Activision Blizzard - SEC Filing, Raider.IO Recruitment System

Activision Blizzard - SEC Filing
Activision Blizzard recently shared some more information about the upcoming merger with Microsoft in a SEC filing.
Originally Posted by Activision Blizzard
ABK Leadership Talking Points - Microsoft Deal

The employee talking points are for senior leaders to use in conversations with Activision Blizzard employees regarding the Microsoft acquisition announcement.

Announcement

  • As you now know, Activision Blizzard is expected to merge with Microsoft.
  • This is an exciting evolution for our company that will build on the work we have done together to be the leader in gaming by delivering epic entertainment for our players.

Rationale

  • Together, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft will help to shape the future of interactive entertainment and drive engagement with some of the most popular games on one of the world’s premier network of platforms and devices.
  • Our accomplished team, creative DNA and library of premium games, combined with Microsoft’s technology, distribution, and cloud capabilities will build a foundation that supports the combined company’s success in an increasingly competitive marketplace and rapidly evolving industry landscape.
  • Bobby, Activision Blizzard’s Board of Directors, and broader leadership team see this combination as a way to ensure that Activision Blizzard continues to play a significant role in creating epic content for the next generation of gamers.

What this Means for Employees

  • Microsoft recognizes the commitment to excellence and creativity that sets us apart, and this depth of talent and expertise is a driving force behind this transaction.
  • Activision Blizzard’s success is because of you - your creativity and innovation have created a workplace that supports the development of epic content to connect and engage the world.

Impact to Jobs

  • We are going to have a long time where we can focus on retaining our employees, making sure that you all see a pathway for greater opportunities. And while this concern is natural, I need to be clear that this is going to take time.
  • We, both Activision Blizzard and Microsoft, have a focus on retaining people. In fact, Microsoft leadership have expressed that what they’re MOST excited for in acquiring our company is our talent.

Compensation, Benefits, Stock & Equity

  • Microsoft has committed that for the first twelve months after closing Activision-Blizzard employees will be provided with benefits, target cash compensation (excluding equity) and severance payments that are no less favorable, in the aggregate, than either (i) what Activision employees received prior to closing or (ii) the standard compensation and benefits Microsoft provides to its similarly situated employees. More information will be coming soon on other details of this transition, including treatment of existing equity compensation.
  • In the meantime, we will continue to deliver compensation that considers a number of factors including performance, including regular annual wage evaluations, delivering on our bonus plans, and consideration of future equity awards. The changes we announced around employee benefits this past month will continue through at least close.

Learning and Development

  • Microsoft’s diverse operations will give us access to valuable expertise, technology, and tools and provide even greater opportunities for learning, development, and career growth.

Tools and Platforms

  • We are operating as business as usual until close, and that means we don’t plan to switch to Microsoft Teams, for example, during this time before the deal closes.
  • Ensuring a smooth transition is key for both us and Microsoft.

Partner Agreements

  • We are coordinating closely with our partners to reassure them that we plan to honor existing commitments post close. As with Microsoft’s acquisition of Minecraft, there is no intent to remove any content from platforms where it exists today.

Hiring

  • We are still hiring – we’re always looking for top talent and will continue with our current practices and programs through closing. It is too soon to share any detail on hiring post close, but for now we look forward to continuing to welcome great talent to Activision Blizzard.

Workplace Culture

  • Importantly, the workplace changes that Activision Blizzard’s leadership team has implemented and made progress on throughout 2021 are expected to continue in 2022 and beyond.
  • We intend for Activision Blizzard to continue its progress towards a welcoming and inclusive workplace culture, and Bobby has made achieving this objective one of his top priorities for the near- and long-term.
  • Activision Blizzard’s leadership team has discussed the company’s goals at length with Microsoft, and Microsoft has reviewed the renewed culture commitment and actions Activision Blizzard has undertaken so far. You can find these yourself on the “Progress and Commitments” space on the Hub that will be continuously updated. Microsoft is supportive of the goals and the work being done.

