Activision Blizzard Q4 2018 Earnings Call and Layoffs

They can spare 15 million for a new executive in his first week but they cannot afford to keep their own games running as it was? The suits need to take pay cuts instead of cutting corners, look at Nintendo their highest paid executives took pay cuts when the Wii U was making them take a massive hit, instead of laying off staff they voluntarily took a cut to their massive paychecks just to allow Nintendo to weather the storm without losing people, and all of that paid off with the Nintendo switch saving their arses.

Abandon ship!

Originally Posted by Dawon

Yeah, better to keep all employed and eventually bankrupt the whole company?! Learn the basics of "capitalism" before making statements like that... jesus!

If shit aint profitable enough, would you rather fire some and have 92% still employed to make the company live, or keep all and eventuall 100% lose their jobs?

This isn't a case of the companies involved going bankrupt. They're going mean and lean on non-dev costs, to put those savings into game dev costs, thus the 20% more resources. Sucks for the 800 people, absolutely, but you skipped right past the part where they made a record amount of PROFIT in 2018 and went right to "THEY'RE GOING OUT OF BUSINESS!!!"

Originally Posted by Ungeir

This sucks badly for the individuals being laid off - but it's the right call. This is non-development staff - as a custuomer I'm happy that they're scaling down on the crazy amount of money being spent on e-sports initiatives, reducing the corporate bureaucracy and making sure the resources are spent on development.

Blizzard has been having trouble getting games and content out of the door - they're not producing enough and the quality is often questionable. Many roles, especially in technical and engineering positions are becoming more difficult and expensive to fill. They need to find the money for this somewhere. That 8% layoff isn't being used to increase dividends. It's refocusing the organization for better production of games. Will this succeed? Maybe. It requires more than shifting around budget figures - it's important that the organization has a whole is trimmed. Getting rid of corporate cruft and office politics is extremely difficult. There's a huge risk they'll fail. But this restructuring can be part of succeeding.

as long as the philosophy behind is accurate and as long as the money goes into the right channels, i believe also that this will make sense.

It sucks to see layoffs, and my sympathies to those affected, but this really is the right move.

They're increasing development resources for their core titles, and cutting back staff and costs in non-development sectors.

At the very least it shows that they know where they need to focus growth.

Originally Posted by chooi

So what I get from this is: forget about BFA and Blizz 2019 in general and wait for the next expansion/games in probably 2020/21 when they got their shit sorted out after 'transition year'.

8.2 and Classic are launching this summer, which should bring a solid rebound to Blizzard's numbers by the end of the year. Sekiro is also launching next month, which I expect will be a "surprise success" for Activision.


I'm secretly hoping that they start to consider releasing more primarily singleplayer titles in the future. A world where Blizzard could start publishing semi-annual AAA titles in the Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Overwatch universes? Yes please. It works for other AAA developers.

Originally Posted by Hyeonh

They can spare 15 million for a new executive in his first week but they cannot afford to keep their own games running as it was? The suits need to take pay cuts instead of cutting corners, look at Nintendo their highest paid executives took pay cuts when the Wii U was making them take a massive hit, instead of laying off staff they voluntarily took a cut to their massive paychecks just to allow Nintendo to weather the storm without losing people, and all of that paid off with the Nintendo switch saving their arses.

They didn't say they can't afford to keep their games running, at all, didn't even hint at it. Do you people even read the comments, or just make up what you want all those letters to mean?

Originally Posted by VanishingAct

#LEARNTOMINECOAL AND GOOD RIDDANCE YOU DIVERSITY HIRE TERMITES THAT NEVER CARED ABOUT GAMES OVER YOUR SHIT AGENDAS

Of course they ruined gaming for me so I won't be going back to nublizz games but fuck em and the rest of these termites that have infested the other game studios.
Get woke go broke etc etc.

That's a lot of buzzwords for one post. Also did you mean to type "Get woke, have record earnings year".?

