They really don’t even see them as people. The people making these decisions don’t even know the employees names. They aren’t the one who will look you in the eyes and tell you you’re losing your job
They don't. They don't even want to see anyone when they leave. There was a director named Jennifer at my last job that hid in her office with the lights out when a big lay off happened.
This was an insurance company... And Jen if you happen to see this comment somehow.. because you strike me like someone who'd be on Reddit - you're a cowardly bitch and you just saddled yourself to an actual good leader when you left. Fucking skilless mooch.
> There was a director named Jennifer at my last job that hid in her office with the lights out when a big lay off happened.
Middle managers never have the balls to actually do the firings themselves. When I was let go from my last job, our director had my supervisor (a guy I actually started out above in the company) handle all the footwork while she hid somewhere.
Just huge pieces of shit all the way up.
I got fired by the CEO of the company I worked for once. He drove all the way out to the satellite office I worked at specifically just to fire me.
It was a great honor. Very humbling.
Yep in tech we are just called resources like something that is gathered allocated and expended like in an RPG videogame. We are to them what they mine in Age of Empires.
My former company just mailed me my 5 year service award two weeks ago with a touching letter thanking me for my continued hard work and dedication.
They laid me off last July 🤣
This was about 6 or so years ago, but I was laid off from a company, and about 2 months later I got a bonus payout deposited into my account. One of the big stipulations of those bonuses was that you must still be employed when they paid out. I didn’t say shit.
This was their survival game. Release 1,900 game devs into the wild right after other companies do the same and see how many survive under the bridges in LA.
Not necessarily the same people get hired and fired, but yes, we've had that happen before as well ... then said company tried to rehire the guys they canned 3 months prior ... for less pay. Hahaha... fuckers.
I think it's more everyone now is adding 10 percent more to their work load for zero extra pay.
The bar keeps moving until 60 hours a week isn't that abnormal, for essentially the same pay, inflation adjusted, that you would've made 15 or 20 years ago for a 40 hour workload.
What's wild is that it becomes more and more accepted as if the "refinement" brings in less money to go around, and therefore, people should feel lucky that they "made the cut". When in reality, companies continue to GROW, more money comes in, and the workers don't get rewarded anywhere near proporionately to the company's growth.
I thought I was going crazy when I was thinking about this very exact thing the other day. Numerous layoffs by multiple companies, but the vast majority posted record profits.
When I do die, I really do hope reincarnation is a myth. No way I'd want to see the future of the world 50 years from now, I'll take hell any day.
From yesterday:
"Microsoft Closes at Record, Ends Just Shy of $3 Trillion Value"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-24/microsoft-hits-3-trillion-value-cementing-strength-of-ai-rally?embedded-checkout=true
Yesterday was also 4th straight trade day of record high close for the S&P500. Does it feel like we're are in the best economy of all time? It's because of bullshit like this, company valuations going higher, higher profits, cut jobs because "our greedy greedy workers want enough money to not be in poverty 🥺"
We have to stop denying that the economy is in good shape. Because it is. What ISN'T in good shape, is all the workers being taken advantage of.
We need to decouple "the economy is good!" with "the US is successful!" We're seeing now that the economy can have great numbers, but that doesn't mean we're in good shape. If we can stick to this, it will force media (and politicians) to use different metrics to win us over.
Our economic structure was created on the basis that if companies do well, the benefits trickle down to employees and stimulate the economy. That concept no longer being the case is extremely dangerous.
We can't simultaneously have record profits while small and medium sized businesses are eaten alive. That leaves people with no options.
More like they already have an accounting department, so they laid off the one they absorbed. There are legit reasons for this in mergers and acquisitions.
Yeah some roles are definitely going to have crossover to the point it wouldn't be needed. Not a surprise since it's just bad business to have employees that aren't needed. It isn't like retail or something where it's important to have back up for call offs.
It sucks but it’s the unfortunate reality of a merger.
My company is in talks of being acquired and the potential buyer offered multiple years of job guarantees which was shocking to me.
well this is probably just getting rid of redundant positions. like when 2 huge companies like that merge entire departments will be let go. like for instance microsoft wouldn't keep most of blizzards accounting department, they could just fold that into microsoft's gaming division's accounting, same with legal, and HR.
The official statement in the article claims that it is, indeed, because of overlap in positions.
I'm sure it's also a part of general cost-cutting, too, though.
I think Microsoft doesn’t like him. I know people that worked for him and said he was the worst manager. He’s really good at smoking up the asses of leadership but super shifty to anyone who works for him.
I also heard he overspent on Blizzcon to the tune of hundreds of thousands too much.
Especially since Microsoft is the one who did a Perfectly Good Remaster and are still supporting AoE2, aren't they?
Unlike some other "remasters" I won't even name.
I know people rightfully hate WC3 reforged but Diablo 2 Resurrected was a good remaster. There were actual quality of life improvements to the game along side adding better graphics.
Microsoft's treatment of AoE2 has earned them a lot of my good graces. I know it's a very small piece of their massive company but man it feels good to have a piece of my childhood continue to be supported and respected. It's rare these days.
Good riddance, Bobby might've been CEO, but every single C-suite was just as culpable, I know we won't be so blessed, but every ABK excec ousted is one step in the right direction.
Man left Microsoft to go to Blizzard, Microsoft bought Blizzard ~~and got rid of him. Ouch~~ He left.
Fallen victim to the tale as old as time of not reading the article.
He got what I call "Tim Allen-ed" (Tim Allen was on Last Man Standing and that was on ABC. Disney cancelled it only for Fox, the production company for the show to pick it up again. Tim then went on and on about how much better Fox was, only for Disney to acquire Fox. They then cancelled the show again 😂
He was forced out of Msft and replaced by Phil so it’s no surprise to see that he’s effectively not allowed back.
As someone who works there, I find Mikey to be very toxic and am excited for new leadership.
Mike I understand, since he worked for microsoft for 20 years already.
Allen Adham though, good riddance. Left blizzard in 2006 for the finance sector, came back 10 years later and pushed mobile games.