Next Steps

  • The next steps in the transaction process are for our company to work to complete the regulatory review of this transaction and obtain approval from our shareholders, which includes many of you.
  • Until the transaction closes, which we expect to be in Microsoft’s fiscal year ending in June 2023, it remains business as usual and both companies will continue to operate independently. We ask that you continue to focus on your current projects and responsibilities.
  • We know there is a lot of interest in understanding what the future company will look like. While we don’t yet know the specifics of Microsoft’s plans once the transaction closes, we do know that Activision Blizzard will become part of Microsoft’s Gaming Division under the leadership of Phil Spencer. We look forward to introducing you all to Phil soon.
  • Many of you will have questions and I recognize the uncertainty that some of you may have. While we don’t have all the answers at this time and there are restrictions on what we can say prior to the close of the transaction, we will update you throughout the process. We will continue to update the “Defining our Future” space on the Hub with information and answers to questions as we have them.



Raider.IO Recruitment System
To celebrate their 5-year anniversary, Raider.IO has announced the launch of their new Recruitment System!

Raider.IO Recruitment System Features
  • Recruitment that is seamless and accessible.
  • Recruit for Raids, Mythic+, PVP, or just Socializing.
  • Find relevant matches quickly and efficiently.
  • Get in touch with prospective Players and Groups easily!

Raider.IO Recruitment System
Originally Posted by Raider.IO
FIND GROUPS FOR ANY ACTIVITY

The Raider.IO Recruitment System makes it possible to find or recruit for a plethora of activities. We recognize that there is so much more to World of Warcraft than just raiding with a guild.

Our Recruitment System supports recruiting for Guild Raiding, Guild Mythic+, Guild PvP, Social Guilds, and Mythic+ Teams!

FIND MATCHES THAT FIT EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR

With the Raider.IO Recruitment System you have the ability to curate exactly what you are looking for. You can set minimum and maximum requirements for raid progression, item level, Mythic+ Score, and more. You can set strict schedules or allow for a flexible range. You can specify which classes and specs you are looking for, or allow for any players to apply.

Get the results you want quickly and efficiently, without having to spend hours scrolling through hundreds of recruitment posts!

FURTHER REFINE YOUR SEARCH RESULTS

We have included even further ways to refine your recruitment needs with our Advanced Search system with the addition of Tags and Recruitment filters. During the profile building process, you have the option to add up to 3 Tags to help rank your initial search results. Once you enter the Advanced Search system, you can use additional Tags and filter options to curate your search results even further. Players and Groups with the same Tags will rank higher on your search, and you can even choose to exclude search results that contain certain Tags, and so much more!

DISCOVER PLAYERS, GUILDS, AND MYTHIC+ TEAMS

We want to ensure recruitment is as easy as possible for both Groups and Players, so we integrated your recruitment profiles throughout the entirety of the Raider.IO site. If a Group or Player has a public recruitment profile active, a hoverable badge will be visible next to their name on Mythic+ and Raid leaderboards across the site.

Our goal is to make recruitment seamless and accessible, not a chore.

APPLY, RECRUIT & COMMUNICATE DIRECTLY

Gone are the days of having to add BattleTag after BattleTag, hoping a potential recruit logs on, or sending Discord friend requests that sit in pending forever.

With the Raider.IO Recruitment System, you can now apply to Groups and recruit players directly within our Messaging system! These messaging threads act as shared channels between the Player and anyone in the Group's GM, Officer, or Recruiter roles.

Get in touch with prospective Players and Groups easily and quickly. Recruitment doesn't need to be a tedious process!
This article was originally published in forum thread: Activision Blizzard - SEC Filing, Raider.IO Recruitment System started by Lumy View original post
Published on 2022-01-31 07:01 AM
52 Comments
Comments 52 Comments
  1. Video Games's Avatar
    There's nothing I love more than a list of corporate talking points /gag
  1. shise's Avatar
    So now they are officially killing guids.

