Roughly 60 Game Developers Cut: No this is not smart business.

[peedei]

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that it has conducted a review of its business based on current organizational needs. Following a completion of the review, the company is conducting a global reduction in workforce of approximately 600 employees. The company anticipates approximately 90% of the affected employees will come from departments not related to game development. The World of Warcraft® development team will not be impacted.

I.e. approx 10% of the 600 (60) are game developers being laid off, so they are in fact reducing the dev team. It is also a high approximation of non-developer positions which means that if it was to tip in a certain direction, it would most likely be less non-developers by a margin of around 12%.

People who were hypothesizing this is a good business move are incorrect, this is because the motive has moved away from getting rid of people you don't need to something else entirely (emphatically inconspicuous) because last time I checked, MoP hasn't been released, D3 still hasn't been released and neither has heart of the swarm, also lets not forget about their other MMO/project titan. Also in the 3rd quarter when the release in china bombed there (by quite a bit) suddenly Blizzcon of all things gets axed in the states and some esports BS is setup in china.

Yet around 60+ game developers have been let go, nothing has been released and lots of things not just employees have been cut.

It would make sense to re-locate devs to other projects like they had been doing, but this is nothing more than: "we're laying off people to take their salaries to reach our target profits because our flagship title bombed all year despite major releases every quarter".

Case in point: Now you can call Blizzard cash cows, it is perfectly valid now.

Oh. Snap.

[Kenasan]

Op, you have no idea what you're talking about. Please stop pretending that you do.

Infracted: Feel free to offer some constructive criticism, but refrain from posting something that offers nothing.

[peedei]

Op, you have no idea what you're talking about. Please stop pretending that you do.

Being logical is silly.

[Duckgirl]

So, let's say they let go of 60 Diablo 3 developers, how would that be negative? The game is almost completed, so there's no reason for them to keep developers not involved in the last bit of tweaking of the game.

Case in point: You have no clue whatsoever who they laid off. Your argument is perfectly invalid.

[therealpeni]

what happens if you perform bad? u get fired.
think that's the case on the developer part then, as i doubt u can have to many developers

overstaffed will be the gm's and other departments, as far as i think

[fogel]

Even the waitress at the local Blizzard cafeteria could be among those 10%.

Think about it:

Programmers are nerds! They eat massive amounts of cake and cookies and practically breathe coffee!

(I'm a developer myself)

[adimaya]

I also like claiming that companies firing people are bad business moves with no insight into their company apart of using one or several of their products.

people usually think I'm a straight down retard for doing so, but hey what else is life about?

[peedei]

So, let's say they let go of 60 Diablo 3 developers, how would that be negative? The game is almost completed, so there's no reason for them to keep developers not involved in the last bit of tweaking of the game.

Case in point: You have no clue whatsoever who they laid off. Your argument is perfectly invalid.

Me thinks not quite:

Diablo III

Game Designer
Game Systems Designer (Console)
Lead Animator
Senior Level Designer
Senior Producer
Senior Software Engineer, Console -- Graphics Specialist
Senior Software Engineer, Console -- Network Specialist
Senior Software Engineer, Server
Senior Writer

That's a lot of senior positions which means they laid off their current ones, to bring in new ones at a lower paycheck. The bottom line doesn't get axed, they're cheap! Sauce: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company...egion=Americas

[Knopperz]

WoW lost ~1/5 of its playerbase in 2011...of course they firing people.
Why pay People you dont need anymore?

Each company has bad apples, and its acually the perfect time to weed out the bad apples.
New Games incoming, and if you need new Employes...you just hire new ones.

You replace the bad ones, with new ones who "might" be better.

[Chuck]

...or we could be less of a small whiny bit4hes and actually not freak out of simple downsizing of thousands employee company?

Where is my stapler... it's my stapler.. one day ill burn this house down.

[KrazyK923]

Me thinks not quite:

Diablo III

Game Designer
Game Systems Designer (Console)
Lead Animator
Senior Level Designer
Senior Producer
Senior Software Engineer, Console -- Graphics Specialist
Senior Software Engineer, Console -- Network Specialist
Senior Software Engineer, Server
Senior Writer

That's a lot of senior positions which means they laid off their current ones, to bring in new ones at a lower paycheck. The bottom line doesn't get axed, they're cheap! Sauce: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company...egion=Americas

ITT: OP making ignorant claim based on no inside information whatsoever and then assuming the sky is falling.

