Why nobody ever gets fired at Blizzard?

[Daralii]

yes but the group that made garrisons is most likely mabye 20ish people

also most AAA dev teams are in the hundreds

heck nost alone had 30 staff

But they would have needed to consult other teams and the higher ups to even work on it, and those other teams would have needed to design their content around garrisons as a result. A lot more than those 20 are to blame, mainly the management.

[purebalance]

I'm not a Holinka fan, as I've thought he was a dick from day one, but I'm not entirely certain Ashran was all him. It's hard to tell - he's the public face for PvP, but is he the ultimate shot caller?

Being a dick on Twitter is not and should not be a firing offense - at worst, they should just prevent him and others like him from commenting. If being a dick on Twitter was a firing offense, Celestalon would have packed his cubicle up with a security guard watching a long time ago.

He was far more rude than anyone else was. He refused to admit Ashran was even bad or poorly designed and lashed out at people when they questioned it. At the very minimum he should have been moved to a new department.

[Kellorion]

Things that players call for firings over aren't the sort of things that actually get people fired.

Gaining 2.6m subs, then losing 5.1m subs in a 6 month time frame are exactly the things people should get fired for.

[Gadzooks]

Isn't WoW's dev team something like 300-400 people?

Well, to play Devil's Advocate here, if they have 400 people on the WoW staff, 375 of them aren't shot-callers - they do what they're told to do. It's the lead devs who make the decisions. if the writing is bad, it's on Kosak, as it's his department - and part of managing is taking the heat when the team fails. The guys and girls filling in quest text don't get to choose what to write overall, they work off of the directions of their bosses.

If you give Ghostcrawler any credibility, decisions are often made at Blizzard in groups, so the lower level people may be allowed to chime in, but ultimately, the decisions are made by the leads, all answerable to Chilton. The buck stops at the desks of Chilton and Brack - it's their job to unify the work of the teams into a cohesive whole. They rubber stamped any ideas you have issues with. Should they be fired, or the people who were allowed to roll with those idea, with their permission?

But, like I said - they made money. Nobody is getting fired for design decisions.

[Aggrophobic]

Of course not, but never heard of any case, because I'm sure from those 7000 employees someone would say it if it would happen, right? But yeah ok, those at the top seems to be more like a Blizzard's symbols, so I guess that's why.

So if you were fired, the first thing you'd do would be to tweet about you getting fired?
Thats a great idea if you never want a job, ever again.

The people at Blizzard that players want fired for whatever they are pissed about are the top designers, they got to the top for a reason and it's not the kind of people you just get rid of.

[FelPlague]

But they would have needed to consult other teams and the higher ups to even work on it, and those other teams would have needed to design their content around garrisons as a result. A lot more than those 20 are to blame, mainly the management.

yes but what parts of the garrison "failed" some people dont mind the table as its 1 click, some people hate it, some people love being able to mine/herb in your garrison with no compitition, some hate it, some love managing a little town, well some hate it

so whos to blame when people hate something people love?

[Gadzooks]

He was far more rude than anyone else was. He refused to admit Ashran was even bad or poorly designed and lashed out at people when they questioned it. At the very minimum he should have been moved to a new department.

I can;t disagree with that. But firing? No. I may have called for his firing at one time, but I'm much calmer now that i don't have to deal with things like Ashran anymore, as I don't play WoW.

[purebalance]

I can;t disagree with that. But firing? No. I may have called for his firing at one time, but I'm much calmer now that i don't have to deal with things like Ashran anymore, as I don't play WoW.

It depends on where you work I guess. Some jobs would have, some wouldn't. It really depends on how publicly you're acting, how much you're considered a face of the business, and how big the business is. Possibly since he was only really pvp centric it wasn't as bad as if Ion started going off on people since he's much more of a public face.

[Gadzooks]

Gaining 2.6m subs, then losing 5.1m subs in a 6 month time frame are exactly the things people should get fired for.

True. But they profited despite that.

