Nearly 3 years on SC2 as a functionality tester (Game Balance, replay system, AI, game mechanics), A bit over a year on WoW, during cataclysm I was in charge of combat and pvp (all spells, talents, battlegrounds), most recently I worked on the combat team for Diablo 3.
my respects to you sir, and best wishes on your future endeavors. hope to maybe read about some of your experiences in QA in the Trenches comic someday
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its definately true that they want gamers to feel guilty - see, less subscribers means we have to throw people out of job..
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And to say their service couldn't get any slower.. Laying off customer service isn't a good move imo.. but then again I don't run a multimillion dollar company..
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It's many, many people from the Battle.Net part of Blizzard from what I heard, I get quite a lot of such news to where I'm currently working. Software Engineers, Leaders, LOTS of things.
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On March 01 2012 11:23 Tula wrote:
I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon.
Are you sure you are talkiing about the correct Blizzard and correct WoW? Cause the WoW I know is woefully understaffed (and has been for a long time) when it comes to phone customer service reps and GMs. Have you tried calling them up? You will be lucky if you get to talk to someone after 30 mins of waiting in queue. Have you tried submitting a ticket from the in-game UI? The average ticket processing times have went from 2-3 hours during the times of Burning Crusade expansion to almost 24 hours today.
Is this what you call overstaffed?
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After talking with a friend that works in Blizz's IGS. The people that were cut from the GM crew were people that "Should have gotten cut months ago, but management didn't want to let anyone go"
600 people, though. That's a lot of redundancy. Guess they're feeling the sub hit harder than they let on.
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On March 02 2012 05:39 Jago wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 11:23 Tula wrote:
I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon. Are you sure you are talkiing about the correct Blizzard and correct WoW? Cause the WoW I know is woefully understaffed (and has been for a long time) when it comes to phone customer service reps and GMs. Have you tried calling them up? You will be lucky if you get to talk to someone after 30 mins of waiting in queue. Have you tried submitting a ticket from the in-game UI? The average ticket processing times have went from 2-3 hours during the times of Burning Crusade expansion to almost 24 hours today. Is this what you call overstaffed?
Blizzard does.
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On March 02 2012 05:39 Jago wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 11:23 Tula wrote:
I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon. Are you sure you are talkiing about the correct Blizzard and correct WoW? Cause the WoW I know is woefully understaffed (and has been for a long time) when it comes to phone customer service reps and GMs. Have you tried calling them up? You will be lucky if you get to talk to someone after 30 mins of waiting in queue. Have you tried submitting a ticket from the in-game UI? The average ticket processing times have went from 2-3 hours during the times of Burning Crusade expansion to almost 24 hours today. Is this what you call overstaffed?
In the last year, I've called Blizzard's customer service a half a dozen times. Each time, I waited less than five minutes to get my call answered.
Since Cata was released, I've put in dozens of tickets in WoW. They were all answered within twelve hours. During Wrath, it was like a 2-3 day wait. More serious tickets put in this expac were answered within a half hour.
You're lying.
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I wouldn't exactly call him lying but he is being absurd with his anecdotes. Also when I used to do cs we were bit overstaffed but customers were still kept waiting a bit because that's just the way it is. They rather have you wait and have work flow smooth than have their reps waste time. Its just the way it is with corporations. Your time means shit. Employees time does.
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happens to every company - not a big deal I think
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Blizzard needs additional pylons.
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So many trolls in this thread.
Seriously, please tell me any game that is anywhere near as good as d3beta or sc2. Because I've been having a lot of fun playing these games, and I don't see anything else out there that comes close to not just as fun of a game as these blizzard games, but have as much replay value. You can't seriously think the other major games out there, like battlefield or COD, is anywhere near as good as sc2, as 'shitty' as it is.
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My cousin was one of the original GMs for World of Warcraft. Apart from highly disliking the game, and only succumbing to corporate pressure to play at home, he said it was a reasonable job. Right now he is working in Sound Design (he did zerg sounds for SC2, if you care) I talked to him on the phone last night about life in general, but he mentioned that most of those cut were newer hires, who probably were dead weight.
The markets acted in agreement. They only moved down 2.3%, which for such a huge layoff really doesn't mean dit.
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I think its Blizzard's revenue model that is hurting them. A revenue model such as the one in League of Legends doesn't hurt the game one bit, and people spend more than the cost of buying a game from Blizzard. They should definitely think about changing that. Not to mention since the barrier to entry for LoL is free, there are so much more users and thus there are more viewers for streams and attendance for tournaments. Maybe SC2 should rethink their revenue model.
