lets be real we all knew it would happen microsoft is known for this just no one pays attention :D once the buyout was official i figured this was going to happen sooner or later. i mean they gutted mojang and bethesda...... They dont care about making good games just cheap games for profit.... They are a monopoly they are a cancer to the industry who buys out competiton instead of inovating there games to beat the competition. They didnt want to fight CoD this is why they wanted activision.... i mean ffs most lawfirms globally have microsoft labled as such a monopoly company..... They have had lawsuits they lost with there os and forcing ppl to use onnnly there products among many other things.... microsoft is worse than EA just no one pays fucking attention to microsoft.... and its this not paying attention to the things that actually matter in the industry that over time has allowed this shit to happen because players dont speak with there wallets the way they should.
I do feel for the devs, but this has been a long time coming. Overwatch and Diablo have huge teams producing astonishingly little output. More importantly, their monetization methods are not catching on. Wow is their only thriving ip, and it’s one of the smallest teams. Very few people work on classic and it’s one of blizzards flagships currently.
@@dreadreaper7123Are you one of those people who think that if you're not playing absolutely optimally, you can't have fun? Plus, there's more to games than sweatlord hardcore multiplayer.
Palworld was made by 8 people. EIght. So why do we need thousands of employees for these companies? Retail wow looks like a ghost town, Wotlk is pure raid logging but the numbers have dropped. SOD is unsurprisingly keeping the brand afloat somehow. Then you have Diablo 4 which was an absolute trainwreck and Path of Exile 2 is going to sweep that game without trying. The alternatives just look better and thats Blizzards fault. All they had to do was make good games. Overwatch is a flop, firing that team was a no brainer. WoW has a lot of following still they just need to actually try. Classic+ new zones, new raids, go the OSRS route with WoW. And why are they just letting Starcraft IP go to waste? An FPS game/ A RTS/ Hack and slash. SOMETHING. There is a lot to work with here. At the end of the day Blizzard needs to stop putting out garbage and make games that people want to play, to have fun. It's not a hard concept. To many companies are making games that are unfun boring movie games and they wonder why they aren't selling. Palworld should be a wake up call to this industry.
Nah. It just is hardcore into exploiting workers. But sadly these ppl are the only ones that can make games, so while there is demand they will just oppen up a new studio rehire everyone almost all of them whit worse of and then repeat that cycle.
@@scheikundeiscool4086 You are half right. While these predatory corporations are evil, their exploitation example you gave is very one-dimensional. I'm glad we can agree on... soemthing. But there is a whole lotta you didn't mention. Things that these workers supported and are now reaping what theyve sewn.
Been at a job that did rolling layoffs... for several hours. We got the news at 16:00 in a 5 min short announcement meeting. Then had to wait until 23:00 when we were told all the emails would have been sent out. No all clear email was ever sent out. It is a bit scary how management handles layoffs whenever they have people around the globe.
The layoff procedures in some countries never cease to baffle me and remind me that my homeland is paradise compared to the dark bleak landscape of murica f.e.
Any time your company is bought out you can count on IT, HR, redundant management, accounting and any overlap to be let go.Once most of that is done, they do evaluations on front line workers and if they have low quality workers on one side or the other, they are let go and keep higher performing people from both sides. Having gone through 3 buyouts, this is what has happened every time.
New leadership has to purge all the old leadership. There will be division otherwise. My company had all the senior leads fired when we got purchased. The new management brought in their people from the last company they ran into the ground.
they laid off their own employee, and I mean from their non acquired companies/studios, from studios they didn't buy. So your defense for Microsoft is invalid.
@@Therizinosaurus I'm not defending MS, this is how nearly every buyout goes. This isn't new, this isn't different, this pretty normal for acquisitions.
I do question why anyone would want to work in the AAA gaming space because you just don't know if your job is ever safe, that level of constant stress and worry would make me go insane.
It's the same in media, telecommunications, and healthcare. The C-Suite believes that continuously shaking the jar of bees is the best way to produce innovation and profit. It's boilerplate management-by-book-of-the-month-club strategy.
I'm not in game development, but I am in IT. After college, I decided to work for the Federal government even though the pay is quite a bit lower. I'd rather have job security than to constantly worry that a mass layoff may hit me. 11 years in and the only people I've ever seen fired, is because they were pieces of sh*t. And actually, the Fed is currently working on implementing competitive wages (in IT) so they stop losing people to the private sector.
Well, if you are good at your job, you probably have nothing to worry about, since they are firing the bloated staff. Or, if you are a diversity hire, you probably thought your job was ultimately safe because, you know, "modern times."
I was expecting some job cuts due to redundant jobs Microsoft already has and feel they don't need for their new studios. I also think Bobby Kotick left a bit of a mess and was probably just sitting on his butt doing very little once the sale was completed.
@@isturbo1984 Its because corps always do layoffs after purchasing new companies. Basically, duplicate employees for the same jobs, post acquisition, and good opportunity to get rid of the "bad" employees in general. If you are ever in a company that gets bought out by another company, expect layoffs at some point.
@@CosmicCleric no, that isnt the reason lol. part of it, but not the most predominant reason. layoffs have been having EVERYWHERE in tech. journalists just had a 20k heads fired just now, which coincides with this story if you are paying attention. industry firings have been going all through 2023 and they continue.
A couple of months ago, i lost my full stack software engineering position at a health tech company. I got the email early in the morning as well. it sucked.
The tech industry is full of lazy entitled gen z workers who do the bare minimum to earn their loaded pay checks and spend more time getting coffee and doing therapy …it’s a long time coming
These layoffs are not just in entertainment. Media/press just had massive layoffs. Friends in IT had massive layoffs and my compay in vehicle maintaince had layoffs before the end of Q4. All industries are effected and these are tell tail signs of the direction of the global economy.
@TheMahayanistBecause large, large swathes of potential consumption are sitting in ~756 US billionaires’ numerous bank havens stashed around the world. Capitalism fails when there’s no consumer class. That class, in turn, becomes the warring class. Said billionaires will be sitting on a mountain of shit and death when all is said and done unless government prerogatives change drastically. The ghost of Reagan is still cackling at the lot of us while the reverberations continue to crack the foundations. Turns out Unions and corporate government oversight is/was important. That heyday the older generations opine so much about was built on steep, fair tax for the wealthiest, corporate regulation and worker representation/rights.
@@exmaarmacait’ll be great for a few decades until your market is no longer deemed profitable and they ship said jobs off to Central America and South Asia. The problem as a whole is systemic. Greed kills.
Last year it was the tech industry that was hit the hardest. Many of the cuts were panic cuts by companies realizing theyd massively overspent and were scrambling to balance out their bottom line due to massive economic uncertainty. I was laid off in October. Its been rough. This year it looks like the entertainment industry is cutting extra or side projects. I don't expect this year to be nearly as bad as last but it could change. Most of these cuts feel more planned and less panic. In other words, these are born from companies taking time to evaluate changes made last year instead of panicked managers covering their butts.
Completely saw that and feel it. Although I left my last job (not laid off), I am still looking for work in the IT industry and have a decade and some change of experience. It's wild right now.
@@protoman111 Many of the people i worked with are also still looking. The feeling I got from most of the hr leads and staffing teams i have spoken to was that nobody was going to do rehiring last year. Late january and febuary is really the first months where theyre being given budgets to start rehiring again and its going to be much smaller teams working for lower rates.
I heard this first hand last year from someone working in IT. Unfortunatley IT Projects are axed first in manufacturing for example when money is drying up. But it will affect everyone if people lose their jobs. Its like a downward spiral, hopefully it turns around this year.@@protoman111
Anyone that makes over 50-70k a year to sit at a computer and socialize deserves some uncertainty people make less risking their life and limbs to protect people or building our infrastructure and lets not think that working from home is actually more productive for "gamers" i think everyone got a lil too comfy
I have friends who work there (or rather used to, since earlier today). I can confirm they didn't just fire marketing, HR and PR staff. They fired designers, artists and programmers. EDIT: Now that I think about it, all these friends have one thing in common: They worked either remotely or hybrid.
Yeah that's what I'm seeing from some friends in the industry (I'm over in TV/Feature animation but have old colleagues and friends over in gaming). Deep cuts to creative focused teams seems to be a common through thread in entertainment layoffs over the past year.
On the bright side, defending the World Soul Saga is going to be much easier. Repeat after me, "Well they had a great plan for the saga, but then the cuts came at the absolute worst time and the vision had to be adjusted for the reality." I for one am looking forward to this new flavor of Cope-a-cola.