You may not be using the same metrics that they do internally. I don't doubt the sub losses are ignored, I'm sure it's discussed often - and the design of Legion and Ion's comments last week say they're listening, and realized they screwed up. Of course they want subs - but they also proved that they could profit without them, which is straight up job security.

Take the profit away, we may have seen a much different dev team working on Legion.

[djcoin]

Ghostcrawler left because he disagreed with managements communication policies. Blizzard was moving away from such a visible social media presence. We rarely get weekly or daily interactions now. He got a huge raise when he left for Riot.

Cover story.
I actually had a dream that blizzard was blackmailing me into transferring into a different job in order to avoid firing me outright. Clearly this is scientific proof that this is how blizzard conducts themselves.

[Nyoken]

Cause saying someone got "fired" from a job gives a very bad impression to other companies looking to hire you. Not that you might have done something horrible, but you might have been working under bad circumstances...had a terrible boss? Or whatever...can get fired for many reasons, doesn't necessarily mean that the person in question has to be a bad person and that said person was doing a bad job.

[BananaHandsB]

But making it look as if they keep anyone despite of the failures in last years gives customers a bad message too. Do they even care?

A normal number people have left over the years. True, few have been directly/publicly fired likely due to the reasons I noted. I'm not sure what your point is.

[Gadzooks]

A normal number people have left over the years. True, few have been directly/publicly fired likely due to the reasons I noted. I'm not sure what your point is.

I think his point is whether Blizzard cares what people think, when something happens thats unpopular, like the WOD launch, and that they don't publicly fire someone to appease the public over it.

If that's the case, nobody does that, except maybe in sports and entertainment. Occasionally there will be a justice boner where a rude retail employee is caught on camera, and they get fired. But for the most part, in the working world, firings are not publicly discussed or announced, unless it's a CEO or in scandal.

I don't like the apple Watch, I think it's dumb and poorly designed - and sales seem to indicate I'm not alone. But do i watch the Apple site feverishly to see if someone got fired over it? Of course not. Blizzard and it's fans are a unique group, where the customers are very invested in the company and the employees, and care far more than they should about the inner workings - and yes, I lump myself in there. Why it's so fascinating, I don't know. But from a corporate perspective, no, they don't really care if anyone knows who got fired, it's none of anyone's business, and for legal reasons, they don't comment.

[MoanaLisa]

Plainly stated, the notion that Blizzard should offer up department heads as human sacrifice to appease game site forums is about as dumb as it sounds.

[StationaryHawk]

There's more to Blizzard than the people we see.

[shise]

Why would day?

Blizzard success keeps rising every new day, regardless of the fashion on which it rises compared to the past.

[Hiricine]

You don't get fired, you get put on the Diablo 3 development team.

[Al Gorefiend]

Tseric was (presumably) fired.

Like others before me have said, it's really none of our business and therefore not knowledge Blizzard feels the need to share with us.

Especially considering employees who left on their own without being fired get treated like shit from the players anyways.

[Tharkkun]

I'm going to point out, even if you disagree with upper management on policy, unless you are getting treated like garbage (I am pretty sure being a high level guy at blizzard is a fairly comfortable position) you only leave if you get offered an opportunity elsewhere that: Pays more Money or Offers the opportunity to be your own Mike Morhaime.

But you can tell from Ghostcrawler's tweets that he really didn't see eye to eye with his managers around the time he left. I'm sure that played a big part along with the money. He's very careful with his words in that he doesn't throw Blizzard under the bus. But there was obvious disagreement.

- - - Updated - - -

They will never publicly say someone got fired. In reality probably most of people who "left Blizzard to work on their own project/company/whatever" got fired or "you are fired but you can resign or announce that you quit for xyz".

If you say in public they were fired versus "No longer with the company" you open yourself to litigation. At least in the USA.

It's one of the reasons why when someone calls to check on references for a job application you can only give their start/end date and whether they are eligible for re-hire.