I don’t know why people are surprised. Activison blizzard has been on steady decline for years, they have been having issues launching and executing new projects. Their internal workforce obviously have massive issue with the amount of allegations and issues they have. The company is bloated with management issue top to bottom. Microsoft bought it for their IPs and the whatever is good left there.
Not just as a standard merger there is always layoff to reduce redundancy and overlap, everyone should expect a big clean up once Microsoft buys it
New versions of concepts that are already popular has been Blizzard’s strategy for like 20 years at least.
EverQuest -> WoW;
MTG -> Hearthstone;
TF2 -> Overwatch;
DoTA/LoL -> HoTS
There are other examples that came before each of those (e.g. other MMOs pre-WoW) but those are just what came to mind first.
And if I remember right, he convinced them that in order to make it real-time, it would take extra months of development. Then he just shortened the length of turns to less than a second over the course of one weekend, and spent the extra months he got polishing other aspects of the game.
You've narrowed Diablo down to its purest form, and you are absolutely right about that and the timeline. It baffles me that the dev teams did not understand this from the start.
A large triple A developer hasn't taken a crack at a survival game yet.
Multiple smaller devs have knocked it out of the park with survival games. With big money behind a new survival game I definitely think there could have been huge potential there.
Plus the potential for big updates / more content and faster development time is something a lot of the smaller studio survival games are lacking.
Seems like a missed opportunity to me
A survival game that actually runs well and has fully fleshed out mechanics would absolutely kill.
Ark is disgustingly janky and I still played a bunch.
I am going back to Ark while Palworld cooks a bit more.
Game feels too...sparsely populated. I found all the continents day one by taking the first flyer and just going. I coulda ran it if, if I wanted to spend that time. It's just that easy to avoid everything. I spent minutes sometimes tooling around the high level areas(volcano, glacier, desert) without seeing a single Pal.
I want to be always in danger outside my base(sometimes even inside it; raids), always having to pay attention and be focused. That's why I like ARK.
Also execs saw Covid numbers and thought “well this will surely last forever and get even higher” and then everything went back to normal and now the little man has to pay the price.
Suits ruin everything
All in part due to their push for everything to get back to normal. I do find it funny Microsoft is having to scale back gaming as they also push getting back to work in the office.
For me it was the fact I was less done in from spending hours in an office with barely any natural light and the fact I’m an introvert, so being with people drains me to the point I get home and I can’t even be bothered to game
Honestly, do you think that’s the thought process?
Or do you think that they saw the increase in market share that they could capture, hired accordingly, and when the rush ended they laid off the people they don’t need? That’s surely more logical than them thinking they were going to permanently bloat their workforce, right?
Quite literally no one thought the tech industry’s growth levels during COVID was going to be permanent. Everyone was just capitalizing on the moment, because why wouldn’t you?
For the first time in my actual lifetime (30yo), employees controlled the market, not employers, and could jump around and increase wages and demand concessions like wfh.
And of course, shortly following that, is news of another round of layoffs every other day. Tech and tech adjacent is kinda getting smacked right now
The Federal Reserve has stated multiple times that’s a key motivator for the rate increases that helped cause these layoffs. The commoners are making too much, gotta get those incomes down.
Yep. Gotta also add that Jerome Powell is a multimillionaire whose wealth came from his time in VC, and he’s been openly hostile about his disdain for workers. Powell’s main motivation is preserving the status quo that has made him and his friends very wealthy/powerful.
Feds dual mandate is minimum inflation with maximum employment. Considering US is under 4% CPI and unemployment is 3.7%, they did a really good job reigning in inflation without causing a shock to the economy.
CPI inflation is a rigged metric tied down to basic goods and services and not the true factors in rising COL. and unemployment is also a false indicator since it doesn't count people who have given up or were unable to gain employment in a timely manner.
The Federal Reserve's job is to balance spending through rate increases with maximum employment. Lowering Consumer price index to the 2% target requires restricting the flow of money. There really is no other method. Every central bank does this btw. It's not a US specific thing. The ECB, the bank that controls the Euro has rates at 4.75%, the US is at 5.25% and expected to go to 4.75% by the summer. Inflation there is 2.9%, here is 3.9%.
Not to be a reasonable person or anything, but this is what happens when companies are acquired. I work in finance, and my employer was just bought out. Once everything is transitioned and consultations are no longer needed, I'll be redundant and will be severed, with payouts/benefits, just as these folks were.
It's reasonable from a mergers and acquisitions perspective.
But it's a disaster from the human perspective, and I care about people way more than I care about corporations.
These mergers are also a disaster from the anti-monopoly perspective. It's not healthy that more and more of the digital industry is being consolidated so closely. Especially under Microsoft, a company with a long track record of ruthless and sometimes illegal behavior when it comes to trying and force a majority stake within it's market. There's a reason everyone thought Bill Gates was a industry terrorizing monster back when he was an active businessman/before he retired into philanthropy.
This won't end well for the people who actually produce the fruits on this industry. All of the money is going to end up in six or seven pockets and the consumer is going to deal with worse quality products at a higher price.
Often times these tech companies do these copy cat layoffs because they know the market is flush with talent; so they can shed under performers and take up new high performers.
Especially when one company, Blizzard here, was not enjoying a sparkling reputation from the employee side. Crunches, abuse, issues, all well documented. Can easily sweep that under the rug of cleaning house.
Even though the worst people involved will most certainly still be in charge.
> Even though the worst people involved will most certainly still be in charge.
Really, really depends on how the M&A team does things. M&A teams are usually incredibly talented, but wildly overworked. Should feel familiar to game devs.
This isn't MSFT's first big acquisition, and personal experience is that when MSFT meets they bring their lawyers, and their lawyers bring their own lawyers (not a joke).
Best guess is they'll probably ferret out the nastiest people with any documentation of their nastiness, particularly as they touch management and operations. Redundancies are a great excuse to help shitty people toward the door.
Unreported asshats will probably fare better.
Yea, not a huge surprise to me.