Have you seen what a shit show blizzard was this past decade? This move was needed and wanted by everyone. How the hell would a company improve if the elements keeping it from being improved aren't even removed?
It's very hard to stay motivated working in game development right now and I'm not even at a company that has done large scale layoffs. So many friends leaving the industry for more stable jobs and that sucks to see.
Do not worry. These things comes in waves. Right now the wave is going down, but at a point it will go up again. I have been around in game dev a long time, so far so goo. I think you will be fine too :)
We can only hope for them to find new jobs soon and hope that Microsoft sorts out Activision-Blizzards mess for the better future, atleast what will be left of it.
The game companies were irresponsible and the staff have yo pay the price. Bloated teams in some areas and skeleton crews elsewhere, poor management, crunch, and unrealistic expectations.
Yet, for some reason, the players (customers) kept forking over money and giving them their time for dogwater products, so of course the money hungry higher ups kept pushing the goal post and continued to replace qualified people with people that could barely pass their college courses, probably. Cheap, poor-quality labor, because players kept throwing money at that and all the higher ups saw was green. Basically, the customers that have no self-control or standards are also to blame. They were and continue to be the incentive to keep crap business practices like what Activision did to Blizzard going.
Corporations I have worked for would fire people before the deal even went through. Lost my favorite job that way, close to 1,000 people were fired over the course of 3 weeks prior to the deal being finalized.
I was part of the Ascendant Studios layoffs five months ago. I landed a new position at WotC after about two months, but some of my former coworkers are still looking for work five months later. Many of these people are senior artists. The industry is in a rough place right now.
Feelings/belief based hiring is out. If you were a virtue signaling mediocre diversity hire/low tier "artist", you're probably out in favor of skill (or AI). Or I'm just totally wrong.
So was I. I almost took an offer at ActiBlizzard for a position on their Survival Game team but decided I didn't want to move back to California + I wanted work on some of my ideas for a while😅
@@PrimyFritzellz The main problem is that the industry is saturated with candidates after tens of thousands of devs were let go in such a short span of time across companies and titles. There are obviously some less-talented folks in the batch, but when a company lays off half their staff or more, it's not a talent issue. Especially for artists. The industry is famous for producing amazing looking games that under-perform or bomb. Good art in a game can multiply its success, but it doesn't dictate it.
@@PrimyFritzellzThat's short sighted, it's way easier for techies to get new jobs than artists, that has literally been the case for centuries. Even Van Gogh lived off his brother's money, so it's not just a 'lack of talent' and diversity-hire issue.
As sad as it is for those undeserving of being laid off, this was to be expected for several reasons. As many already said, mergers will often come with layoffs, second all those studios were massively bloated to begin with and lastly the financial revenue of latest publications probably wasnt as satisfactory as was expected due to all those releases being of mid quality at best and abysmal at worst. So there had to be some repercussions in any way or the other. Add the criticism directed at Microsoft for being too lax with their hands off approach when dealing with the likes of ABK and Bethesda/Zenimax which they had to adress in some way and this whole decision becomes a lot more understandable.
At least they didn't get laid off before Christmas. That's when corporate layoffs usually happen. For Microsoft, it sometimes happened in late spring because of their fiscal year.
This has been the situation since being affected by the layoffs last year. Either you don't know where is a good, healthy place to apply is, or you're competing with 100s colleagues in the industry that have just as many (or more) years experience as you do. So it beyond challenging to come out of these layoffs once you get caught up in them and need to find ways just to stand out even get an interview.
These are corporate layoff which is common practice when a company purchase another one. Once you identify the number of duplicated jobs you can start cutting corners and those that align more with your company will remaing those that not will be gone.
This was inevitable. The writing was on the wall literally years ago. Huge, bloated teams that make nothing of high quality equals redundancy. Redundancy results in layoffs. If the games had actually been good and engaging, there probably would still be layoffs, but not nearly as extensive.
Just look at WoW, they put out 1 new dungeon per expansion at this point, when there should be like 3-4 per major patch. Actual small indie devs put out more content in their games. There's so much lazy scum at Blizzard.
Completely true. I stand behind "Better game, more people play, more word of mouth = ez money". But no, they had to put of boring, bland, family friendly storylines in World of WARcraft, like a single raid every 6 months and the same bland WQ-focused zones for 6+ years. OW2.... just lol. Diablo IV trainwreck, abysmal, pile of garbage. Apparently we don't talk about Starcraft, it's taboo at Blizzard. Bethesda makes a game over a damn decade that even modders won't touch (the MP mod devs just gave up lol). Idk what Zenimax is doing which means they're mediocre at best (no word of mouth, no hype). So obviously if you make shit as a dev you get to go live in a dumpster at some point, how is this even shocking to anyone???
yep yep. anyone who knows how these things go, and how layoffs are often done early in each calendar year, would know that this was to be somewhat expected
@@BellularNews Its not always redundant positions. Its positions that are no longer going to be needed. You very rarely buy a company for all of its assets. You sell stuff off or remove bloat. Similar to the announcement of the survival game being cut. I've done probably 50 M&As and Ds over 15 years and 8% really isn't that shocking. Its often much higher.
Part of why Microsoft buys out companies is to get rid of competing products in order to integrate what customers they can, but also to remove the competing product if that doesn't work. They don't necessarily need wow players playing warcraft, they need them on any microsoft game product.
@@kharmachaos667they dont have to do that. They can just incorporate WoW as part of Gamepass, making you pay for Gamepass to play WoW. Doing that makes WoW no longer a competitor’s product but something acquired that makes you money without having to compete So many people touted this acquisition as good for the industry and gamers. But really it is always bn about making MS better off without actually having to put efforts towards creatively competing
So... Anyone else still wanna hail Phil Spencer as the savior of the gaming industry? So many praise this guy... Knew about Redfall... still released it. Now this...
I don't understand why CEO's and all higher up's don't take a pay cut before layoffs even happen? Seems to me that it's their problem and not an issue with the lower rank and file. If they want more "growth" they president and all those high end folks need to take a paycut.
Did you watch the vid? He covers the nature of these cuts, it's inevitable when gobbling up several businesses with redundant staff. No amount of executive pay cuts will make having three times the marketing staff you need make sense.
Then you are naive cause nobody is interested in taking a pay cut. Second, the company does NOT WANT to keep overlap and redundancies. They want to lay people off they don't want.
between AI replacing a lot of jobs and the cuts because there was a bubble in the entertainment industry when we were on the pandemic... yeah it was expected.
I don't think it's really AI replacing jobs or the bubble in this case. More that there are several jobs that were redundant because Microsoft already has similar jobs and just gave the work to those people and got rid of the person in the redundant job. I also wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft decided to slim some teams down that are very bloated/unproductive and not making enough money for their cost, i.e. Overwatch and Diablo.
Entire art departments were laid off in mobile iunno what you guys are talking about. Maybe just in the east? It's absolutely happening especially after Adobe and Nvidia announcements.
it has been happening in all tech/software related companies with junior lvl jobs, because AI can replace a lot of work put on general textures and microsoft owns copilot something that generates junior lvl code using everything they got from github.
@@seekittycat To be honest, I expect that from the mobile industry. Their entire goal is to make all the money without any of the effort already, its just even less effort now.
I go to a game dev school, Digipen, and all my profs were talking about the layoffs and saying that this is because triple A has lost its innovation and it costs to much to make game the size of games these studios want to/have to make. Hopefully we see a renaissance of double A studios we need more in between indie and massive experiences
Microsoft wants everyone to be on gamepass but they don't want to make anymore games for gamepass... this is going to be a huge problem in 5+ years when they have no more developers to make any new games.
Yep, considering the size of WoW the amount of content they put out is pathetic and genuinely embarrassing. People clearly need firing so they can be replaced with people who actually do something.
This is so odd for me to look at an industry that is so volatile,because from my perspective of someone working in private security most of my life,this is not an issue myself or anyone i know faced,unless ofc we do something to get fired
A lot of these companies are way to bloated and have too much bureaucracy. It stifles creativity. It isn't a coincidence games have become soulless clones as more money and corporate positions are infused in the industry.
@@WartimeConsigliere Yeah I think for too long the triple A circle have been telling themselves and their investors that "souls" have no value... and I am happy to see games like BG3 really prove them wrong!
