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Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

gamespot.com

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Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#111

Post by alanfalcon »

mbenjaminsmith wrote: post #110
alanfalcon wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally worked with two of the people who were layed off today, and am friends of friends with others. This isn't a 85% unsurprising day by any means, it's a serious cut back of the support department (worldwide) because management built up too much capacity while the GMs built tools that allowed serious increases in productivity, the biggest of which was essentially automating the process of recovering hacked a…

Not to say people aren't upset. I'm sure they are. But what you're saying is people are surprised to be laid off when it's clear they were no longer necessary? If how things were done changed significantly (needing far fewer people) isn't that going to obviously lead to layoffs? Maybe I misunderstand what you're saying.

I was saying that these weren't people that were just convenient to let go in one batch. It isn't that they were fire-able material, as angrycoder suggests is often the case, in this case the people who I worked with were great team members, knowledgeable and passionate about working for Blizzard. Absolute assets. That there were too many people in the department isn't surprising, or that layoffs were used to correct the overstaffing. I just suggested that from what and who I know, the "Blizzard 600" wasn't the situation angrycoder described, except for some aspects like the timing.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#112

Post by digitalchaos »

ars wrote: post #68
primigenus wrote: post #45

This is most likely 550 community and customer support people and 50 internationalisation developers. Blizzard is doing really well and has multiple games coming down the pipe. WoW's fluctuating subscriber numbers reflect the natural state of a 7 year old game that is in a down period between expansions, so I'm not worried about that. Instead what I think is going on is that they've spent so much time growing their s…

Why do it in one shot like this? Why not lay people off incrementally?

A big reason is that it's much easier to do from a legal perspective. Letting go of low performing people in a layoff is way easier than going through all the hoops of giving them warnings, putting them on probation, etc.

Also, a slow trickle of firings is just horrible for everyone. You have no idea if you are next, etc. A big layoff followed by a company meeting of "hey, we did a layoff because of X. There will be no additional layoffs as long as we hit our current goals."

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#113

Post by Jare »

beloch wrote: post #102

"Blizzard went on to note that its development and publishing schedule has not been impacted by the staff cuts. " This is easy to say when your publishing schedule is, as it has always been, "When it's done".

Oh, but Blizzard does schedule, of course, it's just that following that schedule is often not their #1 priority. Look at this from back in 2010

http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/10/leaked-blizzard-roadmap-sho...

(Diablo 3 has already deviated from that, of course) However, even if the cuts are not going to cause schedule changes, that doesn't mean they do not reflect scope changes.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#114

Post by emp_ »

DanBC wrote: post #80
ChuckMcM wrote: post #25

I find these sorts of events fascinating. Blizzard does have quite the money machine with WoW. Even a paltry 10.2M subscribers, assuming the adjusted monthly income per subscriber is $10 that is $102M/month in revenue from that franchise. The interesting bit is that to make that count they really need a good operational plan with respect to their infrastructure. I got a peek at their infrastructure early on because t…

About 5 million of those people are in Asia, where they're paying less money. Also, in China for example, Blizzard licenced WOW to some other company (The9 ?). I'd be interested to know how much money Blizzard gets from WOW china. Here's a very old (2005) link with some interesting financials. ( http://www.gamingsteve.com/archives/2005/11/with_all_the_ta.... )

This is likely why he mentioned $10, the US monthly is $15

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#116

Post by trin_ »

TheCapn wrote: post #21
Goronmon wrote: post #17

The company's massively popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game has struggled in the past year, slipping to 10.2 million subscribers through the end of December. I'm not sure "struggled" is the word they were looking for there.

Without Googling for statistics wasn't WoW peaking around 13mill subscribers? A ~20% decline is seemingly quite a massive hit if you ask me and would definitely warrant a few layoffs.

they will come back eventually. the last expansion came out in late 2010 and the next is due this fall(not exactly sure). thats the way wow works. people get fed up afeter some time without enw content and then rush back when theres something new.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#117

Post by itsameta4 »

marshray wrote: post #81
gyardley wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just speculating -- but perhaps Blizzard prefers to get rid of their lower performers all at once in a 'layoff' instead of sacking them one-by-one. Many larger companies do this; I suspect it minimizes dismissal-related lawsuits.

Probably depends on the state, but wouldn't a 'layoff' mean the company would pay higher unemployment compensation premiums?

...which is still probably cheaper than a single wrongful termination suit. Calling it a layoff prevents that.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#118

Post by kapowaz »

alanfalcon wrote: post #106
angrycoder wrote: post #72

The key is the last line of the press release. 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. I worked at 2 BigCo's while they went through layoff periods. What people don't know unless they've worked at a BigCo is that a significant number of…

I personally worked with two of the people who were layed off today, and am friends of friends with others. This isn't a 85% unsurprising day by any means, it's a serious cut back of the support department (worldwide) because management built up too much capacity while the GMs built tools that allowed serious increases in productivity, the biggest of which was essentially automating the process of recovering hacked a…

Are you saying these people voluntarily built tools that effectively made themselves obsolete?

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#119

Post by bh42222 »

kapowaz wrote: post #118
alanfalcon wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally worked with two of the people who were layed off today, and am friends of friends with others. This isn't a 85% unsurprising day by any means, it's a serious cut back of the support department (worldwide) because management built up too much capacity while the GMs built tools that allowed serious increases in productivity, the biggest of which was essentially automating the process of recovering hacked a…

Are you saying these people voluntarily built tools that effectively made themselves obsolete?

Happens all the time. If you are either very good or a bit naive, or both.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#120

Post by marshray »

itsameta4 wrote: post #117
marshray wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably depends on the state, but wouldn't a 'layoff' mean the company would pay higher unemployment compensation premiums?

...which is still probably cheaper than a single wrongful termination suit. Calling it a layoff prevents that.

Former employees can still sue over the way the layoffs were conducted.
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