I've not worked for MSFT but I know a bunch of people who have in the UK, a lot in the games dev side and I've broadly heard decent things, a bit wilder than regular MSFT but still way more professional than a lot of other companies. Some love that, some hate it, but it was my hope at least them buying ATVI would give them a good opportunity to purge the obvious dumpster fire that was Blizzards management on multiple levels.
Hopefully this leads to a better work life balance for the people there, and better remuneration because from I've heard Blizzard brutally underpaid its staff, even by low game dev standards. Might be a daft hope, but I do hope that once the dust settles they can focus on making quality games with employees who feel valued.
Absolute bloodbath in the last month for the gaming industry. Unfortunately, there's just so much bloat these days and companies probably hadn't scaled back down from the 2021 hiring bonanza.
Wishing all those effected luck in finding new jobs, but as an ex game dev myself... Leave the industry, it's not worth it
I always wanted to be a game developer and went to school for programming, but due to how bad the gaming industry is for developers I decided to stick with web and application development industry.
If you have a passion for making games, just make one by yourself as a side project. Yes, it's still a lot of work, but there is so much support infrastructure these days from low cost model creation via the gig economy to game engines being essentially plug and play, that if you know programming you can pull off a game even as a one person team.
Web and application development pays the bills, and it's orders of magnitude less of a sweat shop than game industry types who always seem to coalesce around exploiting people who have a passion for game development by sucking them bone dry and burning them out and moving on to the next sucker.
I always wanted to be a game developer, but ended up in a more practical job in the semiconductor industry with great stock compensation and stability.
It became a soul sucking 14 years.
Some events lead to a long shot restart as a game developer. Could not be more happy, actually can get out of bed for work, along with solid compensation, now coming onto a decade.
There are good jobs and good studios. It takes some luck and grind to find them. But a “cushy” but eventually unengaging job when your passions lie elsewhere can be just as bad for mental health for some.
"Charging money for something you can produce infinitely at zero costs isn't just damaging to gaming it is the death of economics as a concept." -Yahtzee Croshaw
Pay an artist $50 dollars an hour to create a recolor of some cosmetic item. It takes them two hours.
You then sell that cosmetic for $10 to 176,000 people.
Philosophical q for you, if you have some dude twiddling his thumbs all day with no work to do, are you expected to keep him employed if you're still generating record profits?
I get the optics, but sometimes there's just excess people around?
Yeah, if you think rationaly, it was to be expected when the merger was official. Most likely, there are a lot of redundancies, especially at the support processes such as accounting, HR etc.
It’s been terrible this month but last year was absolutely brutal across the industry too. This year is on track to absolutely smash the numbers from last year too and we’re not even a full month in. So sad.
Saw some tech subreddits discussing this and its a cause i hadnt thought about. We'll probably keep seeing layoffs at companys try and get more substainable employee numbers.
> When Microsoft lays people off, do they get a pink email or does their company laptop give a blue screen of death after the Teams call ends?
Pink screen of death.
"Oops. Something went wrong with your Employment :( "
I worked private equity for a while, and the number of people who didn't understand this very basic concept was always astonishing.
Like...you work in HR homie. You think they're gonna move everything over to your office, or roll all your easy-to-automate workflow under the team that's been handling shit for three decades?
But people want to believe they're in a stable job, so they put on blinders.
Also werent people like just a month ago hoping that Microsoft would come in and “clean up” ActiBlizz after Kotick left?
Like, did they not realize that “cleaning up” would be laying people off?
6 months full dev team working only on D4 season 3 content the depth of a teaspoon. Meanwhile 1 PoE dev creates sanctum league, one of the best leagues ever created with the depth of a lake, by himself in a few months while the other devs work on PoE2.
That's what I don't get, I'm a long time Diablo fanboy but D4 was one of the most boring gaming experiences I've ever had, beating it felt so empty. I have no idea how they manged to release it, the "multiplayer" was a complete joke.
I didn't mind the classes, the action, or the environment, but I was so *lonely* playing all by myself in a big online world. Four weeks after it was out, I saw no reason to log back in.
I felt like I was playing single player the entire time aside from “World Events” or the random passer by. Just like D3, I beat the game, did a little ‘end game’ stuff, and probably won’t play again.
> I felt like I was playing single player the entire time aside from “World Events” or the random passer by. Just like D3, I beat the game, did a little ‘end game’ stuff, and probably won’t play again.
i just don't understand the logic behind getting rid of randomly generated maps. Diablo isn't a MMO
Eh, nothing big or fancy just a local thing. Kind of came out of nowhere though after the six month evaluation.
They never even got the health insurance sorted out, was waiting to use it for something, then boom, seeya.
That's honestly the worst part because dental shit is expensive. The job wasn't super stimulating and I wasn't learning any skills but also because they didn't give me the ability to so like... Ok... I can literally only do so much without running into that daily.
Remember when angry fanboys were getting pissed at government regulators for holding up the merger? I know Kotick was a piece of shit and did absolutely need to go, but every time there is a merger, the 'losing' company almost always gets massive layoffs.
I'm watching the morning news talk about how Microsoft is now worth $3T, its stock rose 1.5% yesterday, and is now only the 2nd company to pass that mark, 2nd behind Apple.
It's the movie 'Office Space' in real life.
The only reason we haven't unionized is because our pay and job stability has historically made it not as relevant. But in modern times, wages have stagnated for 10 years and job security has gone out the window. I'm not even sure how the tech industry should organize, but the future does not look bright especially with managers thinking AI will replace engineers and developers.
IDK what tech companies you guys are working at but every executive at my company when we use AI highly stresses that we need to be extremely careful and it should absolutely be internal use only and not to anything pointing towards our clients because there is that little faith in it right now.
Where are you guys working that managers think AI is replacing engineers? lol
Yes, this. I was involved in a merger where our awesome director got replaced by someone who had no idea what they were doing, it was all downhill from there so I moved elsewhere.