Reading Twitter for hours and noticed the trends for depts. Here's what it looks like: -Whole Survival Game team -A huge chunk of T4 (Overwatch), some people saying about 1/3. -Quite a few PR/Comms/Social Media. -A shocking amount of animators and artists from all teams, particularly Overwatch and Diablo. -Several quest designer/lore team for WoW. All in all, it seems like WoW and Diablo were mostly untouched, Hearthstone lost a couple and Overwatch got butchered. I think OW2 is one of the most despicable events in gaming history, but I will be furious if the directors who made all these horrible decisions get to walk into work tomorrow while the devs just doing their jobs don't.
But hey it's good for the growth of the company right? it isn't like they had another 300 million dollars lying around that they gave to a single person to leave the company.
The trickle down effect from this is going to be huge. 10 years from now they’re going to have a hiring crisis where there’s a massive brain drain because the people that would have been really good in game development and are super intelligent were wise enough to pick a different industry
It’s crazy cause they could just lower ceo pay rates instead of costing thousands of regular people their jobs these people don’t need to be laid off the people up top just don’t wanna share the money
CEO salaries are usually lowish... 200 - 400k or so. They make $500 million a year due to bonuses. The bonuses are paid in stock, not cash. The company prints new stock, and hands it over as a bonus. The money comes from stockholders through inflation, not from revenue. The stock holders are "tipping" the execs. "Well, why not print stock and hand the money to workers in the same way?" This was tried. Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motors, did just that. The stockholders sued him immediately. And won. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that workers couldn't get stock bonuses because "reasons". Lots of green, papery reasons left in suitcases under the bench. Since then, no other CEO has tried. Hey, more money for them, right?
Every major corporation especially the gaming ones has too many people at the top doing too little and making too much money, and or they're just outright making bad decisions, cut the fat, great news.
The constant layoffs in big tech companies, gaming or otherwise, have flooded the market with overqualified employees at such a rate that as someone just looking for ANY work it's nearly impossible. After all, why would any company in their right mind hire someone with a few scattered years of IT support experience when they have their pick of sys-admins, team leads, etc. who are desperate enough for ANY job that they'll take whatever they can get?
Before what I state next lemme say this, the people who are in the trenches making the game are the victims here this shouldn’t have impacted them. What did you expect to happen? I mean all I have to say is look at Diablo 4 to explain the absolutely HORRIBLE decisions in the game’s development. Same goes for the other AAA game companies. The companies absolutely deserve this but it should have been the board/CEOs/leaders that get the axe because they are the ones that have been making the players suffer… then they are surprised that they are failing. I’m happy this is happening because ultimately this is a wake up call to those idiots at the top. The players have the money and just because we are fans of your franchise does not mean that we are obligated to buy the trash you have produced. We are not stupid and this will continue to happen until we see better products. As a consumer I shouldn’t need to care about the development decisions but because of the last 8 years of increasing disappointing products with crapy excuses we, the players, are basically required to know what goes on behind the scenes… The only model that works is developers to players. Get rid of the corporate cucks and their dumb decisions and you will see the devs passion and the players will GLADLY pay ANY price for a game.
Getting Laid off sucks, but in most cases it is not about individual employees job performance or worth, but is simple economics, with some politics stirred in ...
The entire tech industry is shit right now. I'd hate to be a CS student close to graduating. People don't really pay attention to tech workers after a layoff, because it used to be you could quickly land a new gig. It's really bad right. Ever since the SVB collapse it's been layoffs like crazy. Google is making tons of money but still laying people off, but even more worryingly they don't seem to have anything in the works.
I was with Blizzard Customer support for 15 years, however they just gutted pretty much all of customer support in the NA region as idk about EU region however there a few more meetings for this, so its safe to say there are more within CS. The only thing you will get now will be Teleperformance people that are temp in and out people who don't even play Blizzard games. All Managers, specialist, standard game masters, group managers, training department, and even more. No one know or saw this was coming as I had a meeting with my supervisor just yesterday, and even new things we are looking forward to in another meeting with a few departments.
However they just gutted pretty much all of customer support in the NA region as idk about EU region Oh please, its been this way for eight years. The CMs have been useless since 2018
@@Sonnabend00 they can’t just layoff the EU region as there are laws to protect them vs here they can just do it out of the blue. I think they have to do some 30 day investigation and then give some official notice about the layoff coming.
My condolences to every one involved and of course their families... What a rough day or even start of the year for gaming and the people actually doing the work...
My poor daughter - a3-D animator -called me to let me know she was just laid off!!! She’s in Irvine ,just driving home from Blizzard… 2 months severance and was told if a job at blizzard opens that she can apply… she just needs to digest this for a day or 2 . Very tearful day she did not think she was going to get laid off and was comforting other people , then she got the message . So many people crying 😭
My daughter, as well, but in Austin. Totally blindsided everyone, and she's been with the company for over 16 yrs. She's so upset, she can't even talk about it.
it's just the beginning, and not in gaming industry only. The shadow on the horizon that we see now is not some far away storm that will pass us by - this is 200m height tsunami going 300km/h right on us - and only getting more powerfull with every meter.
It's absolutely ridiculous that these companies are literally making record profits, record bonuses and then they determine their 'bottom line' can be cut to make more profit and it's at the expense of the workers...
We have been living in late stage capitalism for many years now, people are expendable. Besides, these 4th yachts and 5th beach houses won't pay for themselves.
Get rid of all of management over there and hire people that actually love these ip's and wants to see them thrive and not be motivated purely by greed.
Talking about this being 2024, business-wise, this is still 4th quarter 2023, so my guess is they're looking to clear some salary expenses going into fiscal 2024.
70B buyout leads to job cuts shocker, while it's shit it's not surprising, Ray Charles saw them coming, and he's blind... and dead. MS didn't pay 70B to make things better.
MS paid 70B to make more money. They're a business, that's what businesses tend to do. Having excess employees makes them less money than having just enough employees. Same for MS as for any other corporation, really. Not very nice but what corporation is?
no matter what sector of it you are in, the entertainment industry is very much prone to effects of the economy. If you are in any sector within that industry, you better have a skill you can fall back on for if you get laid off, preferably a skill that is more recession-proof
Mergers always have lay offs. It would be weird if they didn't, and really this was way less than anticipated. I suspect there will be more to come after things settle down. No reason to really worry.
I was expecting this, because I was expecting Microsoft to eliminate redundant jobs and I think Bobby Kotick left a mess for them to deal with. Some teams, like the Overwatch and Diablo teams are massive and produce very little content for their size so I can see Microsoft wanting to cut them down since they aren't making enough money to warrant the cost.
@@Pikilloification In the big picture however those teams have yielded little to nothing for results. OW2 didn't release their promised PvE content until many years AFTER the game was launched, there has been little to no story development, and there hasn't been any creative push to expand the game beyond the new map/game mode they released at launch, those kinds of results do not warrant a massive team with redundant roles filled to the brim with people who aren't producing nearly the amount of content that should be coming out to standards for a team that large. Secondly, Diablo 4 has really been in the ditch since the first season pass got released, causing it to lose massive amounts of the playerbase within the month of the season pass being released. Aside from cosmetics and more season passes there really hasn't been a bold move to push for more complex story or drive in the game which has lead to a content drought for them. This too doesn't warrant having a really large team for little to no results beyond the bare minimum. Thirdly there is World of Warcraft, the thing Blizzard is most known for aside from Starcraft 1 and 2, this game has been struggling terribly since arguably the Legion expansion where there were insane time gates on content, insane reputation grinds, a lack of an alt-friendly system for a game where players easily have 5-15 alts on their account, and overall it hit rockbottom in Shadowlands that really had a butchered story beyond all belief with any lack of direction and poorly written villains. Shadowlands nearly KILLED World of Warcraft because of how much it sucked and they had a larger team back then to work on it only to yield half baked content systems, poorly designed reputation systems, abandoned content that had massive potential for more in future expansions (Thorgasht), and an art team that never truly got their work properly represented in the game let alone the Devs completely ignoring and insulting the complaints of their players. Perhaps Microsoft weeded out the really bad employees holding back the company, making room for new talent, even going as far as to give these teams a reality check and a wake up call to really bring them back in for what they were hired to do in the first place. Make games people love, not these system congested PC friendly social justice science experiments gone wrong, but instead to make games with meaningful stories and characters with content overall people will thrive on.
