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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

#61

Post by ido »

jmsduran wrote: post #42

Damn, I hate hearing about layoffs. I work in a close-knit team of developers and testers, where each of one us is an important contributor to our company's goal, and it impacts our productivity tremendously when someone leaves. Maybe I'm naive, but I would happily give up any yearly bonuses and possibly even a slight pay deduction (as a single guy I don't have many expenses) in order to keep a fellow teammate from b…

    I would happily give up any yearly bonuses and 
    possibly even a slight pay deduction (as a single 
    guy I don't have many expenses) in order to keep 
    a fellow teammate from being laid off.
Assuming the company isn't really hurting for cash you lay off people that don't contribute more than what they cost.

You can either let them go or I guess cut their salaries, but cutting someone else's salary doesn't really solve the problem that you're paying someone more than what you're getting from them.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#62

Post by chaud »

chc wrote: post #19
RandallBrown wrote: post #7

Those 10% are related to game development, but that doesn't mean they're developers. I would guess that it's more likely to be slightly more "disposable" roles like testers. It still sucks though. It seemed like Blizzard was just printing money.

They're presumably winding down some parts of Diablo 3 development and maybe even Heart of the Swarm, so it could just be that they don't expect to be doing as much in the near future rather than simple cost-cutting.

They still have the upcoming Titan game and another unannounced game that they are hiring for.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#63

Post by withad »

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…

They've apparently recently automated a big chunk of their customer support [1], which (along with the decrease in WoW subscribers) would probably explain big cuts to the customer service department.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/2/29/2833313/blizzard-la...

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#64

Post by robryan »

Goronmon wrote: post #23
TheCapn wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, subscriptions may have declined quite a bit, but I think it's a bit silly to call the game "struggling" considering it's position in the market.

If you have a look at how player numbers have declined for any other mmo, their numbers are amazing. Can't forget that WoW come out in 2004, the life span of most games is measured in months.

The game doesn't hold people's interest indefinitely, even of it is a lot longer than most games and probably most people who would want to try the game already have. Also competition is way higher than it was in 2004.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#65

Post by barrybe »

vyrotek wrote: post #16

I was under the impression that this sort of churn happened at all game dev companies when projects were nearing completion. Typically they are roles like QA, writers, and designers that may move to other projects or not.

You are correct, but it's still fun to speculate wildly.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#66

Post by georgemcbay »

AdamTReineke wrote: post #24
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.

The peak subscriber count I could find was 13 million[1] in 2009. Dropping 3 million customers at $12-15/mo would be scary for any company. [1] http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EdwardHunter/20090924/3179/Wo...

"scary" depends on your perspective. The way I look at it, the fact that they still have ~10 million customers for WoW is damn near a miracle -- this is a game that came out in 2004!

Surely they know nothing lasts forever, which is why they are working on that other MMO. I have to believe they are smart enough there that this eventual dropoff was too expected to be "scary".

Also, it isn't like WoW is the only thing they have going on. Starcraft 2 was a big hit, and Diablo 3 likely will be too.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#67

Post by Shorel »

danvideo wrote: post #53
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't already, give Torchlight a try - Mac/PC/XBLA and only $15. http://store.steampowered.com/app/41500/

Looks interesting. On first glance it does appear similar to Trine though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trine_(video_game) Which I wasn't a big fan of... anyone know if that's the case?

Torchlight is done by ex-Blizzards as well.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#68

Post by ars »

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?

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#69

Post by jamesgeck0 »

zorked wrote: post #49
latortuga wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so sure. First off, they list 10.2M as the current subscriber base, taken times a conservative estimate of $13/mo (the every 3 months plan, IIRC) and that's over one and a half billion dollars a year. Second, they are rumored have a new MMO in the pipeline - suppose everyone that ever tried WoW returns to dip into that bucket. I think that, on the contrary, the era of Blizzard printing money is still go…

I don't know if $13 is conservative. $9/mo is the most expensive plan available to me. Presumably in places like China people pay by the hour and therefore way less than that.

Where do you live?

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#70

Post by malero »

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…

You forgot to include these services: character name changes, character race changes, character transfers, guild transfers, vanity pets and mounts. I'm not proud to say that I have spent money on all of these except the guild transfer service.
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