Sounds about right for MMO-C.

[vizzle]

Me thinks not quite:

Diablo III

Game Designer
Game Systems Designer (Console)
Lead Animator
Senior Level Designer
Senior Producer
Senior Software Engineer, Console -- Graphics Specialist
Senior Software Engineer, Console -- Network Specialist
Senior Software Engineer, Server
Senior Writer

That's a lot of senior positions which means they laid off their current ones, to bring in new ones at a lower paycheck. The bottom line doesn't get axed, they're cheap! Sauce: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company...egion=Americas

Well, to look at the bright side... it's not hard for an ex-Blizzard employee to get a job at another company (I would think since Blizz is an amazing company to have on your resume), and new people who've never worked at Blizz get a chance to. I'm not saying getting fired is a good thing, but... at least they're getting severance packages.

[Ghostie]

I read OP in the Charlie Brown cartoon parents voice.

[Flimsy]

No point in trying to say a bad word about Blizzard on these forums you will get flamed no matter how logical it may be, i'll quote a post from a similar thread:

Q1: subs lost... "it was due to the economy"
Q2: Subs lost... "it was due to the game getting "old""
Q3: Subs lost... "it was due to China"
Blizzcon 2012 Canceled... "it was due to them needing to focus on getting 3 games out in 2012" [conference call recently drew that back to 2 games]
Q4: Subs lost... "Quarter with Skyrim/SW:ToR - but the sub loss wasn't so bad as before... so 4.3 and the pass might've helped, right?"
600 employees let go... "it's just some extra fat... every company does this now and again..."

They could fire every person at Blizzard and still people will defend their tactics, its pointless trying to have a discussion.

[peedei]

ITT: OP making ignorant claim based on no inside information whatsoever and then assuming the sky is falling.

Sounds about right for MMO-C.

This made me tilt my head quite a bit...not sure if-

[KrazyK923]

No point in trying to say a bad word about Blizzard on these forums you will get flamed no matter how logical it may be, ill quote a post from a similar thread:

Q1: subs lost... "it was due to the economy"
Q2: Subs lost... "it was due to the game getting "old""
Q3: Subs lost... "it was due to China"
Blizzcon 2012 Canceled... "it was due to them needing to focus on getting 3 games out in 2012" [conference call recently drew that back to 2 games]
Q4: Subs lost... "Quarter with Skyrim/SW:ToR - but the sub loss wasn't so bad as before... so 4.3 and the pass might've helped, right?"
600 employees let go... "it's just some extra fat... every company does this now and again..."

They could fire every person at Blizzard and still people will defend their tactics, its pointless trying to have a discussion.

Replace bad with good, defend with criticize, and "give everybody 10k gold, a pony, and every skill in the game" with "fire"

Same story bro.

---------- Post added 2012-03-01 at 11:41 AM ----------

This made me tilt my head quite a bit...not sure if-

Hint: None of the positions you linked about were just immediately added at the news of these firings. They've been up for a while.

[Chickat]

Blizzard said that the wow dev team was 100% spared. Also if you go look it up you can see they are hiring dozens of developers and hundreds of other people for different positions. Diablo 3 is almost done. Likely most of the devs came from there because they don't need them any more. It doesn't take as many devs to make an expansion pack as it does to make a new game either btw.

[Black Rider]

peedei
Why don't you read this part?

I also want to emphasize that we remain committed to shipping multiple games this year, and that our development teams in particular remain largely unaffected by today's announcement. We're continuing to develop, iterate, and polish Blizzard DOTA, Diablo III, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, as well as other, unannounced projects. We'll have exciting news to share in the coming weeks regarding Diablo III's release date, and will soon be holding a private media event to showcase the latest work on Mists of Pandaria. It goes without saying that we're working hard to get all of these games in your hands as soon as possible.

[peedei]

I read OP in the Charlie Brown cartoon parents voice.

Or d'you mean like his teacher? LOL! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUyLwXhqlWU

[Archidamos]

Hmm.
600 people lost their jobs.
No matter what, this is the thing we should focus and not ourselves.

The reasons for the action are deep inside Blizzard's HQ.
To speculate does not help.

Regarding the game, i am waiting for the mid march press conference.
I hope they will talk about raids, and not about the pandaren female model in that one.