At some point I thought Bobby Kotick was the one causing problems for Blizzard. Then it occurred to me that a part of the problem might be inherent to Blizzard. The way they interact with their player base, the patches they give to the games, dictating how their every game "should" be played, horrible lore writing in WoW... Now I'm glad they had a massive layoff. Might prove beneficial for them moving forward.
Getting laid off sucks. At this point though, if youre still working for these bloated POS gaming corporations and you dont have a plan for when they inevitably lay you off then youre doing it wrong. No one should work for these people, and we'll continue to see this behavior until everyone learns and companies like Blizzard cant find people willing to work for them. That might be never, regardless ill stay safe by never trusting these assholes.
I've worked in retail for about 30 years now. In my experience, They have never been a "Merger" or anything of the sort. It's always been one company taking over from the other one and just keeping the name for PR's sake. When Microsoft bought Blizzard/Activision out. I knew that this would happen. However, I did not see this coming this quickly. It should be a few years once everything gets settled in. Looks like Microsoft has already taken over and is not taking any prisoners. One thing to keep in mind is that it puts leadership all in one location. Do you think this is good or bad? Well, Grab your popcorn. We are in for a great ride!
many tech and news companies that grew to big over the last 5+ years or have redundancies are laying off people recently. but with how quickly AI and other automation is developing some of the people cut will likely get replaced by a computer.
All these layoffs weren't hard to see coming. Just look at all the junk that has been coming out of the gaming industry. Almost every studio has been releasing shit or unfinished shit, it's not sustainable.
This is so old and trite. Who cares? We all know. The tech industry is having layoffs everywhere. Any mention of the reasons why? Diversity hiring, a bloated industry, the economy (and reasons why the economy is bad)? Or are we just blaming anything that isn't those things still? This video is a waste of time, the next video winging will be too.
The governments and Central Banks should've allowed the "Great Recession" back in 2007/2008 to run its course. They've now made the situation far, far worse now and trying to patch it with duct tape.
The triple A video game industry is the one that annually generates billions of $ in video game profits worldwide, and the way this industry compensates its workers and artists in the medium, who are responsible for creating these video games is .... by underpaying them and firing them without warning ... is it just me or does this look like a burning train heading into an abyss? Meh nonsense! let's pay a CEO the salary of almost 500 workers, because, they do the magic to make video games work right guys?
TBH the purge hasn't gone nearly far enough. The whole AAA industry is bloated and suffering from a diseased work culture and mismanagement. In these big AAA projects its taking way more people to do less work half as fast because so many are just wageys avoiding being in a position to be accountable for success or failure. There is no room for creativity, vision, or passion.
I was actually approached by Blizzard to interview for the unannounced Survival game project. I interviewed for the Overwatch 2 Systems Engineer position instead. Good thing I didn't go for the other project. Sad to see people let go and another failed project.
Had to leave an obligatory "Blizzard bad" response. But always want to say thank you guys for covering everything as well as you do. Your depth and care for the coverage is obviously, and meaningful. It really sucks that it has gone this way over the last 10 years after the way the first 10 years charted. The community/consumer relationship was THE thing separating Blizzard from all the other corporations. Once they spit on that relationship, the divorce was inevitable.
Thank GOD Baldurs Gate 3 and Elden Ring were finished before the gaming bubble collapsed. These layoffs are unsustainable for the gaming industry as a whole. It might be a decade before we see some truly amazing games again.. expect AI generated crap like FINALS for the next few years from these hacks.
@@tarnishedhunter222 There will be a rare gem, like for instance like in my first post, both FromSoft and Larian both have integrity and haven't succumbed to the filth and the waste in the industry and still value their product and the experience. And there's maybe a handful others I'm forgetting.. but yah, exactly, AAA is dead and indie is king now. The King is dead; Long Live the King.
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lets be real we all knew it would happen microsoft is known for this just no one pays attention :D once the buyout was official i figured this was going to happen sooner or later. i mean they gutted mojang and bethesda...... They dont care about making good games just cheap games for profit.... They are a monopoly they are a cancer to the industry who buys out competiton instead of inovating there games to beat the competition. They didnt want to fight CoD this is why they wanted activision....
i mean ffs most lawfirms globally have microsoft labled as such a monopoly company..... They have had lawsuits they lost with there os and forcing ppl to use onnnly there products among many other things.... microsoft is worse than EA just no one pays fucking attention to microsoft.... and its this not paying attention to the things that actually matter in the industry that over time has allowed this shit to happen because players dont speak with there wallets the way they should.
Are they that massive… Daiblo 4 has 9000 devs alone. And it was shit and got good and returned to shit. So 1900 people across 3 companies isn’t a lot
I do feel for the devs, but this has been a long time coming. Overwatch and Diablo have huge teams producing astonishingly little output. More importantly, their monetization methods are not catching on. Wow is their only thriving ip, and it’s one of the smallest teams. Very few people work on classic and it’s one of blizzards flagships currently.
I want another fucking StarCraft game.
@USS_Sentinel why you can click rly fast and lose at 8 minute mark in sc2 no need for 3 iteration of he who clicks the fastest shall win
@@USS_Sentinel All of those people quit. Even if they wanted to make a new SC I doubt they would even know how.
@@dreadreaper7123Are you one of those people who think that if you're not playing absolutely optimally, you can't have fun? Plus, there's more to games than sweatlord hardcore multiplayer.
Palworld was made by 8 people. EIght. So why do we need thousands of employees for these companies? Retail wow looks like a ghost town, Wotlk is pure raid logging but the numbers have dropped. SOD is unsurprisingly keeping the brand afloat somehow. Then you have Diablo 4 which was an absolute trainwreck and Path of Exile 2 is going to sweep that game without trying. The alternatives just look better and thats Blizzards fault. All they had to do was make good games. Overwatch is a flop, firing that team was a no brainer. WoW has a lot of following still they just need to actually try. Classic+ new zones, new raids, go the OSRS route with WoW. And why are they just letting Starcraft IP go to waste? An FPS game/ A RTS/ Hack and slash. SOMETHING. There is a lot to work with here. At the end of the day Blizzard needs to stop putting out garbage and make games that people want to play, to have fun. It's not a hard concept. To many companies are making games that are unfun boring movie games and they wonder why they aren't selling. Palworld should be a wake up call to this industry.
Tripple A gaming - the industry that keeps eating itself until it stops existing.
Nah. It just is hardcore into exploiting workers. But sadly these ppl are the only ones that can make games, so while there is demand they will just oppen up a new studio rehire everyone almost all of them whit worse of and then repeat that cycle.
@@scheikundeiscool4086 You are half right. While these predatory corporations are evil, their exploitation example you gave is very one-dimensional. I'm glad we can agree on... soemthing. But there is a whole lotta you didn't mention. Things that these workers supported and are now reaping what theyve sewn.
I think we are getting to the point where it would probably be better if it didnt
Outside of remakes i dont buy any AAA games any more.
@@ArkonBlade Wait till someone at Naughty Dog gets the bright idea to skip the original release and go straight to the remaster :p
That’s just how capitalism works.
Optimize profits over anything else
Been at a job that did rolling layoffs... for several hours. We got the news at 16:00 in a 5 min short announcement meeting. Then had to wait until 23:00 when we were told all the emails would have been sent out. No all clear email was ever sent out. It is a bit scary how management handles layoffs whenever they have people around the globe.
Its disgusting and should be illegal.
Uuugh. Sorry you had to go through that.
Yes, that sucks. They can just send the emails out all at once instead of making people wait hours.
The layoff procedures in some countries never cease to baffle me and remind me that my homeland is paradise compared to the dark bleak landscape of murica f.e.
@@monkeywrench1277 Yeah, I would never wanna work or live in any other country than my own. 😅
Any time your company is bought out you can count on IT, HR, redundant management, accounting and any overlap to be let go.Once most of that is done, they do evaluations on front line workers and if they have low quality workers on one side or the other, they are let go and keep higher performing people from both sides. Having gone through 3 buyouts, this is what has happened every time.
New leadership has to purge all the old leadership. There will be division otherwise. My company had all the senior leads fired when we got purchased. The new management brought in their people from the last company they ran into the ground.
It doesn’t happen every time
they laid off their own employee, and I mean from their non acquired companies/studios, from studios they didn't buy. So your defense for Microsoft is invalid.
@@Therizinosaurus I'm not defending MS, this is how nearly every buyout goes. This isn't new, this isn't different, this pretty normal for acquisitions.
@@jonolsen2510 You are correct, it probably doesn't happen every time, but it does more often than not.