    The whole raider IO is a big failure. I wonder when they will understand that. It was never needed in the game in the past and we managed to clear the hard content just fine, finding the right people just fine...

    This is a new gen tool, which destroys the core of the game: networking in the game/socializing. All is does is bring disconnection and toxicity.
  1. Sanguinerd's Avatar
    Just what the game needs more tools for toxicity! Good job EJ devs

    /s
  1. korijenkins's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by shise View Post
    So now they are officially killing guids.

    The whole raider IO is a big failure. I wonder when they will understand that. It was never needed in the game in the past and we managed to clear the hard content just fine, finding the right people just fine...

    This is a new gen tool, which destroys the core of the game: networking in the game/socializing. All is does is bring disconnection and toxicity.
    This is something the supporters of the tool simply fail to understand. The game survived years without it and is currently in decline despite it. Basically, it's not necessary or even necessarily good.

    Everyone is so entitled to have everything RIGHT NOW that they're unwilling to deal with the realities of recruiting and finding people for groups; you're going to encounter bad players. Thus we have this awful tool that exists solely to create a giant wedge in the community. All around just terrible.
  1. shise's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by korijenkins View Post
    This is something the supporters of the tool simply fail to understand. The game survived years without it and is currently in decline despite it. Basically, it's not necessary or even necessarily good.

    Everyone is so entitled to have everything RIGHT NOW that they're unwilling to deal with the realities of recruiting and finding people for groups; you're going to encounter bad players. Thus we have this awful tool that exists solely to create a giant wedge in the community. All around just terrible.
    Exactly.

    For so long I thought this was an amazing idea. I was enjoying it.. but soon enough you start to notice what it really brings.
    I think it is a cool feature. It is a nice competitive feature but it has no place in WoW.
    Yes, you can use it and you can easily find other people who you know won´t cause a stupid wipe... (not really, but it boosts the chances), which is nice.


    But it comes at a very high price. Over time, you realize how people join groups, don´t even bother saying hello... The only time they open their chat is to flame that DPS who messed up ONE time... even though you healed the problem away and saved the wipe lol... I mean, it´s so disconnected and toxic. Not always, not at all, but sadly, for the greatest part of the time it is so.
    That is exactly the last thing this game needs. A feature mainly aimed at people with no patience, high risk of spreding toxicity. If we don´t allow casuals to have fun, they will go away. And we all know that casuals are easily over 70% of the player base of any MMO... FF14 has already taken a big chunk of those players. Because in FF14 it is simply easier to do even high content as a casual palyer.

    I don´t say the game should be made for casuals. But the game needs them too. Limiting the end-game to toxic, elitist players, encouraging tools which render guilds redundant(out of raiding)... does not help.


    Also, where does it stop? Is the next step making it easy to find raid groups too?
  1. BetterGameDev's Avatar
    Longtime lurker here, I just want to say that raider.io or basically the "score" is fine by itself because is like the PvP rating.

    If you are at 2300 and want to push to 2400 you are not going to play with 1500 or 1800 players, and this has always been like this.

    So the same logic should be (but isn't) for M+ if I have 1800 score and want to push all m + 20 ( for example ) I will search for people with my own or similar score, not somebody with 1000 score.


    The problem with r.io is that isn't only about the score, the entire M+ mindset / meta of the same classes + "gogogo rush fuck quit if wipe once" is the core problem that gets amplified by raider.io

    Is like if in PvP you get more rating if you win quickly so basically the m+ timer and the meta makes an already toxic environment more toxic and the score doesn't help.



    Hence the fact that r.io is becoming the new "automated" LFG is going to strip WoW of any social aspect, in a game already devoid of it is going to take a huge toll on the game on the long term.
  1. korijenkins's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MechanoDruid View Post
    Problem is, Blizzard fully supports it. Blizzard developers have created API necessary to get player's data by third party tools, making creation of such tools possible.