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On March 02 2012 12:47 ShootingStars wrote:
I think its Blizzard's revenue model that is hurting them. A revenue model such as the one in League of Legends doesn't hurt the game one bit, and people spend more than the cost of buying a game from Blizzard. They should definitely think about changing that. Not to mention since the barrier to entry for LoL is free, there are so much more users and thus there are more viewers for streams and attendance for tournaments. Maybe SC2 should rethink their revenue model.
These layoffs were because of dead weight for WoW. They are really in no way connected to SC2 apart from just trying to trim fat on a company.
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Most are non-developers, the rest is non-WoW
so that means a little of delevopers of diablo and expansions of sc2 are probably cut .?
Edit: it was a question not affirmation
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They're getting rid of dead weight, wage costs will be much less, more profit for further developments, good on you Blizzard, may Starcraft 3 be released within 12 years of Starcraft 2 lol
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According to cousin it's like 90% GM, and then some random poor employees they were holding on to. He doesn't know anybody from SC2 that got layed off.
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Wow apparently everyone's cousin works at Blizzard!
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It sucks to hear this bad news but I hope they find their new opportunities. Best be great to say they used to work for Blizzard!
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On March 02 2012 08:02 PH wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2012 05:39 Jago wrote:On March 01 2012 11:23 Tula wrote:
I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon. Are you sure you are talkiing about the correct Blizzard and correct WoW? Cause the WoW I know is woefully understaffed (and has been for a long time) when it comes to phone customer service reps and GMs. Have you tried calling them up? You will be lucky if you get to talk to someone after 30 mins of waiting in queue. Have you tried submitting a ticket from the in-game UI? The average ticket processing times have went from 2-3 hours during the times of Burning Crusade expansion to almost 24 hours today. Is this what you call overstaffed? In the last year, I've called Blizzard's customer service a half a dozen times. Each time, I waited less than five minutes to get my call answered. Since Cata was released, I've put in dozens of tickets in WoW. They were all answered within twelve hours. During Wrath, it was like a 2-3 day wait. More serious tickets put in this expac were answered within a half hour. You're lying.
Nice. So your if experience don't match mine it means I am lying. You must be really popular with people. Has it even crossed your mind that perhaps the situation in various world regions is different?
On March 02 2012 12:28 Froadac wrote:
My cousin was one of the original GMs for World of Warcraft. Apart from highly disliking the game, and only succumbing to corporate pressure to play at home, he said it was a reasonable job. Right now he is working in Sound Design (he did zerg sounds for SC2, if you care) I talked to him on the phone last night about life in general, but he mentioned that most of those cut were newer hires, who probably were dead weight.
The markets acted in agreement. They only moved down 2.3%, which for such a huge layoff really doesn't mean dit.
You have that completely backwards. When investors see layoffs as a good decision, the reaction to the news is positive, bidding up the share price. Since the news broke, ActivisionBlizzard is down 2 consecutive days in a row, while the overall market is up over the same period.
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Although they did not reference any financial issues, I worry that "Constant evaluation" leading to "difficult decisions" could someday result in a monthly fee for battle.net.
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On March 02 2012 08:02 PH wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2012 05:39 Jago wrote:On March 01 2012 11:23 Tula wrote:
I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon. Are you sure you are talkiing about the correct Blizzard and correct WoW? Cause the WoW I know is woefully understaffed (and has been for a long time) when it comes to phone customer service reps and GMs. Have you tried calling them up? You will be lucky if you get to talk to someone after 30 mins of waiting in queue. Have you tried submitting a ticket from the in-game UI? The average ticket processing times have went from 2-3 hours during the times of Burning Crusade expansion to almost 24 hours today. Is this what you call overstaffed? In the last year, I've called Blizzard's customer service a half a dozen times. Each time, I waited less than five minutes to get my call answered. Since Cata was released, I've put in dozens of tickets in WoW. They were all answered within twelve hours. During Wrath, it was like a 2-3 day wait. More serious tickets put in this expac were answered within a half hour. You're lying.
It's also very possible that European and US experiences with customer service differs greatly. Though when i played WoW (on EU server) fairly recently, I didn't have very long waits with tickets (hour max), so who knows.
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There's a lot of nonsense on this thread. If someone can get the numbers on how many GM's Bliz employees along with how many tickets they average per day, we can start talking. Until then, you are basing your assumptions on your own experience of like.. what.. 1-2 times you've called in to get your IRON THONG OF THE TIGER back from when you got hacked.
Stop it.
On Mar 2 2012 13:03 jackienopay wrote:
Although they did not reference any financial issues, I worry that "Constant evaluation" leading to "difficult decisions" could someday result in a monthly fee for battle.net.