Ythisens is gone.

https://twitter.com/CadenHouse/statu...50053001371649

Originally Posted by Hyeonh

They can spare 15 million for a new executive in his first week but they cannot afford to keep their own games running as it was? The suits need to take pay cuts instead of cutting corners, look at Nintendo their highest paid executives took pay cuts when the Wii U was making them take a massive hit, instead of laying off staff they voluntarily took a cut to their massive paychecks just to allow Nintendo to weather the storm without losing people, and all of that paid off with the Nintendo switch saving their arses.

This is not staff that "keeps games running". This is e-sports and corporate support staff - human resources, middle managers, community managers, social media, influencer relations, etc.

Originally Posted by Kathranis

It sucks to see layoffs, and my sympathies to those affected, but this really is the right move.

They're increasing development resources for their core titles, and cutting back staff and costs in non-development sectors.

At the very least it shows that they know where they need to focus growth.




8.2 and Classic are launching this summer, which should bring a solid rebound to Blizzard's numbers by the end of the year. Sekiro is also launching next month, which I expect will be a "surprise success" for Activision.


I'm secretly hoping that they start to consider releasing more primarily singleplayer titles in the future. A world where Blizzard could start publishing semi-annual AAA titles in the Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Overwatch universes? Yes please. It works for other AAA developers.

yep. ecatly the same has surprised me. it seems nearly they once in life listened to players and there is a small chance, that they really want focus more and better to their core values and invest into them, instead just milking them until they dry out. all in all i am surprised to read this direction, bc imo it is the right direction.

Originally Posted by Bhanzai

I agree. I work for a large multi-national. A few years ago the company made the most profit in its 200 year history and I had the best annual review of my career...then got the lowest raise I've ever received because of 'regional downturns' in divisions of the company that I have no impact on. That was a wake up call and changed how I work.

Now I am just a regular worker who gets normal reviews and gets normal raises but don't spend an extra 15+ hours at work each week. So all in all I'm better off, really.

I'm proud of you, keep it up

Just hire on diversity basic, that will solve everything.

P.S. Could you imagine Blizzard in this state few years ago?

Originally Posted by AngerFork

Personally, I'd ask myself how many of those jobs we could keep for the next year rather than giving our new CFO $15 million of rewards simply for coming on board. But that's just me.

I'd love to see corporate America take that stance, as a whole, but it's one of the ugliest aspects of that part of the business world, that I wouldn't even begin to try and defend. If Blizzard or any corporation said they were deferring corporate bonuses and using that money to pay their employees more, I'd be a solid customer of theirs, but it's so rare now it's almost unicorn rare.

ATVI are no better and no worse than any other companies out there in this regard, and I've worked for many companies who have the same extreme wage disparity between executives and workers, and watched it grow worse every year. I don't know how to fix it, I wish I did.

You know, if they didn't pay their new CFO 15 million they could've actually keep those people?

And people are gonna defend this? Right?

Originally Posted by mvaliz

Or changing WoW to become a new kind of marketing franchise.

~60ish probably

Originally Posted by The-Shan

As long as they give me more narratively driven Warcraft experiences, I'm interesting. Hopefully, this influx of talent also means an influx of new ideas and leadership with more upward movement for innovators.

imagine being this naive...

Originally Posted by Xilurm

You know, if they didn't pay their new CFO 15 million they could've actually keep those people?

And people are gonna defend this? Right?

They didn't, actually.

I can't wait for the new Candy Crush expansion, I am hyped.

Originally Posted by Dawon

Yeah, better to keep all employed and eventually bankrupt the whole company?! Learn the basics of "capitalism" before making statements like that... jesus!

If shit aint profitable enough, would you rather fire some and have 92% still employed to make the company live, or keep all and eventuall 100% lose their jobs?

Billions of $ in profits and lay people off... I know plenty about capitalism fella...

That bit about "We made leadership changes"...yeah, Morhaime was forced out. That's corporate speak for "Morhaime wasn't playing ball." And, of course, it could also mean Morhaime wasn't doing a very good job. He's well liked, but that doesn't drive the money machine.

I was on the "He made the decision on his own" team, but looks like I was wrong.