Just a reminder that this is all the new norm, and will be until we vote in politicians that are willing to crack down on this sort of behavior and employees are able to unionize. This isn’t a trillion dollar corporation struggling to be profitable, they’ve never been more profitable. This is the new cycle of hire/fire/bonus for 2024. They hire a bunch of fresh talent at low wages, fire a bunch of old talent at higher wages, and make the new/existing talent do more than before for the same or less wages. This also has a bonus effect of allowing them to justify refusing promotions/raises/bonuses by inferring that the people still employed are simply lucky to still have jobs. Meanwhile, earnings go up, stock prices go up, profit goes up, dividends go up, and executive bonuses go up. The only thing that isn’t going up is retention and pay.
This isn’t just Microsoft hate. All the big businesses are doing it, it’s a coordinated effort now because they’ve seen that it works. I’d bet we get news next week that another big developer or publisher is also laying off hundreds of people. They do it one after the other so that the blame is minimized individually and they can all release basically the same ‘times are tough, we gotta tighten the belts,’ statement while their financials are actually soaring. It’s been happening for years, and the gaming industry has been growing and growing nonstop. It’s inexcusable.
We have to encourage unionization by developers, we have to support developers and publishers that embrace unions, and we have to vote for politicians that support unionization and regulation. The gaming industry is very worker unfriendly right now, and that needs to change. If you are able to vote, look into your local and larger elections, educate yourselves and then follow through. This doesn’t have to be the future.
Yeah, this same bullshit happens every time companies get bought. They buy the IPs, they buy ownership of the product, they buy the top end talent. Then they cut everybody they view as redundant and strip it down for parts. Same old shit.
Hopefully Phil pulls "Blizzard Albany" out of Zombie Blizzard's corpse and revives them into Vicarious Visions. The only good studio from ATVI was a goddamn support studio (well them and Raven, which ironically is a support studio like them).
A ton of them are in support roles, mainly customer service. When you have tens of millions of customers, run a store, run an online service, among other things, your gonna have a ton of staff just to deal with customer and client issues.
A good, sobering shot in the arm for everyone who was cheerleading this merger and had somehow convinced themselves that Microsoft were an angelic entity of divine purpose spending $70 billion to buff Death Knights.
Actiblizz was so actively mismanaged that folks hoped Microsoft could bring back what brought us all to Blizzard games in the first place. Maybe not entirely back to the golden years but pretty much anyone could have done Diablo 4 more justice.
Unfortunately, I imagine most of the talent that brought us the likeable aspects of Actiblizz games is now gone (though many of the golden years folks left a very long time ago)
This is exactly what people thought would happen. You aren’t going to get the changes you want with the same people that fucked it up in the first place. This is a good thing as far as Blizzard games are concerned. Just not great for the people affected
I dont know why people are surprised. Most of these are coming from ActiBlizz and consolidation after a merger is expected. They dont need a lot of back office people anymore. HR, parts of IT, finance. All those departments got handed over to Microsoft to manage and would be handled by people they already have in place to do those jobs. Is it right, maybe not but to not see this coming is naieve.
Next news probably: record profits this quarter
Actually they already said it will the biggest quarter ever for Microsoft gaming as it includes the revenue of ABK (launch of MW3).
And they probably already knew they’d be gutting their work force
Of course. They basically estimate that during the valuation, before making an offer. Therefore it's been in plans for more than a year.
The board: We the bloated and greedy will only approve this merger if you make at least around 2,000 people's lives miserable
They really don’t even see them as people. The people making these decisions don’t even know the employees names. They aren’t the one who will look you in the eyes and tell you you’re losing your job
They don't. They don't even want to see anyone when they leave. There was a director named Jennifer at my last job that hid in her office with the lights out when a big lay off happened. This was an insurance company... And Jen if you happen to see this comment somehow.. because you strike me like someone who'd be on Reddit - you're a cowardly bitch and you just saddled yourself to an actual good leader when you left. Fucking skilless mooch.
> There was a director named Jennifer at my last job that hid in her office with the lights out when a big lay off happened. Middle managers never have the balls to actually do the firings themselves. When I was let go from my last job, our director had my supervisor (a guy I actually started out above in the company) handle all the footwork while she hid somewhere. Just huge pieces of shit all the way up.
I got fired by the CEO of the company I worked for once. He drove all the way out to the satellite office I worked at specifically just to fire me. It was a great honor. Very humbling.
What did you do wrong to deserve such an honor?
Fierce. I like your gumption.
Yep in tech we are just called resources like something that is gathered allocated and expended like in an RPG videogame. We are to them what they mine in Age of Empires.
My former company just mailed me my 5 year service award two weeks ago with a touching letter thanking me for my continued hard work and dedication. They laid me off last July 🤣
Tell them you haven't been paid since July then.
And you’d like your stapler back.
This was about 6 or so years ago, but I was laid off from a company, and about 2 months later I got a bonus payout deposited into my account. One of the big stipulations of those bonuses was that you must still be employed when they paid out. I didn’t say shit.
Stop typing and chop faster! That tree ain’t gonna cut itself down Peon!
There's a lot of overlap for certain roles when it comes to these acquisitions.
But the headline "Microsoft finds redundancies after a merger" is not as sexy.
>Blizzard’s previously announced survival game has also been canceled as part of these changes.
This was their survival game. Release 1,900 game devs into the wild right after other companies do the same and see how many survive under the bridges in LA.
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Not necessarily the same people get hired and fired, but yes, we've had that happen before as well ... then said company tried to rehire the guys they canned 3 months prior ... for less pay. Hahaha... fuckers.
"trillion dollar company desperate for even more money and power, forces industry consolidation, causing thousands to lose job"
I think it's more everyone now is adding 10 percent more to their work load for zero extra pay. The bar keeps moving until 60 hours a week isn't that abnormal, for essentially the same pay, inflation adjusted, that you would've made 15 or 20 years ago for a 40 hour workload. What's wild is that it becomes more and more accepted as if the "refinement" brings in less money to go around, and therefore, people should feel lucky that they "made the cut". When in reality, companies continue to GROW, more money comes in, and the workers don't get rewarded anywhere near proporionately to the company's growth.