I do question why anyone would want to work in the AAA gaming space because you just don't know if your job is ever safe, that level of constant stress and worry would make me go insane.
It's the same in media, telecommunications, and healthcare. The C-Suite believes that continuously shaking the jar of bees is the best way to produce innovation and profit. It's boilerplate management-by-book-of-the-month-club strategy.
what other game dev job could you get and make the same amount of money?
I'm not in game development, but I am in IT. After college, I decided to work for the Federal government even though the pay is quite a bit lower. I'd rather have job security than to constantly worry that a mass layoff may hit me. 11 years in and the only people I've ever seen fired, is because they were pieces of sh*t. And actually, the Fed is currently working on implementing competitive wages (in IT) so they stop losing people to the private sector.
@37Kilo2 well hopefully the US government starts making video games.
Well, if you are good at your job, you probably have nothing to worry about, since they are firing the bloated staff. Or, if you are a diversity hire, you probably thought your job was ultimately safe because, you know, "modern times."
I knew this was going to happen as soon as the sale completed. It was inevitable
I was expecting some job cuts due to redundant jobs Microsoft already has and feel they don't need for their new studios. I also think Bobby Kotick left a bit of a mess and was probably just sitting on his butt doing very little once the sale was completed.
Funny enough there were cuts at Microsoft game studios before the sale completed.
Because it is happening everywhere in the tech industry. Ya, everyone knew.
@@isturbo1984 Its because corps always do layoffs after purchasing new companies. Basically, duplicate employees for the same jobs, post acquisition, and good opportunity to get rid of the "bad" employees in general.
If you are ever in a company that gets bought out by another company, expect layoffs at some point.
@@CosmicCleric no, that isnt the reason lol. part of it, but not the most predominant reason. layoffs have been having EVERYWHERE in tech. journalists just had a 20k heads fired just now, which coincides with this story if you are paying attention. industry firings have been going all through 2023 and they continue.
The triple A bubble really is bursting
And I am so here for it lol. Hopefully in a couple years,we can start getting good games without all the trend chasing and politics.
@@isturbo1984 Politics = a woman in ma vidja games 😢
@TheMahayanist these layoffs were justified and there should be more layoffs at triple A companies to restore competency
@TheMahayanist it was always a bubble cope
This is honestly just the mega-corpses trying their worst to stop the inevitable at this point.
A couple of months ago, i lost my full stack software engineering position at a health tech company. I got the email early in the morning as well. it sucked.
hope you found another job ,or will soon ! always sucks
@@bingbong3084 thank you!
Activision Blizzard has been infected with incompetence for years. I just hope the right people are being let go
My brother was let go, was one of the best artists on his team. not sure what their criteria is
Nope. Those who lack political connections tend to get go the most.
The tech industry is full of lazy entitled gen z workers who do the bare minimum to earn their loaded pay checks and spend more time getting coffee and doing therapy …it’s a long time coming
"the right people" would be the CEOS and execs. So no.
There's a thin line between being hopeful and being a fool.
These layoffs are not just in entertainment. Media/press just had massive layoffs. Friends in IT had massive layoffs and my compay in vehicle maintaince had layoffs before the end of Q4. All industries are effected and these are tell tail signs of the direction of the global economy.
Here on Mexico there is a great expectative of hiring and growth, probably cuz big industry movements because of the "nearshoring".
lol it's not global economy, but western economy due to usa doing stupid stuff.
@TheMahayanistBecause large, large swathes of potential consumption are sitting in ~756 US billionaires’ numerous bank havens stashed around the world.
Capitalism fails when there’s no consumer class. That class, in turn, becomes the warring class. Said billionaires will be sitting on a mountain of shit and death when all is said and done unless government prerogatives change drastically.
The ghost of Reagan is still cackling at the lot of us while the reverberations continue to crack the foundations.
Turns out Unions and corporate government oversight is/was important. That heyday the older generations opine so much about was built on steep, fair tax for the wealthiest, corporate regulation and worker representation/rights.
@@exmaarmacait’ll be great for a few decades until your market is no longer deemed profitable and they ship said jobs off to Central America and South Asia.
The problem as a whole is systemic. Greed kills.
don't trust online job listings to be an indicator of anything. Ghost jobs are real and a major problem right now.
Last year it was the tech industry that was hit the hardest. Many of the cuts were panic cuts by companies realizing theyd massively overspent and were scrambling to balance out their bottom line due to massive economic uncertainty. I was laid off in October. Its been rough. This year it looks like the entertainment industry is cutting extra or side projects. I don't expect this year to be nearly as bad as last but it could change. Most of these cuts feel more planned and less panic. In other words, these are born from companies taking time to evaluate changes made last year instead of panicked managers covering their butts.
Completely saw that and feel it. Although I left my last job (not laid off), I am still looking for work in the IT industry and have a decade and some change of experience. It's wild right now.
@@protoman111 Many of the people i worked with are also still looking. The feeling I got from most of the hr leads and staffing teams i have spoken to was that nobody was going to do rehiring last year. Late january and febuary is really the first months where theyre being given budgets to start rehiring again and its going to be much smaller teams working for lower rates.
"Economic uncertainty." It's pretty much certain at this point.
I heard this first hand last year from someone working in IT. Unfortunatley IT Projects are axed first in manufacturing for example when money is drying up. But it will affect everyone if people lose their jobs. Its like a downward spiral, hopefully it turns around this year.@@protoman111
Anyone that makes over 50-70k a year to sit at a computer and socialize deserves some uncertainty people make less risking their life and limbs to protect people or building our infrastructure and lets not think that working from home is actually more productive for "gamers" i think everyone got a lil too comfy
I have friends who work there (or rather used to, since earlier today). I can confirm they didn't just fire marketing, HR and PR staff. They fired designers, artists and programmers.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, all these friends have one thing in common: They worked either remotely or hybrid.
Addendum: Now that I think about it, all these friends have one thing in common: They worked either remotely or hybrid.
Yeah that's what I'm seeing from some friends in the industry (I'm over in TV/Feature animation but have old colleagues and friends over in gaming). Deep cuts to creative focused teams seems to be a common through thread in entertainment layoffs over the past year.
@@kit_race Exactly! Lots of creatives are getting axed from what I'm seeing as well
On the bright side, defending the World Soul Saga is going to be much easier. Repeat after me, "Well they had a great plan for the saga, but then the cuts came at the absolute worst time and the vision had to be adjusted for the reality."
I for one am looking forward to this new flavor of Cope-a-cola.
Finest cope there is, refined and purified beyond medical grade, a true state of the art copium like no other 👌
Lol I expect Copeullar to say this exact thing around 11.1.5
This is why the consolidation of everything into giant companies is a mistake. Smaller, more independent companies is what we need.
Have you seen what a shit show blizzard was this past decade? This move was needed and wanted by everyone. How the hell would a company improve if the elements keeping it from being improved aren't even removed?
Leader ship will be slowly replaced by Indian leads. Ip will flail ip will become stagnant other games will overpass
What? Smaller companies shouldn’t merge because they might realise they have redundant employees? Are you high?
@@hanzohattori9576the Elements you mean are gone 2 years ago.
Small companies also layoff people, and with little benefit and severance.
Huh, I work in software (not gaming) and my company announced huge layoffs this morning too.
It's very hard to stay motivated working in game development right now and I'm not even at a company that has done large scale layoffs. So many friends leaving the industry for more stable jobs and that sucks to see.
Don't worry lots of immigrants to replace them hahahaha
Do not worry. These things comes in waves. Right now the wave is going down, but at a point it will go up again. I have been around in game dev a long time, so far so goo. I think you will be fine too :)
@CB-os4lf maybe you guys should heckle the decision makers instead of normal people, but that would take actual courage.
I knew me cancelling my WoW sub would cause a problem.
Seriously, though, I hope everyone laid off get themselves sorted soon.
We can only hope for them to find new jobs soon and hope that Microsoft sorts out Activision-Blizzards mess for the better future, atleast what will be left of it.
The game companies were irresponsible and the staff have yo pay the price. Bloated teams in some areas and skeleton crews elsewhere, poor management, crunch, and unrealistic expectations.
Yet, for some reason, the players (customers) kept forking over money and giving them their time for dogwater products, so of course the money hungry higher ups kept pushing the goal post and continued to replace qualified people with people that could barely pass their college courses, probably. Cheap, poor-quality labor, because players kept throwing money at that and all the higher ups saw was green. Basically, the customers that have no self-control or standards are also to blame. They were and continue to be the incentive to keep crap business practices like what Activision did to Blizzard going.
