Blizzard Q&A With Leadership about Return to Office, WoW Hotfixes - February 17, 2023

[ablib]

Good for Blizzard. People working at home aren't productive.

People who aren't productive should be managed out. If they're stealing from the company at home, they'll be stealing from the company onsite. It's a people problem not a work from home problem.

[Linkedblade]

Of course theyre not making their profit sharing, because they hired an entire team of diversity/equity/inclusion professionals. Not sure why they need that if people are working from home. How can you be harassed while at home in your pajamas.

What a joke. There's nothing in active development. WoW is on a fourth digit patch cycle, meaning they are trickling content in as soon as it's available, as miniscule as it is. OW has minimal development. D4 is about to release. All other games are on life support. However they have high profits from what is being consumed, yet they aren't getting their full share.

Called this when the trial ended. This equity lunatics are there to funnel money from the company. So they have two HR teams and didnt do their job

[frackas]

Good for Blizzard. People working at home aren't productive.

Pure ignorance!

[Skylarking]

Pure ignorance!

A better way to put it would be some people working from home aren't productive

[Gloriandus]

"Employees interpreted that comment as suggesting that employees who do not like the return-to-office policy should leave."

Well, yeah, that's how the world works.

Your employer makes the rules; if you don't like them and don't wish to comply, you leave/can't work there anymore. I don't get the criticism of Blizzard here, unless it's purely on tone.

[MiiiMiii]

I really don't like this Ybarra guy. He is just a suit that got phoned in as a leader during the chaos. He was supposed to co-lead with this other woman, but somehow now is there alone. He comes across as arrogant and fake. Mike Morhaime would never set him in charge.

[khazmodan]

If Dragonflight would have made a ton of money then this set of demands would probably not have been made, but since this expansion's sales is mostly because of a decline of quality over the last 2 expansions, Ybarra finds it easier to blame the current staff. Microsoft has to be a bit nervous about paying 68.7 billion dollars for a company in decline and Ybarra is probably feeling pressure as well considering he worked at Microsoft before and was probably hoping to take over All of Acti/Blizz after the merger.

The deal falling through is looking more and more possible now and if it does fall through then the company might be broken up and sold off in parts to whoever thinks they can pull it out of its tailspin.

[Aleksej89]

execs = pure greed in human form.

[Varitok]

"Employees interpreted that comment as suggesting that employees who do not like the return-to-office policy should leave."

Well, yeah, that's how the world works.

Your employer makes the rules; if you don't like them and don't wish to comply, you leave/can't work there anymore. I don't get the criticism of Blizzard here, unless it's purely on tone.

Americans rarely understand working standards and employee rights.

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Of course theyre not making their profit sharing, because they hired an entire team of diversity/equity/inclusion professionals. Not sure why they need that if people are working from home. How can you be harassed while at home in your pajamas.

What a joke. There's nothing in active development. WoW is on a fourth digit patch cycle, meaning they are trickling content in as soon as it's available, as miniscule as it is. OW has minimal development. D4 is about to release. All other games are on life support. However they have high profits from what is being consumed, yet they aren't getting their full share.

Called this when the trial ended. This equity lunatics are there to funnel money from the company. So they have two HR teams and didnt do their job

Just couldn't wait to get mad at PoC and trans people eh? Just bubbling over like some cauldron of hate. Discourse in America is so fucked

[Nzx]

Honestly, this is starting to reek of desperation on behalf of MMOC. None of this is news. Imagine thinking that you need to know about revenue sharing percentages at Coca Cola because you drink their products.

Yes, QA and customer support roles are lowly paid, because they don't require any specialist skills and there are approximately an infinite number of other people who could fill your seat if you left. Yes, sometimes "executives" get fucked by poor company performance as well, and often it's more than "regular" employees get fucked by poor company performance because such a significant part of their remuneration is linked to performance. What the fuck does "strong fourth quarter performance" have to do with revenue share? Does anyone on this website understand the criteria used to scale the revenue share?

Fucking hell. If you think this is "news" you need your head checked.

[Tentim]

I kind of question if they overpay their customer service staff. The last ticket I sent in the gm messed up the copy pasta response cutting off their own name then linking the wrong tos section ( was a automated silence but I was linked to economy manipulation) answered in the email that my punishment was upheld while it was lifted and the email header said it was lifted...