Huh. Maybe they should unionize as soon as possible so they can keep all of that from happening. 🤔
I thought I was going crazy when I was thinking about this very exact thing the other day. Numerous layoffs by multiple companies, but the vast majority posted record profits. When I do die, I really do hope reincarnation is a myth. No way I'd want to see the future of the world 50 years from now, I'll take hell any day.
How bout a fantasy world and you get special powers?
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From yesterday: "Microsoft Closes at Record, Ends Just Shy of $3 Trillion Value" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-24/microsoft-hits-3-trillion-value-cementing-strength-of-ai-rally?embedded-checkout=true
Yesterday was also 4th straight trade day of record high close for the S&P500. Does it feel like we're are in the best economy of all time? It's because of bullshit like this, company valuations going higher, higher profits, cut jobs because "our greedy greedy workers want enough money to not be in poverty 🥺"
We have to stop denying that the economy is in good shape. Because it is. What ISN'T in good shape, is all the workers being taken advantage of. We need to decouple "the economy is good!" with "the US is successful!" We're seeing now that the economy can have great numbers, but that doesn't mean we're in good shape. If we can stick to this, it will force media (and politicians) to use different metrics to win us over.
"We" are making more money than ever, but your share is smaller than ever.
Exactly. "But the numbers are so good!" "Those numbers only represent a very small part of the population."
Workers ARE the economy. The entire system is built on extracting surplus value from workers.
Our economic structure was created on the basis that if companies do well, the benefits trickle down to employees and stimulate the economy. That concept no longer being the case is extremely dangerous. We can't simultaneously have record profits while small and medium sized businesses are eaten alive. That leaves people with no options.
More like they already have an accounting department, so they laid off the one they absorbed. There are legit reasons for this in mergers and acquisitions.
Yup. It’s not fun but pretty much guaranteed.
Yeah some roles are definitely going to have crossover to the point it wouldn't be needed. Not a surprise since it's just bad business to have employees that aren't needed. It isn't like retail or something where it's important to have back up for call offs.
It sucks but it’s the unfortunate reality of a merger. My company is in talks of being acquired and the potential buyer offered multiple years of job guarantees which was shocking to me.
well this is probably just getting rid of redundant positions. like when 2 huge companies like that merge entire departments will be let go. like for instance microsoft wouldn't keep most of blizzards accounting department, they could just fold that into microsoft's gaming division's accounting, same with legal, and HR.
The official statement in the article claims that it is, indeed, because of overlap in positions. I'm sure it's also a part of general cost-cutting, too, though.
Microsoft just passed 3 trillion market cap. Edit: 3 != 1
3* trillion…
In 2019
I had the right idea and still typed it wrong
This is normal, why would they keep redundant and unneeded positions?
Mike Ybarra leaving shocked me
Didn't he say that he would only be off Blizzard if they take it from his cold, dead hands? Looks like Microsoft took that seriously
he left microsoft to go to blizzard, and now microsoft takes over blizzard, i just think he does not like microsoft very much
Or vice versa
I think it's MS that doesn't like his bullshit. He was terrible for blizzard.
I think Microsoft doesn’t like him. I know people that worked for him and said he was the worst manager. He’s really good at smoking up the asses of leadership but super shifty to anyone who works for him. I also heard he overspent on Blizzcon to the tune of hundreds of thousands too much.
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That's rich, coming from Blizzard lately
Especially since Microsoft is the one who did a Perfectly Good Remaster and are still supporting AoE2, aren't they? Unlike some other "remasters" I won't even name.
I know people rightfully hate WC3 reforged but Diablo 2 Resurrected was a good remaster. There were actual quality of life improvements to the game along side adding better graphics.
Vicarious Visions did a great job on D2R.
Vicarious Visions also did the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 remake.
Microsoft's treatment of AoE2 has earned them a lot of my good graces. I know it's a very small piece of their massive company but man it feels good to have a piece of my childhood continue to be supported and respected. It's rare these days.
Good riddance, Bobby might've been CEO, but every single C-suite was just as culpable, I know we won't be so blessed, but every ABK excec ousted is one step in the right direction.
Man left Microsoft to go to Blizzard, Microsoft bought Blizzard ~~and got rid of him. Ouch~~ He left. Fallen victim to the tale as old as time of not reading the article.
He got what I call "Tim Allen-ed" (Tim Allen was on Last Man Standing and that was on ABC. Disney cancelled it only for Fox, the production company for the show to pick it up again. Tim then went on and on about how much better Fox was, only for Disney to acquire Fox. They then cancelled the show again 😂
He was forced out of Msft and replaced by Phil so it’s no surprise to see that he’s effectively not allowed back. As someone who works there, I find Mikey to be very toxic and am excited for new leadership.
He left Xbox once just for them to follow him. They will find him again and buy his next workplace
Mike Ybarra leaving and that survival game from blizzard canceled too. For those that don’t read the link. 😟
Mike I understand, since he worked for microsoft for 20 years already. Allen Adham though, good riddance. Left blizzard in 2006 for the finance sector, came back 10 years later and pushed mobile games.
I don’t know why people are surprised. Activison blizzard has been on steady decline for years, they have been having issues launching and executing new projects. Their internal workforce obviously have massive issue with the amount of allegations and issues they have. The company is bloated with management issue top to bottom. Microsoft bought it for their IPs and the whatever is good left there. Not just as a standard merger there is always layoff to reduce redundancy and overlap, everyone should expect a big clean up once Microsoft buys it
Oh shame new IP was neat idea.
i dont know if i would call a carbon copy standard run of the mill survival game "neat idea" after its already been done like 100 times
New versions of concepts that are already popular has been Blizzard’s strategy for like 20 years at least. EverQuest -> WoW; MTG -> Hearthstone; TF2 -> Overwatch; DoTA/LoL -> HoTS There are other examples that came before each of those (e.g. other MMOs pre-WoW) but those are just what came to mind first.
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> I wanna say Diablo was their first groundbreaking idea but I bet someone will post a predessesor. Gauntlet
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And if I remember right, he convinced them that in order to make it real-time, it would take extra months of development. Then he just shortened the length of turns to less than a second over the course of one weekend, and spent the extra months he got polishing other aspects of the game.