Corporations I have worked for would fire people before the deal even went through. Lost my favorite job that way, close to 1,000 people were fired over the course of 3 weeks prior to the deal being finalized.
I was part of the Ascendant Studios layoffs five months ago. I landed a new position at WotC after about two months, but some of my former coworkers are still looking for work five months later. Many of these people are senior artists. The industry is in a rough place right now.
Feelings/belief based hiring is out. If you were a virtue signaling mediocre diversity hire/low tier "artist", you're probably out in favor of skill (or AI). Or I'm just totally wrong.
Honestly, if they were senior artists great portfolios, and haven't gotten hired for over 5 months, then maybe there was a reason behind the layoffs.
So was I. I almost took an offer at ActiBlizzard for a position on their Survival Game team but decided I didn't want to move back to California + I wanted work on some of my ideas for a while😅
@@PrimyFritzellz The main problem is that the industry is saturated with candidates after tens of thousands of devs were let go in such a short span of time across companies and titles. There are obviously some less-talented folks in the batch, but when a company lays off half their staff or more, it's not a talent issue.
Especially for artists. The industry is famous for producing amazing looking games that under-perform or bomb. Good art in a game can multiply its success, but it doesn't dictate it.
@@PrimyFritzellzThat's short sighted, it's way easier for techies to get new jobs than artists, that has literally been the case for centuries.
Even Van Gogh lived off his brother's money, so it's not just a 'lack of talent' and diversity-hire issue.
1900 od 22000 is under 9%, Unity laid off 1800 of 7200 which is 25% of staff.
As sad as it is for those undeserving of being laid off, this was to be expected for several reasons. As many already said, mergers will often come with layoffs, second all those studios were massively bloated to begin with and lastly the financial revenue of latest publications probably wasnt as satisfactory as was expected due to all those releases being of mid quality at best and abysmal at worst. So there had to be some repercussions in any way or the other. Add the criticism directed at Microsoft for being too lax with their hands off approach when dealing with the likes of ABK and Bethesda/Zenimax which they had to adress in some way and this whole decision becomes a lot more understandable.
Sucks because blizzard ip was iconic. And now it will be slowly indianized to literal street shiting culture
At least they didn't get laid off before Christmas. That's when corporate layoffs usually happen. For Microsoft, it sometimes happened in late spring because of their fiscal year.
This has been the situation since being affected by the layoffs last year. Either you don't know where is a good, healthy place to apply is, or you're competing with 100s colleagues in the industry that have just as many (or more) years experience as you do. So it beyond challenging to come out of these layoffs once you get caught up in them and need to find ways just to stand out even get an interview.
These are corporate layoff which is common practice when a company purchase another one. Once you identify the number of duplicated jobs you can start cutting corners and those that align more with your company will remaing those that not will be gone.
This was inevitable. The writing was on the wall literally years ago. Huge, bloated teams that make nothing of high quality equals redundancy. Redundancy results in layoffs. If the games had actually been good and engaging, there probably would still be layoffs, but not nearly as extensive.
Just look at WoW, they put out 1 new dungeon per expansion at this point, when there should be like 3-4 per major patch. Actual small indie devs put out more content in their games. There's so much lazy scum at Blizzard.
Completely true. I stand behind "Better game, more people play, more word of mouth = ez money". But no, they had to put of boring, bland, family friendly storylines in World of WARcraft, like a single raid every 6 months and the same bland WQ-focused zones for 6+ years.
OW2.... just lol.
Diablo IV trainwreck, abysmal, pile of garbage.
Apparently we don't talk about Starcraft, it's taboo at Blizzard.
Bethesda makes a game over a damn decade that even modders won't touch (the MP mod devs just gave up lol).
Idk what Zenimax is doing which means they're mediocre at best (no word of mouth, no hype).
So obviously if you make shit as a dev you get to go live in a dumpster at some point, how is this even shocking to anyone???
Big mergers always tend to have layoffs due to a lot of overlapping positions. This isn't really surprising.
Yep, though as more info has came to light, this isn't just redundant positions. Lots more being axed.
yep yep. anyone who knows how these things go, and how layoffs are often done early in each calendar year, would know that this was to be somewhat expected
Keep enjoying that fine leather.
@@BellularNews Its not always redundant positions. Its positions that are no longer going to be needed. You very rarely buy a company for all of its assets. You sell stuff off or remove bloat. Similar to the announcement of the survival game being cut. I've done probably 50 M&As and Ds over 15 years and 8% really isn't that shocking. Its often much higher.
except this never NEEDED to happen...
Part of why Microsoft buys out companies is to get rid of competing products in order to integrate what customers they can, but also to remove the competing product if that doesn't work. They don't necessarily need wow players playing warcraft, they need them on any microsoft game product.
Shhh. Microsoft are here to save Blizzard. Quiet now with your poisonous truths.
I really forking hope they try to pull a wow clone out of their asses. It'll bankrupt them.
@@kharmachaos667they dont have to do that. They can just incorporate WoW as part of Gamepass, making you pay for Gamepass to play WoW.
Doing that makes WoW no longer a competitor’s product but something acquired that makes you money without having to compete
So many people touted this acquisition as good for the industry and gamers. But really it is always bn about making MS better off without actually having to put efforts towards creatively competing
@@solidkwonI always thought they would do this.
And it will be great for about 2 years and then prices will start to rise just like Netflix.
Most already were its called Windows OS.
So... Anyone else still wanna hail Phil Spencer as the savior of the gaming industry?
So many praise this guy...
Knew about Redfall... still released it. Now this...
I don't understand why CEO's and all higher up's don't take a pay cut before layoffs even happen? Seems to me that it's their problem and not an issue with the lower rank and file. If they want more "growth" they president and all those high end folks need to take a paycut.
Paycuts for thee, never for me.
It's called greed.
Did you watch the vid? He covers the nature of these cuts, it's inevitable when gobbling up several businesses with redundant staff. No amount of executive pay cuts will make having three times the marketing staff you need make sense.
Then you are naive cause nobody is interested in taking a pay cut. Second, the company does NOT WANT to keep overlap and redundancies. They want to lay people off they don't want.
i highly doubt you would take a pay cut
between AI replacing a lot of jobs and the cuts because there was a bubble in the entertainment industry when we were on the pandemic... yeah it was expected.
I don't think it's really AI replacing jobs or the bubble in this case. More that there are several jobs that were redundant because Microsoft already has similar jobs and just gave the work to those people and got rid of the person in the redundant job. I also wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft decided to slim some teams down that are very bloated/unproductive and not making enough money for their cost, i.e. Overwatch and Diablo.
AI hasnt gotten to the point of replacing any jobs. Not until someone invents an AI workflow programme.
Entire art departments were laid off in mobile iunno what you guys are talking about. Maybe just in the east? It's absolutely happening especially after Adobe and Nvidia announcements.
it has been happening in all tech/software related companies with junior lvl jobs, because AI can replace a lot of work put on general textures and microsoft owns copilot something that generates junior lvl code using everything they got from github.
@@seekittycat To be honest, I expect that from the mobile industry. Their entire goal is to make all the money without any of the effort already, its just even less effort now.
Every time AAA companies lay off staff, a new competitor is born.
I go to a game dev school, Digipen, and all my profs were talking about the layoffs and saying that this is because triple A has lost its innovation and it costs to much to make game the size of games these studios want to/have to make. Hopefully we see a renaissance of double A studios we need more in between indie and massive experiences
Microsoft wants everyone to be on gamepass but they don't want to make anymore games for gamepass... this is going to be a huge problem in 5+ years when they have no more developers to make any new games.
Oh, really? I guess activision-Blizzard was the best company out there, and people were 100% happy with their games lately.
The Ai machines will handle that for sure
Jesus Christ imagine needing 22.000 people and years upon years to make bad games.
The output doesn't seem to corelate with the massive size of these teams.. it was always a bubble waiting to burst.
Yep, considering the size of WoW the amount of content they put out is pathetic and genuinely embarrassing. People clearly need firing so they can be replaced with people who actually do something.
This is so odd for me to look at an industry that is so volatile,because from my perspective of someone working in private security most of my life,this is not an issue myself or anyone i know faced,unless ofc we do something to get fired
I think we see why so many triple A devs were terrified of BG3's success now...