It was so bizzare but I got to use lfd again so whatever.

[Zalraki]

There's only 1 group of people that Blizzard needs to keep happy, and that's the shortsighted shareholders. Screw the rest

[MoanaLisa]

It's telling that if you go over to the Game Developer link and read the whole thing you'll see a small bit that talks about Blizzard management (not Activision in this case) being rather hard-nosed about stuff like this. Kotick deserves some responsibility for how things are there but far too many people are willing to dump the whole thing on Kotick and give Blizzard's management a pass. That's always been a mistake.

Blizzard management does and has always done what's good for the business. Players always come in, at the very best, in second place. I'm not surprised that Ybarra considers customer service and QA as dead-end departments essentially for entry level employees that should be moved out of as soon as possible, the implication being that if you're happy in one of those positions you're not what Blizzard is looking for.

It shows too on the customer side in the constantly degraded customer service experienced over the last dozen years and their approach to launch quality as beta level customer-driven QA. I'm not saying the game should be perfect but it's pretty clear that they now plan for lots of bugs and construct their teams significantly around triage. That's a corporate culture failure to respect and prioritize customer quality. QA after all is Quality Assurance. If you don't give a shit about your QA department then that says something about your product and how you view your customers.

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Honestly, this is starting to reek of desperation on behalf of MMOC. None of this is news. Imagine thinking that you need to know about revenue sharing percentages at Coca Cola because you drink their products.

Employee meetings such as this and extensive articles about the internal goings-on at Blizzard have always been and will always be news here.

[Biomega]

"I don't understand why you're all upset, everyone had to pitch in $10,000 from the janitor to the CEO - clearly this means we all suffer equally from this, no? #mythlife I guess, and if you don't like it there's the door or something idk what I'm saying here." - MikeY Mike

These are professionals. Highly paid professionals. This was a pre-screened event. Teams of people went over this to prepare answers. Teams.

[Gaidax]

People here are so weird - it's fucking capitalism and Ybarra is a top-level exec, what'd you expect that he got there because he plays WoW?

As former QA, I agree with him that QA is just a steppingstone on path to development positions. People worth their shit don't stay QA for more than a few years until they gather all the marbles to be either promoted to dev or find another place that offers it.

And his other comment about happiness - well it's a good life advice really. Some people weirdly marry to the employer. not understanding that at any moment they can get the boot without much of a second thought. Then they act surprised and angry when this happens. wake up, will ya?

Finally, while I do think hybrid mode of work is both superior and here to stay - I don't think anyone should be having expectation of this lasting forever. My current employer still is in work from home mode and they tolerate only 1 day in the office - something I abuse in fullest, given I intend to jump within a year.

But the situation has changed, C19 is practically not a thing anymore and 3/2 begins to be a "meta". I would not be surprised if in a year or two it will become 4/1 standard.

[Xilurm]

Ybarra said "At the end of the day we want people to be happy, and if decisions about about being happy don't align with where we're going, and you won't be happy, then you'll have to do what will make [you] happy."

Couldn't make it more obvious huh?

Employees interpreted that comment as suggesting that employees who do not like the return-to-office policy should leave.

Because that's exactly what it means. Imagine telling someone to go fuck themselves then 10 seconds later saying "well, that's not what I actually meant".

[Sanguinerd]

I never understood posts like these, like who gives a shit how Blizzard run their business. The only thing we should care about is the games.

No one cares about the staff at McDonalds yet when its about Blizzard suddenly everyone has an opinion.

[GUZ]

Thank god now hopefully diablo 4 will release on time. Let people work from home if they are sick or need time off tho.

[RobertMugabe]

I have a 50:50 Home Office and presence policy at the company I work at, although nobody is really looking at it hard as long as you are not abusing anything too much... and it works great.
Like I seriously don't get how whiny people get over having to spend some time in the office despite this being completely normal just 2 years ago. Furthermore, working in IT is already such a luxury compared to let's say working construction, where obviously any home office is not an option (unless they are building your house).

[loras]

What a great way to shoot yourself in the foot.
Control-horny executives chasing away competent and cheap labor yet again.