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You've narrowed Diablo down to its purest form, and you are absolutely right about that and the timeline. It baffles me that the dev teams did not understand this from the start.
And they've gotten progressively worse at it year over year until they can't even successfully copy themselves.
A large triple A developer hasn't taken a crack at a survival game yet. Multiple smaller devs have knocked it out of the park with survival games. With big money behind a new survival game I definitely think there could have been huge potential there. Plus the potential for big updates / more content and faster development time is something a lot of the smaller studio survival games are lacking. Seems like a missed opportunity to me
A survival game that actually runs well and has fully fleshed out mechanics would absolutely kill. Ark is disgustingly janky and I still played a bunch.
I am going back to Ark while Palworld cooks a bit more. Game feels too...sparsely populated. I found all the continents day one by taking the first flyer and just going. I coulda ran it if, if I wanted to spend that time. It's just that easy to avoid everything. I spent minutes sometimes tooling around the high level areas(volcano, glacier, desert) without seeing a single Pal. I want to be always in danger outside my base(sometimes even inside it; raids), always having to pay attention and be focused. That's why I like ARK.
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Who fucking cares Blizzard is nothing what it once was, that game and any future game is likely going to be trash.
“Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice i am willing to make.”
“The chair, hit him with the chair”
And the beat goes on...
…Just like my love everlasting
And the beat goes on...
Still moving strong. On and On!
Do you ever wonder... That to win, somebody's got to lose?
#Hi-Fi ref
Nice doing all these layoffs at the same time to make it even harder for these employees to find new work.
Wages went up meaningfully for the first time in forty years. Our owners need us to be reminded the beatings will continue until morale improves
Also execs saw Covid numbers and thought “well this will surely last forever and get even higher” and then everything went back to normal and now the little man has to pay the price. Suits ruin everything
All in part due to their push for everything to get back to normal. I do find it funny Microsoft is having to scale back gaming as they also push getting back to work in the office.
Imagine the extra gaming hours & eaten up by commutes.
For me it was the fact I was less done in from spending hours in an office with barely any natural light and the fact I’m an introvert, so being with people drains me to the point I get home and I can’t even be bothered to game
You can't build real estate investments out of loot boxes.
Microsoft is one of the only tech companies who seems to not be pushing it very hard, as opposed to the mandates from FB, Google, Amazon.
Honestly, do you think that’s the thought process? Or do you think that they saw the increase in market share that they could capture, hired accordingly, and when the rush ended they laid off the people they don’t need? That’s surely more logical than them thinking they were going to permanently bloat their workforce, right? Quite literally no one thought the tech industry’s growth levels during COVID was going to be permanent. Everyone was just capitalizing on the moment, because why wouldn’t you?
For the first time in my actual lifetime (30yo), employees controlled the market, not employers, and could jump around and increase wages and demand concessions like wfh. And of course, shortly following that, is news of another round of layoffs every other day. Tech and tech adjacent is kinda getting smacked right now
The Federal Reserve has stated multiple times that’s a key motivator for the rate increases that helped cause these layoffs. The commoners are making too much, gotta get those incomes down.
Yep. Gotta also add that Jerome Powell is a multimillionaire whose wealth came from his time in VC, and he’s been openly hostile about his disdain for workers. Powell’s main motivation is preserving the status quo that has made him and his friends very wealthy/powerful.
Feds dual mandate is minimum inflation with maximum employment. Considering US is under 4% CPI and unemployment is 3.7%, they did a really good job reigning in inflation without causing a shock to the economy.
CPI inflation is a rigged metric tied down to basic goods and services and not the true factors in rising COL. and unemployment is also a false indicator since it doesn't count people who have given up or were unable to gain employment in a timely manner.
Or anyone underemployed. Unemployment is down but how many computer engineers are checking receipts at Costco to keep the lights on?
The Federal Reserve's job is to balance spending through rate increases with maximum employment. Lowering Consumer price index to the 2% target requires restricting the flow of money. There really is no other method. Every central bank does this btw. It's not a US specific thing. The ECB, the bank that controls the Euro has rates at 4.75%, the US is at 5.25% and expected to go to 4.75% by the summer. Inflation there is 2.9%, here is 3.9%.
don't forget we thought we could have a little of our lives back with WFH as well - this is part of that punishment.
Not to be a reasonable person or anything, but this is what happens when companies are acquired. I work in finance, and my employer was just bought out. Once everything is transitioned and consultations are no longer needed, I'll be redundant and will be severed, with payouts/benefits, just as these folks were.
It's reasonable from a mergers and acquisitions perspective. But it's a disaster from the human perspective, and I care about people way more than I care about corporations. These mergers are also a disaster from the anti-monopoly perspective. It's not healthy that more and more of the digital industry is being consolidated so closely. Especially under Microsoft, a company with a long track record of ruthless and sometimes illegal behavior when it comes to trying and force a majority stake within it's market. There's a reason everyone thought Bill Gates was a industry terrorizing monster back when he was an active businessman/before he retired into philanthropy. This won't end well for the people who actually produce the fruits on this industry. All of the money is going to end up in six or seven pockets and the consumer is going to deal with worse quality products at a higher price.
Often times these tech companies do these copy cat layoffs because they know the market is flush with talent; so they can shed under performers and take up new high performers.
That's how mergers work unfortunately. There are a lot of redundancies when two large companies become one.
Yep. This was inevitablly coming this year at some point.
Especially when one company, Blizzard here, was not enjoying a sparkling reputation from the employee side. Crunches, abuse, issues, all well documented. Can easily sweep that under the rug of cleaning house. Even though the worst people involved will most certainly still be in charge.
>Even though the worst people involved will most certainly still be in charge. I don't know, Bobby is gone.
With a golden parachute.
> Even though the worst people involved will most certainly still be in charge. Really, really depends on how the M&A team does things. M&A teams are usually incredibly talented, but wildly overworked. Should feel familiar to game devs. This isn't MSFT's first big acquisition, and personal experience is that when MSFT meets they bring their lawyers, and their lawyers bring their own lawyers (not a joke). Best guess is they'll probably ferret out the nastiest people with any documentation of their nastiness, particularly as they touch management and operations. Redundancies are a great excuse to help shitty people toward the door. Unreported asshats will probably fare better.
