Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

theverge.com

181–190 of 322 posts

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

#181
post #141
post #47

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 Bl…

You might be surprised what is the real money printer in ABK.

Candy Crush?

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

#182
post #87

Last time the stock market was surging, everyone was hiring. This time it's different

I'm pretty old, and I've NEVER had issues finding a job. I've been unemployed for 6 months now. Thinking about getting out of software development TBH. It isn't that I'm a bad developer, I've almost always gotten good to great performance reviews, but nobody is hiring. The positions that do open up are swamped with tons of people. The culture also is pretty toxic, especially in the startup world, and with AI now ente…

Coming from both a place of kindness and a place of selfishness:

1. Please keep at it. We need more people with experience staying in software. I don’t know your financial situation, but software is huge and something will land!

2. Based on this comment, I highly recommend likely not ever starting a company. It’s fucking hard, and it’s not glamorous. And even though it’s hard times in the macro, it’s actually way harder for many compounding reasons that are not obvious until you do it.

Again, coming from a place of love.

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

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I'm not impressed at all. It looks and feels like a cartoonish bootleg of SC with AI generated Fortnite-looking artwork. What made SC interesting, like most Blizzard IP of the time, was also the well written story lines with amazing character arcs, that kept people invested, and not that it was a strategy game of space marines versus organic aliens versus energy aliens. They even made sure to give stor…

SC1 had a great story with excellent writing, especially for the time. SC2's story was schlocky garbage. The biggest example of this is the opening cutscene of 2 with Raynor in the bar. Raynor's literal final line to Kerrigan in SC1 was "It may not be tomorow, darlin', it may not even happen with an army at my back. But rest assured; I'm the man who's gonna kill you one day. I'll be seeing you." Meanwhile in the open…

Story-wise SC2 was a sequel to the SC1 books rather than the SC1 game. I don't know if they thought that everyone who cared about the story would have read the books and preferred that version of the story or if they just forgot that they were different (or didn't care), but it was pretty weird.

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

#184
post #160
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 :)

As long as they don't fire the Starcraft 2 intern I am good.

I bet they could get Lowko to do it for free.

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

#185
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 :)

If you love Starcraft just a quick reminder that the Korean Brood War scene is still going strong, and is now getting bigger. BW is a near perfect game and it's clear with how they handled SC2 "Blizzard" is not going to make anything close to BW ever again. I would highly recommend checking it out if you love Starcraft. For starters, Artosis casts a pro-level ladder game every day on this channel: https://www.youtube…

> BW is a near perfect game

It has a lot of pacing and quality-of-life issues.

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

#186
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you love Starcraft just a quick reminder that the Korean Brood War scene is still going strong, and is now getting bigger. BW is a near perfect game and it's clear with how they handled SC2 "Blizzard" is not going to make anything close to BW ever again. I would highly recommend checking it out if you love Starcraft. For starters, Artosis casts a pro-level ladder game every day on this channel: https://www.youtube…

You're bringing back memories of Jaedong :-))

He's still playing! He is often in the ASL.

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

#187
post #87

Last time the stock market was surging, everyone was hiring. This time it's different

I'm pretty old, and I've NEVER had issues finding a job. I've been unemployed for 6 months now. Thinking about getting out of software development TBH. It isn't that I'm a bad developer, I've almost always gotten good to great performance reviews, but nobody is hiring. The positions that do open up are swamped with tons of people. The culture also is pretty toxic, especially in the startup world, and with AI now ente…

Same, in 20+ years doing this, I've never seen it this bad.

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

#188
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Activision Blizzard reported 13,000 employees as of Dec 31st, 2022

And barely 9,200 as of Dec 31st, 2019 The overhiring during covid really went insane in a lot of places

40% increase isn't even that bad compared to some I've seen.

I saw that before the recent layoffs at Discord their employee headcount had grown 5x since 2020, and after the layoffs they're merely at 4x their size of 2020

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

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it all due to inflation and the interest rates? Shouldn't these companies be able to issue stock to get some cheap capital to continue growth/hiring? Or anyone know why this is happening?

> Shouldn't these companies be able to issue stock to get some cheap capital to continue growth/hiring? Yes, but then the stock price would go down, which obviously isn't allowed.

issuing stock and selling it into the market doesn't make the stock price go down. Raising money for this activity on a large scale is why the stock market exists.

The value of the existing company "before" remains the same, and the sale of the new shares brings cash into the company at the selling price, so those new cash assets exactly balance out the dilution of ownership.

If anything it might increase the value of the company if shareholders believe that the same "profit multiplier"/ROE will be applied to the new cash, for example if a profitable restaurant chain sells new shares to get the cash to open and operate new restaurants in new locations. Of course, changes to the share price are due to changing expectations so that will occur as information about the pending transaction is incorporated into the hive mind and not necessarily at the moment of share sales.

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

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shouldn't these companies be able to issue stock to get some cheap capital to continue growth/hiring? Yes, but then the stock price would go down, which obviously isn't allowed.

? Not allowed. It is done all the time. Companies can issue new stock. or? are you being sarcastic about c-suit not wanting 'stock price to go down'? which could be a consequence of issuing new stock?

[deleted]
Post reply on HN