I read on Twitter he was responsible for a lot connected to WoW Classic. In that light it makes sense they let him go after Classic flopped.
I'm not even looking at it from a 'doom and gloom' aspect. I'm looking at it from a, "Dreamhaven has had an unusually-high number of Blizzard alumni who had a large footprint on the company's history joining up" standpoint. It's not unusual to see former big names at Blizzard end up elsewhere continuing to make a name for themselves, or for them to show up in a startup, but it is unusual to see them concentrated like this and so many of them being big names in the company.
That's why I'm interested and curious to see what they come up with; it will be interesting to see if Blizzard was lightning in a bottle or if these guys can manage to recreate the conditions that allowed Blizzard to explode and become an industry force like they did.
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One can have issues with the company, warranted/justified or not, and still enjoy the product that company creates/created.
Be seeing you guys on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA!
You do know thats its more common for senior employess to leave then new ones, since senior have been working at the same place for a long time and want to try new things or new places.
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Was a server enginner at first and then worked on the ui and interface until he started working on Classic.
Oh yeah, I understand that, but he is an experienced senior developer, I would as many others join a well established game company, not a start up founded by Mike ex CEO of Blizzard.
Kinda seems like Mike is stealing ex blizzard employees, judging how many left to join Dreamhaven.
FOMO: "Fear Of Missing Out", also commonly known as people with a mental issue of managing time and activities, many expecting others to fit into their schedule so they don't miss out on things to come. If FOMO becomes a problem for you, do seek help, it can be a very unhealthy lifestyle..
For the most part, the kind of longevity Blizzard has seen for devs is unusual for the industry. In tech turnover is usually high, it's how you move up, you go somewhere else, get paid more and then move on again usually every 2 years or so. I get the feeling that most of the devs just like working with eachother, and when Dreamhaven was set up thats where they wanted to go. Will likely be more people leaving as their current contracts end at Blizzard.
Honestly, the only thing that feels unusual to me is that Dreamhaven kinda appears as a possible future competitor to Blizzard. Usually (or at least where I am from) you are not allowed to join a "competitor" for an X amount of time when you quit the company. For example, at my company I build customs software for large companies and if I were to quit I am not allowed to join another company that also builds customs software for 1 year or so.
But other than that, I remember that when all that insider info about Blizzard was leaked 1 or 2 years ago (can't remember), it said that a lot of employees were burned out from working on huge projects like WoW and wanted to work on small projects. I guess besides Hearthstone and Diablo Immortal, no other smaller projects were planned and thus some of these employees left and joined Dreamhaven (possibly a reason why Dreamhaven was founded too).
Last edited by RobertMugabe; 2021-04-04 at 05:48 PM.
No idea how the situation is in the US (or California for that matter) but a non compete clause isn't just something one can put into a contract, if you work in a specific niche and you can't work in any other branch without suffering a major loss of income, a non compete clause would basically be a deterrent from anyone ever quitting in that niche.
In some countries, the employer also has to compensate to (former) employee for that duration of the non compete clause.
I am by no means a lawyer, but i don't think a non compete clause can be just put into any contract (or more specifically, hold up in front of a court when push comes to shove) unless said job involves trade secrets that would give a competitor a massive edge.
I've heard Morhaime had a non compete clause in its contract, altough makes a bit more sense as he as CEO of Blizzard had a lot of insight into the business plan of Activision Blizzard and thus could reveal to the competition what Activision Blizzards immediate strategy is for the next 2-3 years.
Dreamhaven is looking more interesting each day.
Why are you taking the bait? \sigh
This isn't exactly what a non-compete is meant to stop, but in California non-compete clauses in contracts are illegal.
Generally speaking a dev going from company A to company B, even though both are in the same industry isn't a breach of "non-compete". What they try to stop is you taking knowledge specific to job 1 to job 2, IE you fix Sony thingamajigs and you take a job with a company that fixes thingamajigs from every company and they hired you specifically to fix Sony thingamajigs, which now takes business from Sony either through customer manipulation or other kind of practices that can create an actual financial impact.
Sometimes you've gone as far as you can go with a large company. At that time you have a choice: Settle in and get comfortable with the idea that the rest of your career at the company will be lateral movement or it's time to look and see if there are opportunities elsewhere.
That's how life works. It's so interesting that so many here seem to think that Blizzard can only be OK if they essentially imprison their employees.
Technology sector people move all the time especially if there's a chance to work on fresh challenges.
Personally if I were a Blizzard developer and was stuck on the track of cleaning up and re-releasing old content I might look elsewhere as well.
Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2021-04-04 at 06:16 PM.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
In this day and age if you work in game dev or tech or anything similar your best bet for paycheck advancement is to leave your job and negotiate a new salary at a new job every 2-3 years. You're just fucking yourself over if you stay at a job for useless reasons like 'loyalty' when it doesn't translate into anything tangible.