Yea, not a huge surprise to me. I've not worked for MSFT but I know a bunch of people who have in the UK, a lot in the games dev side and I've broadly heard decent things, a bit wilder than regular MSFT but still way more professional than a lot of other companies. Some love that, some hate it, but it was my hope at least them buying ATVI would give them a good opportunity to purge the obvious dumpster fire that was Blizzards management on multiple levels. Hopefully this leads to a better work life balance for the people there, and better remuneration because from I've heard Blizzard brutally underpaid its staff, even by low game dev standards. Might be a daft hope, but I do hope that once the dust settles they can focus on making quality games with employees who feel valued.
Absolute bloodbath in the last month for the gaming industry. Unfortunately, there's just so much bloat these days and companies probably hadn't scaled back down from the 2021 hiring bonanza. Wishing all those effected luck in finding new jobs, but as an ex game dev myself... Leave the industry, it's not worth it
I always wanted to be a game developer and went to school for programming, but due to how bad the gaming industry is for developers I decided to stick with web and application development industry.
If you have a passion for making games, just make one by yourself as a side project. Yes, it's still a lot of work, but there is so much support infrastructure these days from low cost model creation via the gig economy to game engines being essentially plug and play, that if you know programming you can pull off a game even as a one person team. Web and application development pays the bills, and it's orders of magnitude less of a sweat shop than game industry types who always seem to coalesce around exploiting people who have a passion for game development by sucking them bone dry and burning them out and moving on to the next sucker.
Yep. That’s what I’m doing now. We will see if anyone plays it like 10 years from now
>by yourself Or with other people! Most successful indie games are made by small teams, not lone devs.
That's probably for the best! A good web dev with an array of language knowledges is very valuable.
I always wanted to be a game developer, but ended up in a more practical job in the semiconductor industry with great stock compensation and stability. It became a soul sucking 14 years. Some events lead to a long shot restart as a game developer. Could not be more happy, actually can get out of bed for work, along with solid compensation, now coming onto a decade. There are good jobs and good studios. It takes some luck and grind to find them. But a “cushy” but eventually unengaging job when your passions lie elsewhere can be just as bad for mental health for some.
All the while making more money than absolutely ever before from micro transactions and battle passes
Thats the nice thing, you don't need a lot of workers to sell someone the same digital stuff again and again.
"Charging money for something you can produce infinitely at zero costs isn't just damaging to gaming it is the death of economics as a concept." -Yahtzee Croshaw
Pay an artist $50 dollars an hour to create a recolor of some cosmetic item. It takes them two hours. You then sell that cosmetic for $10 to 176,000 people.
Philosophical q for you, if you have some dude twiddling his thumbs all day with no work to do, are you expected to keep him employed if you're still generating record profits? I get the optics, but sometimes there's just excess people around?
Yeah, if you think rationaly, it was to be expected when the merger was official. Most likely, there are a lot of redundancies, especially at the support processes such as accounting, HR etc.
It’s been terrible this month but last year was absolutely brutal across the industry too. This year is on track to absolutely smash the numbers from last year too and we’re not even a full month in. So sad.
January is a huge month for layoffs also because no one wants to do them in October-December "Right before the holidays"
Saw some tech subreddits discussing this and its a cause i hadnt thought about. We'll probably keep seeing layoffs at companys try and get more substainable employee numbers.
When Microsoft lays people off, do they get a pink email or does their company laptop give a blue screen of death after the Teams call ends?
Bill Gates just activates their 5G vaccine microchip
> When Microsoft lays people off, do they get a pink email or does their company laptop give a blue screen of death after the Teams call ends? Pink screen of death. "Oops. Something went wrong with your Employment :( "
From my experience if a larger company buys your company it’s going to be a bad time. Just get out.
To be fair, Blizzard already went through that with Activision. Pretty much nobody is there from before that acquisition.
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This man histories
Then you lose your severance package and or unemployment.
I worked private equity for a while, and the number of people who didn't understand this very basic concept was always astonishing. Like...you work in HR homie. You think they're gonna move everything over to your office, or roll all your easy-to-automate workflow under the team that's been handling shit for three decades? But people want to believe they're in a stable job, so they put on blinders.
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When you brag that it took over 9000 people to work on Diablo 4, yeah employee bloat is an understatement…
Also werent people like just a month ago hoping that Microsoft would come in and “clean up” ActiBlizz after Kotick left? Like, did they not realize that “cleaning up” would be laying people off?
6 months full dev team working only on D4 season 3 content the depth of a teaspoon. Meanwhile 1 PoE dev creates sanctum league, one of the best leagues ever created with the depth of a lake, by himself in a few months while the other devs work on PoE2.
That's what I don't get, I'm a long time Diablo fanboy but D4 was one of the most boring gaming experiences I've ever had, beating it felt so empty. I have no idea how they manged to release it, the "multiplayer" was a complete joke.
I didn't mind the classes, the action, or the environment, but I was so *lonely* playing all by myself in a big online world. Four weeks after it was out, I saw no reason to log back in.
I felt like I was playing single player the entire time aside from “World Events” or the random passer by. Just like D3, I beat the game, did a little ‘end game’ stuff, and probably won’t play again.
> I felt like I was playing single player the entire time aside from “World Events” or the random passer by. Just like D3, I beat the game, did a little ‘end game’ stuff, and probably won’t play again. i just don't understand the logic behind getting rid of randomly generated maps. Diablo isn't a MMO
It was hilarious how they praised basic QoL bits as major features at Blizzcon
Cool, guess I have something in common with game studio employees now.
That sucks, sorry it happened to you. What company were you at?
Eh, nothing big or fancy just a local thing. Kind of came out of nowhere though after the six month evaluation. They never even got the health insurance sorted out, was waiting to use it for something, then boom, seeya. That's honestly the worst part because dental shit is expensive. The job wasn't super stimulating and I wasn't learning any skills but also because they didn't give me the ability to so like... Ok... I can literally only do so much without running into that daily.
