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Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

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Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#41

Post by iammjm »

wseqyrku wrote: post #31
iammjm wrote: post #3

"primarily laying off roles at Activision Blizzard, some Xbox and ZeniMax employees will also be impacted / work out to roughly 8 percent of the overall Microsoft Gaming division that stands at around 22,000 employees in total." 2k employees look like a lot, 8% looks kinda better. I need Starcraft 3 badly :)

> 2k employees look like a lot, 8% looks kinda better. Sorry what?

What I meant to say: a game studio dropping 2000 employees seem like A LOT until you consider it's Microsoft and it's "just" 8% of their workforce.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#42

Post by thiago_fm »

Activision Blizzard games are on a downtrend for quite a while. I imagine now post-layoff how it feels to work there, if before there were already plenty of cases of abuse.

Hope the laid-off folks have a better outcome long-term.

Such a terrible acquisition from Microsoft. I doubt the IP is worth that much, so many people are full of those grindy lootboxes games looking to something new and fresh.

If I could short that acquisition, I would go all-in.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#43

Post by Wevah »

iammjm wrote: post #20
two_in_one wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs don't compete with artists, they are more about text.. (Large Language Model)

No, the art that LLMs are generating is already amazing and getting better each month. There's even LLMs that generate whole videos.

That’s genAI, though, no? LLMs specifically deal with language.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#44

Post by eigenket »

asylteltine wrote: post #35
iammjm wrote: post #3

"primarily laying off roles at Activision Blizzard, some Xbox and ZeniMax employees will also be impacted / work out to roughly 8 percent of the overall Microsoft Gaming division that stands at around 22,000 employees in total." 2k employees look like a lot, 8% looks kinda better. I need Starcraft 3 badly :)

The blizzard you know is completely dead. No one from their classic games is around. No one who made Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft, etc is around. Those games were made as a labor of love.

Its not quite true that none of those people are still around - a bunch of them work for Frostgiant & are working on Stormate.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#46

Post by marcinzm »

dvngnt_ wrote: post #9
mensetmanusman wrote: post #4

Yikes, how many are artists replaced by LLMs?

it hadn't replaced much yet since it's hard to make consistent high quality art

Maybe at larger studios but smaller ones are transitioning especially in things like initial designs (ie: characters, etc.). Someone told me recently that "our Art Director is ChatGPT."

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#47

Post by jmyeet »

When this was announced my question was "is Microsoft buying Call of Duty or are they buying Activision-Blizzard?" CoD is a reliable cash cow and driver for consoles with an annual game release. It makes a lot of money.

Activision-Blizzard owns a lot of valuble IP that they could absolutely further monetize. It remains to be seen if Microsoft has the vision or desire to capitalize on that. There is a huge gap with Blizzard IP mostly not being on consoles.

It's worth noting that Microsoft just became the second $3 trillion market cap company. Yet we still have the same old playbook of raising prices and cutting costs, employees be damned.

I do wonder if Microsoft will try and replace artists with AIs to further save costs.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#48

Post by super256 »

iammjm wrote: post #20
two_in_one wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs don't compete with artists, they are more about text.. (Large Language Model)

No, the art that LLMs are generating is already amazing and getting better each month. There's even LLMs that generate whole videos.

I think you are confusing large language models with diffusion models.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#49

Post by usrnm »

ramesh31 wrote: post #23
mikeortman wrote: post #19

It blows my mind that many people worked there, only 8% of Microsoft Gaming?

>It blows my mind that many people worked there, only 8% of Microsoft Gaming? The difference between AAA and the rest is not so much in quality these days, but sheer quantity . Quantity of NPCs, artwork, music, items, skills, vehicles, levels, etc. etc. And it takes a small army of artists/designers/PMs to do all of that stuff, not to even mention the actual dev team.

Larian Studios has 450 employees, and BG3 completely blows any other modern RPG out of the water in terms of the sheer amount of fun content inside the game

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#50

Post by solardev »

asylteltine wrote: post #35
iammjm wrote: post #3

"primarily laying off roles at Activision Blizzard, some Xbox and ZeniMax employees will also be impacted / work out to roughly 8 percent of the overall Microsoft Gaming division that stands at around 22,000 employees in total." 2k employees look like a lot, 8% looks kinda better. I need Starcraft 3 badly :)

The blizzard you know is completely dead. No one from their classic games is around. No one who made Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft, etc is around. Those games were made as a labor of love.

I just played Diablo 4 season 3 (which launched a couple days ago) for a bit, and sadly I have to agree. It's such an empty, soulless game. Reminds me of Starfield, regurgitated sameness.

Path of Exile, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn, etc. are all so much better, and made by tiny studios (though sometimes backed by Tencent, like with PoE).

With the AAAs focusing only on safe sequels, maybe LLMs taking over would be a good thing, lol. At least maybe we'll get better writing and game design that way. Even ChatGPT has more passion than Blizzard now...

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