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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

#91

Post by efsavage »

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?

"For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer."

http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince08.htm

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#92

Post by ChuckMcM »

malero wrote: post #70
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.

That is true, although as mentioned above the Chinese get their own deal. And Blizzard did get into the 'real gold for virtual goods market' which is quite large. Teasing apart the revenue per subscriber from their reports, talks, and sometimes off hand remarks is very challenging. There is the 'max' rate of $15/month, there are the 'free til level 20' players, there are the 'Yearly Pass' types, and of course there are the pay per hour guys in China and elsewhere in southeast Asia.

So my guesstimate at $10 per was a 'blended' rate. Pessimists seem to put it closer to $7, not sure why though.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#93

Post by talmand »

weaksauce wrote: post #75
ars wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Morale wise it's probably better to do it in one large chunk instead of smaller servings where people are wondering if they are going to get cut in the next round.

But how would you know the one large chunk will be the only one? Layoffs are bad for morale regardless of how it is handled. I've been through both sides of a layoff and it wasn't fun either way.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#94

Post by runevault »

marshray wrote: post #84
runevault wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there is a subset of people who played WoW and have since sworn off MMOs entirely (I am one such and I have a coworker who has also done so). I somehow doubt this is THAT rare an occurrence.

I think I've met people who've committed to do that, but for every one of them I've probably met many more who just got bored with it or wandered off to another game.

Sure not claiming it's a majority, but I could imagine it being 5-10%, which is still enough people to invalidate the original argument of "they'll get everyone who tried WoW" back.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#95

Post by gwern »

talmand wrote: post #93
weaksauce wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Morale wise it's probably better to do it in one large chunk instead of smaller servings where people are wondering if they are going to get cut in the next round.

But how would you know the one large chunk will be the only one? Layoffs are bad for morale regardless of how it is handled. I've been through both sides of a layoff and it wasn't fun either way.

> But how would you know the one large chunk will be the only one?

You can at a minimum guess from the size. Take for example this cut - roughly cutting 600 from 6-7000 means cutting 10%. Unless Blizzard is seriously inefficient, another such cut of 10+% would start doing major damage to operations. Hence, you know there probably won't be such a cut.

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#96

Post by angrytapir »

parfe wrote: post #88
danvideo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a highly overrated Diablo 1 clone. The game has barely any story. The side quest system literally repeats "Kill the monster on level 5" "Kill the monster on level 10" "Kill the monster on level 15" etc. The game has some okay graphics and the loot system is decent. If you enjoy looting corpses for a slightly upgraded item over and over in a noxiously repetitive manner then I say go for it. Five people i…

I enjoyed it a lot. Sure it's not a AAA title - but it's good, mindless fun. Especially given its extremely appealing price point. (And, yes, I haven't finished it.)

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#98

Post by packetslave »

drostie wrote: post #50

I know it's naive, but it wasn't until I read this article that I started to think of the WoW programmers as human beings, as opposed to some universal geometric constant about the WoW universe. I would like to see a documentary filmed inside of the WoW studio, if it's at all possible. Like, it could be really Serious Business, which would be hilarious, or it could be a more relaxed-artists type of story, which could…

FWIW, I've seen one of Blizzard's hosting cages. It's more like "held together with hundred dollar bills and big fat DC power cables"

Re: Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers

#100

Post by digitalchaos »

zach wrote: post #86
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…

This is the correct read on this news. Customer service is emerging from a major generational change at Blizzard. Understand that Blizzard went very quickly from a company of mostly developers to a company whose headcount was overwhelmingly focused on customer support. They had (before these layoffs) about 3,000 customer service employees worldwide. They hired a huge, huge amount of people, put together systems and t…

It is always funny reading the hysterics of public perception when you are on the inside, isn't it? You are spot on though. These types of layoffs are the norm in gaming. I can't think of a single game shop that doesn't do semi frequent operational cuts (aka "trimming the fat") for the last 10-15 years. I don't know why this is always a shock to the community.
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