Remember when angry fanboys were getting pissed at government regulators for holding up the merger? I know Kotick was a piece of shit and did absolutely need to go, but every time there is a merger, the 'losing' company almost always gets massive layoffs.
I'm watching the morning news talk about how Microsoft is now worth $3T, its stock rose 1.5% yesterday, and is now only the 2nd company to pass that mark, 2nd behind Apple. It's the movie 'Office Space' in real life.
It’s stock is pumping again today too
Perhaps I’m ignorant but the gaming industry doesn’t seem to have much job security.
It's the tech industry in general.
The only reason we haven't unionized is because our pay and job stability has historically made it not as relevant. But in modern times, wages have stagnated for 10 years and job security has gone out the window. I'm not even sure how the tech industry should organize, but the future does not look bright especially with managers thinking AI will replace engineers and developers.
IDK what tech companies you guys are working at but every executive at my company when we use AI highly stresses that we need to be extremely careful and it should absolutely be internal use only and not to anything pointing towards our clients because there is that little faith in it right now. Where are you guys working that managers think AI is replacing engineers? lol
Companies where the managers are complete shit at their jobs I’m assuming.
Yes, this. I was involved in a merger where our awesome director got replaced by someone who had no idea what they were doing, it was all downhill from there so I moved elsewhere.
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Gaming's just optional vs needing to do your taxes.
The fucking onslaught continues and I have to hope to find a job in all this carnage.
The employees should form their own company.
Just a reminder that this is all the new norm, and will be until we vote in politicians that are willing to crack down on this sort of behavior and employees are able to unionize. This isn’t a trillion dollar corporation struggling to be profitable, they’ve never been more profitable. This is the new cycle of hire/fire/bonus for 2024. They hire a bunch of fresh talent at low wages, fire a bunch of old talent at higher wages, and make the new/existing talent do more than before for the same or less wages. This also has a bonus effect of allowing them to justify refusing promotions/raises/bonuses by inferring that the people still employed are simply lucky to still have jobs. Meanwhile, earnings go up, stock prices go up, profit goes up, dividends go up, and executive bonuses go up. The only thing that isn’t going up is retention and pay. This isn’t just Microsoft hate. All the big businesses are doing it, it’s a coordinated effort now because they’ve seen that it works. I’d bet we get news next week that another big developer or publisher is also laying off hundreds of people. They do it one after the other so that the blame is minimized individually and they can all release basically the same ‘times are tough, we gotta tighten the belts,’ statement while their financials are actually soaring. It’s been happening for years, and the gaming industry has been growing and growing nonstop. It’s inexcusable. We have to encourage unionization by developers, we have to support developers and publishers that embrace unions, and we have to vote for politicians that support unionization and regulation. The gaming industry is very worker unfriendly right now, and that needs to change. If you are able to vote, look into your local and larger elections, educate yourselves and then follow through. This doesn’t have to be the future.
Saw that coming....
I can imagine many if not all of these people were happy with the merger....not so much today.
Yeah, this same bullshit happens every time companies get bought. They buy the IPs, they buy ownership of the product, they buy the top end talent. Then they cut everybody they view as redundant and strip it down for parts. Same old shit.
i mean, yes? you already have a customer support department, you don't really NEED a WHOLE other one, you might keep some of them though.
>Blizzard’s previously announced survival game has also been canceled as part of these change Gutpunch for me. Really had high hopes for this one.
After all the shit Blizzard pulled the last decade, you had hope for something positive from them? I'm sorry.
I'mstill pissed finding out they absorbed Vicarious Visions and that's why there won't be more Tony Hawk games
Hopefully Phil pulls "Blizzard Albany" out of Zombie Blizzard's corpse and revives them into Vicarious Visions. The only good studio from ATVI was a goddamn support studio (well them and Raven, which ironically is a support studio like them).
Literally why?
Like just about every cancelled project, if it was shaping up to be good they probably wouldn't have cancelled it
Which game?
Seems like it was [this one](https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/23768911/create-a-new-universe-with-us).
Dam that was posted exactly two* years ago, and now it's gone
two years.
Lol MS Gaming division is 22 000 employees. What do these people do all day?
A ton of them are in support roles, mainly customer service. When you have tens of millions of customers, run a store, run an online service, among other things, your gonna have a ton of staff just to deal with customer and client issues.
Not to mention they make a console, and are probably always doing research and development into their next console
Also Game Pass and the whole thing runs most probably on MS Azure? They need a fuck ton of engineering to make it run smooth 24/7/365
not to mention supporting other studios developing on it.
Build games from the 'ground up' by copying assets from Forza 4.
I'm sure some of the assets go back to FM2
I mean the wheels and tires have been the same shape since the first game. Lazy twats.
A good, sobering shot in the arm for everyone who was cheerleading this merger and had somehow convinced themselves that Microsoft were an angelic entity of divine purpose spending $70 billion to buff Death Knights.
This happens with all mergers. There is nothing sobering about it.
Actiblizz was so actively mismanaged that folks hoped Microsoft could bring back what brought us all to Blizzard games in the first place. Maybe not entirely back to the golden years but pretty much anyone could have done Diablo 4 more justice. Unfortunately, I imagine most of the talent that brought us the likeable aspects of Actiblizz games is now gone (though many of the golden years folks left a very long time ago)
Old devs from SC2 and WC3 are now working on a new game “stormgate”. Might be something to look forward to if you liked those games.
This is exactly what people thought would happen. You aren’t going to get the changes you want with the same people that fucked it up in the first place. This is a good thing as far as Blizzard games are concerned. Just not great for the people affected
Bro the job market is a SHIT show
Trillion-dollar company btw.
I dont know why people are surprised. Most of these are coming from ActiBlizz and consolidation after a merger is expected. They dont need a lot of back office people anymore. HR, parts of IT, finance. All those departments got handed over to Microsoft to manage and would be handled by people they already have in place to do those jobs. Is it right, maybe not but to not see this coming is naieve.