    So if not RIO, there would be another tool because of Blizzard developers mentality.
    Yeah I'm aware of it. Blizzard fundamentally no longer understands what made the game great.
  1. crusadernero's Avatar
    raider.io is pure garbo and part of the downfall of wow as an MMORPG. Sad thing is, Blizzard and the players that support it either dont realise it or dont give a shit.

    I used this addon for a bit and it gave me literally nothing of good. They have, intentionally or not, created a shitshow addon that now is incorporated into the game. Congratulation on that.
  1. exsanguinate's Avatar
    raider.io is pure illness for this game.
  1. JorimoniLS's Avatar
    First of all let me just say that im not playing dumb or anything like that just genuine curiosity. So i dont think im the greatest player. Ive played a protection paladin for around 15 years now and ive always been decent. Usually hardest difficulty kills but with plenty of nerfs to the raids, and overgearing. Ive stopped playing for a whole year to just take a break and i recently came back ( around 3 weeks ago ) got my Mythic+ score to 1.9k. Previously the character was geared around 217 ilvl. What i do not understand is the hate for the scoring system. I que, and i play mostly with people of similar score, sometimes there is a leaver but who cares. If i didnt have the addon or a score i wouldnt know if the person im taking to the group is good or not, if we go down that road, might as well eliminate achievements. Ive seen here that people believe it eliminates the social aspect to the game. Im guildless right now, and i play on a small server alliance side, i highly doubt ill find a guild anyways.

    I login que up and do like 2 dungeons each day and thats it, i dont care if anyone says hey or bye or anything during the run as long as we finish as fast as possible and then i still have time left for other activities. Maybe my approach is wrong, but its been like this during wrath too, or you folks dont remember *the gearscore* ?

    Im playing with people with a skillset similar to my own, that way no one is boosting me. So i dont understand how a system that allows you to take people based on your own prefered choice of class or specc, is wrong ?
    Or is it just that only people who never get taken complain?

    - - - Updated - - -

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by exsanguinate View Post
    raider.io is pure illness for this game.
    Why ? All it does is allow you to take people you want, based on your compatibility, spec desireability and your perceived thoughts of their potential skill.
  1. crusadernero's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by JorimoniLS View Post
    First of all let me just say that im not playing dumb or anything like that just genuine curiosity. So i dont think im the greatest player. Ive played a protection paladin for around 15 years now and ive always been decent. Usually hardest difficulty kills but with plenty of nerfs to the raids, and overgearing. Ive stopped playing for a whole year to just take a break and i recently came back ( around 3 weeks ago ) got my Mythic+ score to 1.9k. Previously the character was geared around 217 ilvl. What i do not understand is the hate for the scoring system. I que, and i play mostly with people of similar score, sometimes there is a leaver but who cares. If i didnt have the addon or a score i wouldnt know if the person im taking to the group is good or not, if we go down that road, might as well eliminate achievements. Ive seen here that people believe it eliminates the social aspect to the game. Im guildless right now, and i play on a small server alliance side, i highly doubt ill find a guild anyways.

    I login que up and do like 2 dungeons each day and thats it, i dont care if anyone says hey or bye or anything during the run as long as we finish as fast as possible and then i still have time left for other activities. Maybe my approach is wrong, but its been like this during wrath too, or you folks dont remember *the gearscore* ?

    Im playing with people with a skillset similar to my own, that way no one is boosting me. So i dont understand how a system that allows you to take people based on your own prefered choice of class or specc, is wrong ?
    Or is it just that only people who never get taken complain?
    Fair point, and I get it. Its a nice thing knowing you can queue up with people of somewhat same skill and knowledge to doing m+. That said, when you play a tank in the m+ universe, especially as a mostly solo player, you get grps instantly all the time. Its a whole different story as a dps, especially if you are playing the "wrong" class or have the "wrong" covenant at the time. dps is dime a dozen, so its either meta or gtfo. A tank? You are most welcome, always.