A lot of these companies are way to bloated and have too much bureaucracy. It stifles creativity. It isn't a coincidence games have become soulless clones as more money and corporate positions are infused in the industry.
@@WartimeConsigliere Yeah I think for too long the triple A circle have been telling themselves and their investors that "souls" have no value... and I am happy to see games like BG3 really prove them wrong!
@@WartimeConsigliere These companies don't want creativity, they just want sequels or remasters.
How is this BG3's or Larian's fault dude?
@@karehaqtand They often fail to even produce those.
Reading Twitter for hours and noticed the trends for depts. Here's what it looks like:
-Whole Survival Game team
-A huge chunk of T4 (Overwatch), some people saying about 1/3.
-Quite a few PR/Comms/Social Media.
-A shocking amount of animators and artists from all teams, particularly Overwatch and Diablo.
-Several quest designer/lore team for WoW.
All in all, it seems like WoW and Diablo were mostly untouched, Hearthstone lost a couple and Overwatch got butchered.
I think OW2 is one of the most despicable events in gaming history, but I will be furious if the directors who made all these horrible decisions get to walk into work tomorrow while the devs just doing their jobs don't.
But hey it's good for the growth of the company right? it isn't like they had another 300 million dollars lying around that they gave to a single person to leave the company.
The trickle down effect from this is going to be huge. 10 years from now they’re going to have a hiring crisis where there’s a massive brain drain because the people that would have been really good in game development and are super intelligent were wise enough to pick a different industry
It’s crazy cause they could just lower ceo pay rates instead of costing thousands of regular people their jobs these people don’t need to be laid off the people up top just don’t wanna share the money
Cutting the pay of the ceo to zero might save 200 engineers
Looking at Diablo 4, they don't want to earn their money either, just charge people for the hope of nostalgia.
CEO salaries are usually lowish... 200 - 400k or so. They make $500 million a year due to bonuses.
The bonuses are paid in stock, not cash. The company prints new stock, and hands it over as a bonus. The money comes from stockholders through inflation, not from revenue. The stock holders are "tipping" the execs.
"Well, why not print stock and hand the money to workers in the same way?"
This was tried. Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motors, did just that. The stockholders sued him immediately. And won.
It went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that workers couldn't get stock bonuses because "reasons". Lots of green, papery reasons left in suitcases under the bench.
Since then, no other CEO has tried. Hey, more money for them, right?
Every major corporation especially the gaming ones has too many people at the top doing too little and making too much money, and or they're just outright making bad decisions, cut the fat, great news.
Did ANYONE not realize that there was going restructuring, and therefore the firing of people?
The constant layoffs in big tech companies, gaming or otherwise, have flooded the market with overqualified employees at such a rate that as someone just looking for ANY work it's nearly impossible. After all, why would any company in their right mind hire someone with a few scattered years of IT support experience when they have their pick of sys-admins, team leads, etc. who are desperate enough for ANY job that they'll take whatever they can get?
Before what I state next lemme say this, the people who are in the trenches making the game are the victims here this shouldn’t have impacted them.
What did you expect to happen? I mean all I have to say is look at Diablo 4 to explain the absolutely HORRIBLE decisions in the game’s development. Same goes for the other AAA game companies. The companies absolutely deserve this but it should have been the board/CEOs/leaders that get the axe because they are the ones that have been making the players suffer… then they are surprised that they are failing. I’m happy this is happening because ultimately this is a wake up call to those idiots at the top. The players have the money and just because we are fans of your franchise does not mean that we are obligated to buy the trash you have produced. We are not stupid and this will continue to happen until we see better products. As a consumer I shouldn’t need to care about the development decisions but because of the last 8 years of increasing disappointing products with crapy excuses we, the players, are basically required to know what goes on behind the scenes…
The only model that works is developers to players. Get rid of the corporate cucks and their dumb decisions and you will see the devs passion and the players will GLADLY pay ANY price for a game.
Getting Laid off sucks, but in most cases it is not about individual employees job performance or worth, but is simple economics, with some politics stirred in ...
The entire tech industry is shit right now. I'd hate to be a CS student close to graduating. People don't really pay attention to tech workers after a layoff, because it used to be you could quickly land a new gig. It's really bad right. Ever since the SVB collapse it's been layoffs like crazy. Google is making tons of money but still laying people off, but even more worryingly they don't seem to have anything in the works.
its largely based on interest rates, they affect companies too.
I remember all the pro Microsoft guys saying how this acquisition was great for developers, loooool.
Thank you for covering
The perpetual motion axe that keeps falling forever rolling heads for all eternity
Given Bethesda's 90+% active player loss one has to wonder how long they're going to last.
Money isn't drying up. Its being redirected to upper management.
Most of them worked remotely or had sexual harassment accusations or was just useless...
I was with Blizzard Customer support for 15 years, however they just gutted pretty much all of customer support in the NA region as idk about EU region however there a few more meetings for this, so its safe to say there are more within CS. The only thing you will get now will be Teleperformance people that are temp in and out people who don't even play Blizzard games. All Managers, specialist, standard game masters, group managers, training department, and even more.
No one know or saw this was coming as I had a meeting with my supervisor just yesterday, and even new things we are looking forward to in another meeting with a few departments.
However they just gutted pretty much all of customer support in the NA region as idk about EU region
Oh please, its been this way for eight years. The CMs have been useless since 2018
@@Sonnabend00 they can’t just layoff the EU region as there are laws to protect them vs here they can just do it out of the blue. I think they have to do some 30 day investigation and then give some official notice about the layoff coming.
@@Burnzzs oh I know. Theres a slew of worker protections and Im glad they are there
My condolences to every one involved and of course their families... What a rough day or even start of the year for gaming and the people actually doing the work...
My poor daughter - a3-D animator -called me to let me know she was just laid off!!! She’s in Irvine ,just driving home from Blizzard… 2 months severance and was told if a job at blizzard opens that she can apply… she just needs to digest this for a day or 2 . Very tearful day she did not think she was going to get laid off and was comforting other people , then she got the message . So many people crying 😭
My daughter, as well, but in Austin. Totally blindsided everyone, and she's been with the company for over 16 yrs. She's so upset, she can't even talk about it.
@@patrician1870 that’s awful!!! I can’t believe that your daughter was let go after all those years 😩
it's just the beginning, and not in gaming industry only. The shadow on the horizon that we see now is not some far away storm that will pass us by - this is 200m height tsunami going 300km/h right on us - and only getting more powerfull with every meter.
It's absolutely ridiculous that these companies are literally making record profits, record bonuses and then they determine their 'bottom line' can be cut to make more profit and it's at the expense of the workers...
We have been living in late stage capitalism for many years now, people are expendable.
Besides, these 4th yachts and 5th beach houses won't pay for themselves.
Is it really that shocking though? ActiBlizz has been shitting the bed for so long, feels like it was a long time coming.
As always, the HARD WORKING ARTISTS AND DEVS get the boot while these exec bastards keep getting their raises..
At this rate, every AAA studio in the industry will have a staff of less than 1000 by the end of the year.
DEI/ESG hiring practices have caught up with the industry. I can't wait for the epic implosion.
Get rid of all of management over there and hire people that actually love these ip's and wants to see them thrive and not be motivated purely by greed.
Is Danuser gone?
This is crazy. 2k employees are almost an entire Rockstar Games
Don't worry microsoft will replace them with mohit and raveen. That will make it better duhh
Casual reminder that Bobby made $300 Million from this.
Thanks Microsoft 👍
How much revenue did he earn back to the shareholders ? That's how the real world works
@@SeverinoCatule “earned back” do tell me more about how the world works kiddo.
@@AveryWildman95 Calm down grammar teacher, don't need to be mad because people don't now how the world works
@@SeverinoCatuleThey weren't even talking about your grammar...
@@SeverinoCatule Your utter lack of self-awareness is so funny.
Talking about this being 2024, business-wise, this is still 4th quarter 2023, so my guess is they're looking to clear some salary expenses going into fiscal 2024.
70B buyout leads to job cuts shocker, while it's shit it's not surprising, Ray Charles saw them coming, and he's blind...
and dead.
MS didn't pay 70B to make things better.
MS paid 70B to make more money. They're a business, that's what businesses tend to do. Having excess employees makes them less money than having just enough employees. Same for MS as for any other corporation, really. Not very nice but what corporation is?
@@Monochromatic_Spider Nailed it.