Who knows, maybe once they FIX some things about shitty.net we'd be willing to pay.
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On March 03 2012 02:56 Jago wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2012 08:02 PH wrote:On March 02 2012 05:39 Jago wrote:On March 01 2012 11:23 Tula wrote:
I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon. Are you sure you are talkiing about the correct Blizzard and correct WoW? Cause the WoW I know is woefully understaffed (and has been for a long time) when it comes to phone customer service reps and GMs. Have you tried calling them up? You will be lucky if you get to talk to someone after 30 mins of waiting in queue. Have you tried submitting a ticket from the in-game UI? The average ticket processing times have went from 2-3 hours during the times of Burning Crusade expansion to almost 24 hours today. Is this what you call overstaffed? In the last year, I've called Blizzard's customer service a half a dozen times. Each time, I waited less than five minutes to get my call answered. Since Cata was released, I've put in dozens of tickets in WoW. They were all answered within twelve hours. During Wrath, it was like a 2-3 day wait. More serious tickets put in this expac were answered within a half hour. You're lying. Nice. So your if experience don't match mine it means I am lying. You must be really popular with people. Has it even crossed your mind that perhaps the situation in various world regions is different? Show nested quote +On March 02 2012 12:28 Froadac wrote:
My cousin was one of the original GMs for World of Warcraft. Apart from highly disliking the game, and only succumbing to corporate pressure to play at home, he said it was a reasonable job. Right now he is working in Sound Design (he did zerg sounds for SC2, if you care) I talked to him on the phone last night about life in general, but he mentioned that most of those cut were newer hires, who probably were dead weight.
The markets acted in agreement. They only moved down 2.3%, which for such a huge layoff really doesn't mean dit. You have that completely backwards. When investors see layoffs as a good decision, the reaction to the news is positive, bidding up the share price. Since the news broke, ActivisionBlizzard is down 2 consecutive days in a row, while the overall market is up over the same period.
Two percent for 600 layoffs? Generally markets never react well when there are this many, not falling byu 5-6% is a positive.
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I'm not exactly sure how "new=dead weight", and but as one of the 600 people that was cut, I can assure you that very few if any of us, knew with any certainty, how the selection process for the lay offs was. I seriously doubt that seniority was a determining factor, as I was someone who has been there for almost 4 years, and friends of mine who have been there for upwards of 11 were all let go. For what it's worth, Blizzard has been the best company I've ever worked for, and if the opportunity arises in the future, I'd go for them again, and here's why.
Mike Morhaime was there to give the news in person, and there was not a person who was sadder in the room. He's always treated us with respect, and couldn't even look us in the eyes for more than a few seconds when he had to break the news. He's always advocated for us, and I've not had a single experience in the corporate world where that's even something a ceo would consider. He stayed the whole time, and even stayed to talk to us after everything was said and done. The profound sadness in his eyes wasn't that of someone who was motivated by greed, but compromable to someone who had just experienced the passing of a family member.
The blizzard family took a big hit this week, and I can guarantee that not a single person in the company was not effected by this.
On a final note, most of us didn't work there for the money, if we did, we would have gotten out of there a long time ago. We worked there for the culture, and for the opportunity to work alongside some of the coolest people in the industry. Short of keeping us there, we were given a generous severance package all things considering, and I personally would go back in a heartbeat.
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Mike Morhaime was there to give the news in person, and there was not a person who was sadder in the room. He's always treated us with respect, and couldn't even look us in the eyes for more than a few seconds when he had to break the news. He's always advocated for us, and I've not had a single experience in the corporate world where that's even something a ceo would consider. He stayed the whole time, and even stayed to talk to us after everything was said and done. The profound sadness in his eyes wasn't that of someone who was motivated by greed, but compromable to someone who had just experienced the passing of a family member.
The blizzard family took a big hit this week, and I can guarantee that not a single person in the company was not effected by this.
On a final note, most of us didn't work there for the money, if we did, we would have gotten out of there a long time ago. We worked there for the culture, and for the opportunity to work alongside some of the coolest people in the industry. Short of keeping us there, we were given a generous severance package all things considering, and I personally would go back in a heartbeat.
this.
User was warned for this post
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this probably means the report function will be even less functional than it is now.
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Would be hilarious if this was the reason at least, thought I highly doubt it.
"Hey everyone! This is my first day at work. I hope you welcome me into this family...oh, and you're all sacked."
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no what happens is..
before a top exec signs on... he may make an initial request before he is willing to "sign on the dotted line"
this avoids the EXACT situation u r describing...
arriving on the job... and 1 week in u execute 600 people.
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EPT