    Also - even though there are positives to raider.io, there are negatives to it too. This has turned the whole endgame activity of doing dungeons into a metaslave ranking game. Its debatable if thats suitable for a MMORPG.
  1. Twdft's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by JorimoniLS View Post
    What i do not understand is the hate for the scoring system.
    The only people hating it, are players who want to run content higher than their experience level and don't get picked because theylack said experience. They are also not able to admit that they want to get into groups above their experience.

    I do wonder however, why the same people don't say a word about pvp rating.
  1. JorimoniLS's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by crusadernero View Post
    Fair point, and I get it. Its a nice thing knowing you can queue up with people of somewhat same skill and knowledge to doing m+. That said, when you play a tank in the m+ universe, especially as a mostly solo player, you get grps instantly all the time. Its a whole different story as a dps, especially if you are playing the "wrong" class or have the "wrong" covenant at the time. dps is dime a dozen, so its either meta or gtfo. A tank? You are most welcome, always.

    Also - even though there are positives to raider.io, there are negatives to it too. This has turned the whole endgame activity of doing dungeons into a metaslave ranking game. Its debatable if thats suitable for a MMORPG.
    Well yes i understand that, but you cant really fault the players for wanting the max chance for their group to succeed right? EVEN if there was no score, i would still prefer a resto shaman to heal me because i like their healing the best, and it has a good synergy with my own cooldowns. Id still choose some classes over others. And perfect balance is impossible, unless homogeny takes place. However despite this i would say that any class and any spec can achieve 2k score. However you might get stuck doing only your own key. Every system has flaws, i dont particularly mind this one, but contrary to your belief if dps have it so hard and tanks have it so easy, very rarely it comes down that dps ask "hey wanna do some more" since group is full and its convenient.

    Critique comes down hard... You play to pass your time and then someone says why arent you doing the same dmg as this other *mage* which is doing twice your dps. Flaming is never fun and i dislike it, dont tolerate it in my groups. But ill still choose, score or no score if i can choose based on something i will.
  1. Cyi's Avatar
    I thought Blizzard put in their own ranking system into the game. Why do we even need this?
  1. Tiwack's Avatar
    Raiderio make money off player-trafic, whether or not players use these 3rd party tools responsibly is another matter, blizz could do more to incentivize social interaction by reducing their boner for esports in every aspect of endgame wow, not everyone enjoys playing on a timer or attempting to clear the same raid on 4 seperate difficulties every tier.
  1. Alanar's Avatar
    The rating is obviously helping in some way as others have said when you are 2400, it feels like a big risk to let lower ratings sich as 1700 or what ever.. fear of disbanding group or just failing your key.

    It feels the same as pvp.. like it has been in the game for a long time, does it help to remove toxicty? No not at all.

    I dont have a solution, but does removing rio help at sll?
  1. Esper's Avatar
    The real culprit is M+. Raider.io is just a symptom of that. The way the system is set up encourages the toxic behavior. If keys didn't deplete or de-rank upon a failed run there would be more willingness to try with a person you're not 100% sure will get it done.
  1. Peacemoon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Esper View Post
    The real culprit is M+. Raider.io is just a symptom of that. The way the system is set up encourages the toxic behavior. If keys didn't deplete or de-rank upon a failed run there would be more willingness to try with a person you're not 100% sure will get it done.
    Yep and this sort of thinking about player psychology is always lacking in Blizzard’s decisions I feel. Ever since they first introduced LFG back in WotLK and plenty of us earned it would break down realm, player and community identities.
  1. Caprias's Avatar
    Why do I feel like all the people talking shit about raider io here are at least 40+?

    Back in my day before the war...
  1. Kiwijello's Avatar
    You are so out of touch. You have splintered the playerbase into tiny little fragments. Your system works, but instead of 300 people in queue, there are THREE that fit the criteria.

    I remember when you would go in /world and say LF DPS for Strat. We didn't ask what gear they had. We didn't ask what spec. We made it work. Now it's I want a 5884884 iLEVEL iOS Score with this specific spec AND race, with this specific set of gear, and oh, you need this specific KEY. It's stupid. I guess it makes some people feel special /shrug
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