Looks like youtube has disabled the video playblack in brave browser, i only get audio, but with no video
Hope no one in the art department for Blizzard got canned, they have been propping up Wow for years now
From what I'm seeing a lot of them did.
no matter what sector of it you are in, the entertainment industry is very much prone to effects of the economy. If you are in any sector within that industry, you better have a skill you can fall back on for if you get laid off, preferably a skill that is more recession-proof
Mergers always have lay offs. It would be weird if they didn't, and really this was way less than anticipated. I suspect there will be more to come after things settle down. No reason to really worry.
a giant swalloing a dwarf is hardly a merger :D
its not just management that would overlap , im seeing game designers and concept artists , 3d artists etc fired too
1900 is too little to improve the quality of game production but its a good start. this is healthy for the industry
I was expecting this, because I was expecting Microsoft to eliminate redundant jobs and I think Bobby Kotick left a mess for them to deal with. Some teams, like the Overwatch and Diablo teams are massive and produce very little content for their size so I can see Microsoft wanting to cut them down since they aren't making enough money to warrant the cost.
They are making more tham enough, but corpos don't just want a bit of it. They want ALL of it.
@@Pikilloification In the big picture however those teams have yielded little to nothing for results. OW2 didn't release their promised PvE content until many years AFTER the game was launched, there has been little to no story development, and there hasn't been any creative push to expand the game beyond the new map/game mode they released at launch, those kinds of results do not warrant a massive team with redundant roles filled to the brim with people who aren't producing nearly the amount of content that should be coming out to standards for a team that large.
Secondly, Diablo 4 has really been in the ditch since the first season pass got released, causing it to lose massive amounts of the playerbase within the month of the season pass being released. Aside from cosmetics and more season passes there really hasn't been a bold move to push for more complex story or drive in the game which has lead to a content drought for them. This too doesn't warrant having a really large team for little to no results beyond the bare minimum.
Thirdly there is World of Warcraft, the thing Blizzard is most known for aside from Starcraft 1 and 2, this game has been struggling terribly since arguably the Legion expansion where there were insane time gates on content, insane reputation grinds, a lack of an alt-friendly system for a game where players easily have 5-15 alts on their account, and overall it hit rockbottom in Shadowlands that really had a butchered story beyond all belief with any lack of direction and poorly written villains. Shadowlands nearly KILLED World of Warcraft because of how much it sucked and they had a larger team back then to work on it only to yield half baked content systems, poorly designed reputation systems, abandoned content that had massive potential for more in future expansions (Thorgasht), and an art team that never truly got their work properly represented in the game let alone the Devs completely ignoring and insulting the complaints of their players.
Perhaps Microsoft weeded out the really bad employees holding back the company, making room for new talent, even going as far as to give these teams a reality check and a wake up call to really bring them back in for what they were hired to do in the first place. Make games people love, not these system congested PC friendly social justice science experiments gone wrong, but instead to make games with meaningful stories and characters with content overall people will thrive on.
At some point I thought Bobby Kotick was the one causing problems for Blizzard. Then it occurred to me that a part of the problem might be inherent to Blizzard. The way they interact with their player base, the patches they give to the games, dictating how their every game "should" be played, horrible lore writing in WoW... Now I'm glad they had a massive layoff. Might prove beneficial for them moving forward.
Getting laid off sucks. At this point though, if youre still working for these bloated POS gaming corporations and you dont have a plan for when they inevitably lay you off then youre doing it wrong. No one should work for these people, and we'll continue to see this behavior until everyone learns and companies like Blizzard cant find people willing to work for them. That might be never, regardless ill stay safe by never trusting these assholes.
I was laid off several times before, each time it feels as they are doing me a favor :D
I've worked in retail for about 30 years now. In my experience, They have never been a "Merger" or anything of the sort. It's always been one company taking over from the other one and just keeping the name for PR's sake. When Microsoft bought Blizzard/Activision out. I knew that this would happen. However, I did not see this coming this quickly. It should be a few years once everything gets settled in. Looks like Microsoft has already taken over and is not taking any prisoners. One thing to keep in mind is that it puts leadership all in one location. Do you think this is good or bad? Well, Grab your popcorn. We are in for a great ride!
Yep, big number. They are bleeding from the acquisition.
Poor Microsoft, basically bankrupt now.
many tech and news companies that grew to big over the last 5+ years or have redundancies are laying off people recently. but with how quickly AI and other automation is developing some of the people cut will likely get replaced by a computer.
All these layoffs weren't hard to see coming. Just look at all the junk that has been coming out of the gaming industry. Almost every studio has been releasing shit or unfinished shit, it's not sustainable.
Got layed off the last two jobs i had.. Its a rough world out there :(
This is so old and trite. Who cares? We all know. The tech industry is having layoffs everywhere. Any mention of the reasons why? Diversity hiring, a bloated industry, the economy (and reasons why the economy is bad)? Or are we just blaming anything that isn't those things still? This video is a waste of time, the next video winging will be too.
High Interest Rates is causing ALL of this! Free Money = Lots and Lots of Waste
The governments and Central Banks should've allowed the "Great Recession" back in 2007/2008 to run its course. They've now made the situation far, far worse now and trying to patch it with duct tape.
The grass is greener on the other side...or so that say XDDD
Dude you're cracking the code to how these industries work which will teach us where to spend our money,for which I salute !
No one saw this coming.
Sarcasm? After such a massive merger you'd have to be born yesterday if you didn't see this coming.
@@VelociferoYes, sarcasm.
Lol, true.
I get communing it. But are we really surprised? XD
Too bad most won't notice the sarcasm of the comment lol
They should be stripped of the name blizzard. They don’t deserve it anymore. Same for BioWare, square, and dice
First company that feels like giving customers what they want again is going to clean house in this industry.
The triple A video game industry is the one that annually generates billions of $ in video game profits worldwide, and the way this industry compensates its workers and artists in the medium, who are responsible for creating these video games is .... by underpaying them and firing them without warning ... is it just me or does this look like a burning train heading into an abyss?
Meh nonsense! let's pay a CEO the salary of almost 500 workers, because, they do the magic to make video games work right guys?
TBH the purge hasn't gone nearly far enough. The whole AAA industry is bloated and suffering from a diseased work culture and mismanagement. In these big AAA projects its taking way more people to do less work half as fast because so many are just wageys avoiding being in a position to be accountable for success or failure. There is no room for creativity, vision, or passion.
DEI with a side of agile, baby! look at all those videos from last year about google emps 'working' lol
You guys found a new 3 letter acronym for this season?@peterberg3446
I was actually approached by Blizzard to interview for the unannounced Survival game project. I interviewed for the Overwatch 2 Systems Engineer position instead. Good thing I didn't go for the other project. Sad to see people let go and another failed project.
Hard to feel bad for some of these people. Knowing what they probably knew. The rest, it's a low blow.
Had to leave an obligatory "Blizzard bad" response. But always want to say thank you guys for covering everything as well as you do.
Your depth and care for the coverage is obviously, and meaningful. It really sucks that it has gone this way over the last 10 years after the way the first 10 years charted.
The community/consumer relationship was THE thing separating Blizzard from all the other corporations. Once they spit on that relationship, the divorce was inevitable.
Okay now do 343
oh gee i wonder who could've predicted that this would happen.
So much for Microsoft “saving” Blizzard.
By shaving off the excess baggage
There’s too many incompetent losers at blizzard anyway, this is a cleanup
@@runforestrunfpv4354they need to fire leadership first since they get paid more and have made terrible decisions
Hopefully they got rid of the DEI employees and kept the employees that are actually good.
They didn't save Bethesda either, they ran them into the ground. 76, Starfaild, and ESO are all trash.
Been saying that this is going to be a serious year of loss across the game industry. This is still just the beginning.
Thank GOD Baldurs Gate 3 and Elden Ring were finished before the gaming bubble collapsed. These layoffs are unsustainable for the gaming industry as a whole. It might be a decade before we see some truly amazing games again.. expect AI generated crap like FINALS for the next few years from these hacks.
@@stevenstehling AAA are usually utterly trash anyways.
this decade every triple A game is either gonna be developed by AI or a live service. Indie games are gonna constantly overshadow them all.
@@tarnishedhunter222 There will be a rare gem, like for instance like in my first post, both FromSoft and Larian both have integrity and haven't succumbed to the filth and the waste in the industry and still value their product and the experience. And there's maybe a handful others I'm forgetting.. but yah, exactly, AAA is dead and indie is king now. The King is dead; Long Live the King.