Blizzard Lays Off 600

[Andy Chalk]

Blizzard Lays Off 600

Blizzard Entertainment has announced that it will cut roughly 600 employees from its global workforce.

Following a "review of its business based on current organizational needs," World of Warcraft [http://www.blizzard.com] team will not be touched. The bad news, obviously, is that 600 people are, or soon will be, out of work.

"Constant evaluation of teams and processes is necessary for the long-term health of any business. Over the last several years, we've grown our organization tremendously and made large investments in our infrastructure in order to better serve our global community," CEO Mike Morhaime said in a statement. "However, as Blizzard and the industry have evolved we've also had to make some difficult decisions in order to address the changing needs of our company."

Blizzard said that its current development schedule, which of course includes the still-undated Diablo 3 [http://www.amazon.com/Diablo-III-Collectors-Pc/dp/B0050SZC5U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330546462&sr=8-1], will not be affected by the cuts, and that it is in fact "still recruiting and looking to hire qualified developers for a number of open positions." But no matter how it's spun, 600 job losses in a company that employees less than 5000 has to hurt. We wish all the best to Blizzard employees affected by the cuts.


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[rembrandtqeinstein]

review of its business based on current organizational needs

Notice how whenever a corporation "review's its needs" the outcome is never lower executive compensation or increase employee benefits.

And I can almost guarantee you that nobody laid off was either a relative or friend of a board member or executive.

Could you image if they were honest?

Possible press conference from bizarro world:

We the owners decided that we wanted more lewt for ourselves. Our hooker and blow sessions weren't nearly as frequent as they should be so we decided to let go some peons and transfer the amount we were spending on them to us. How will they provide for their families? We don't care, not our problem. Their work will be distributed to our remaining peons because its not like they are going to quit in this economy. In conclusion, we're rich, fuck you.

Actually come to think of it that would be a breath of fresh air compared to the patent disingenuity of "reviewed our needs" doublespeak.

 

[draythefingerless]

Translation: 2 million dead subscriptions = 600 dead jobs. you can fucking calculate it mathematically to a precision

 

[draythefingerless]

review of its business based on current organizational needs

Notice how whenever a corporation "review's its needs" the outcome is never lower executive compensation or increase employee benefits.

And I can almost guarantee you that nobody laid off was either a relative or friend of a board member or executive.

Could you image if they were honest?

Possible press conference from bizarro world:

We the owners decided that we wanted more lewt for ourselves. Our hooker and blow sessions weren't nearly as frequent as they should be so we decided to let go some peons and transfer the amount we were spending on them to us. How will they provide for their families? We don't care, not our problem. Their work will be distributed to our remaining peons because its not like they are going to quit in this economy. In conclusion, we're rich, fuck you.

Actually come to think of it that would be a breath of fresh air compared to the patent disingenuity of "reviewed our needs" doublespeak.

ill respect an asshole if hes an asshole with balls. business is business, but you dont have to be a pussy and a weasel about it.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Revenue increase US$4.447 billion (2010)

Job Cuts: 12%

Bastards.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Unfortunately, they can't loudly report on when they've hired a thousand extra people in a press release, if they've got shareholders, they're going to want to know why the expense.

I do agree tho, that all the time there's people earning six figure salaries, there shouldn't be people lower down the ladder losing their jobs.

 

[Sylveria]

I'm sure this was necessary. Blizzard only pulls in, what, $150million a month? No this is Kotek saying "Profits are down slightly, we need massive layoffs to balance it out. Now get me some more cocaine and a new jet."

 

[Jumwa]

The actual quote was ?The World of Warcraft development team will not be impacted" rather than WoW "will not be touched".

The original wording has more wiggle room, and doesn't necessarily mean that the WoW development team didn't receive cuts. Think about it: 'Sure, we cut a lot of jobs from the WoW dev team, but I don't believe it'll impact development at all.'

Seeing as the reason for these cuts is most definitely to do with the fact that WoW subscriptions have plummeted about a fifth since Cataclysm launched, it'd be strange if WoW wasn't touched by this at all. Perhaps they're right in that WoW development wont be affected, maybe it'll just mean less customer support. But that was solid to begin with... right?

Anyhow, whether they did or did not cut back on the WoW dev team, the first thing they would rush to do is deny that it would impact current WoW subscribers, to reassure the customer base so as to not spur more fleeing. And since their phrasing didn't explicitly rule out cuts there...

 

[dobahci]

This is why I can't stand to be stuck in the same room with someone who's into business or marketing or whatever. Because they talk like this:

"Constant evaluation of teams and processes is necessary for the long-term health of any business. Over the last several years, we've grown our organization tremendously and made large investments in our infrastructure in order to better serve our global community," CEO Mike Morhaime said in a statement. "However, as Blizzard and the industry have evolved we've also had to make some difficult decisions in order to address the changing needs of our company."

Ugh. Honestly, who talks like that besides them and maybe politicians? It's a bunch of sentences with random business lingo thrown in that tell you absolutely nothing. It's possibly the most generic set of sentences you could possibly come up with short of using words like "things" and "stuff". You could remove "Blizzard" and substitute the name of any other company on the planet and it'd fit just as well.

It's like they have a template in Microsoft Word that they use to come up with this stuff, or some kind of general purpose Businessman Press Release Generator with patented BullshitSpeak technology.

 

[Seventh Actuality]

Death of WoW again, obviously.

 

[faefrost]

This is where it can be taken a lot of different ways. And I never ever understand why companies use so much doublespeak and pointless blathering rather than just simply say what is going on? What they are affraid of spooking the investors? Just laying off %12 of the work force with no clear reason won't?

I have seen some reports that indicate that the majority of the cuts were in areas that had become somewhat redundant since the Activision merger. Sales, marketing, HR administration etc. While harsh for the person sitting in that chair, you can understand why companies make those sorts of cuts. If the people who handle your employee health insurance questions are now all sitting in Activisions HQ, why are you still paying a staff of 6 at the Blizz HQ to do the same thing? Etc. And yeah a drop of 2 million subscribers could easily trigger a round of evaluations about this sort of thing. "How much are we spending? How much do we need to be spending?" etc.

As well I wonder how much of it is from oddball branches of things? How many employee's does Blizzard have supporting it's WOW CCG? How many people are buying or playing that? Other one off WoW Diablo or Starcraft product lines that aren't core software? In todays economy they may be scaling those back.

Is there a previously unannounced Software product that might have ended up on the chopping block for whatever reason in the current environment? This wouldn't be the first time that Blizz did this. Anyone remember Starcraft Ghost?

Until more leaks out we just will not know what is really going on.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Damn, more unemployed.

When will people learn.

 

[Robert Ewing]

I hate to say it... But It's most likely Activision's fault... The very second those two partnered up. Blizzards business strategy seemed to went fucktarded.

They where up something like $44bln. Yet had a 12% job cut. Blizzard has, and never would of done that in my mind... It's all on those bastards at activision. I'm willing to put money on it.

This is extremely out of character for Blizzard. On top of that, what's happening to all their new titles coming up?

 

[CJ1145]

Misread as "Blizzard fires God".

Lulz were had.

Then I saw that the most uber-rich bozos in the business short of EA laid off 600 innocent workers, and I got pissed.