Gaming News

nix

The only surprising thing is how long it took them to do it, anytime a company is merged or swallowed, there are a lot of lay offs. Sadly

Varik

nix wrote: »

The only surprising thing is how long it took them to do it, anytime a company is merged or swallowed, there are a lot of lay offs. Sadly

People crying out for Disney to finish buying Fox, and while I'm looking forward to Marvel studio headed X-men and may an actually good FF it's going to be an absolute bloodbath for job losses.

johnny_ultimate

Activision Blizzard reports record revenue as they **** over 800 employees

A+ headline writing from Waypoint (not to mention a sly note to their own employers)

Vicxas

Apparently they fired 8% of their grunt staff so they could hire 20% more devs to make more games.

The wheel of capitalism in full force.

Retr0gamer

Mostly Quality and Support staff I say. So expect a very consumer focused Activision going forward

Kiith

It's not surprising. If they can save money by cutting staff, while still making the games that make them money, it's a no brainer from a financial point of view. It's not like they care what people think of them...they'll still buy their games. Bobby Kotick saying "he sees more space in mobile markets for free-to-play models to take off for Activision and Blizzard franchises." is more worrying, and expect to see more Diablo Immortals soon.

Cordell

Mass layoffs and studio closures are quite common in the gamedev industry, anyone working in it should be aware of that, and most are. It's a, let's say, a very dynamic environment.

gizmo

Vicxas wrote: »

Apparently they fired 8% of their grunt staff so they could hire 20% more devs to make more games.

The wheel of capitalism in full force.

There's a caveat to this, the increase in development capacity is concentrated on "increasing the size of development teams on key franchises - including Call of Duty, CandyCrush, Overwatch, Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Diablo" in order to "accelerate the pace and quality of content for their communities and [to support] a number of new product initiatives".

For those interested in new releases rather than new content, outside of the possibility of Warcraft 4 which, unless WC3: Reforged sells gangbusters, is unlikely and Diablo 4, which is thankfully in active development, it doesn't exactly instill confidence in their future offerings.

That being said, this has been Activision's MO for over a decade. As Kotick said during the Vivendi merger all those years ago in reference to those games which didn't survive the cull...

With respect to the franchises that don't have the potential to be exploited every year across every platform with clear sequel potential that can meet our objectives of over time becoming USD 100 million plus franchises, that's a strategy that has worked very well for us.

The only thing that's changed is $100 million has become a $1 billion...

gizmo

In entirely unrelated news...

Now THQ Nordic has bought the Kingdom Come: Deliverance dev

I'd be really interested to see what their plan is going forward because right now, there's an unfortunate smell of Starbreeze about all of this. It's not helped by the fact that their development budgets for some of the newly acquired IP haven't exactly done their respective releases any favours, Darksiders 3 unfortunately springs to mind.

Sonics2k

It's bad enough that so many people have been let go, what's absolutely awful is the fact that with US employment laws there's not even a notice period of a lot of these people. They just hand in their badges on the spot and that's it. Go home.

Shiminay

I cannot understand how Americans continue to allow themselves to be so badly shafted by the companies they work for and why their laws are set up to protect the company and not the person working for it. I know why it was set up that way - the rich white dudes in power owned all the companies (no to mention a literal slave labour workforce) and wanted to make all the money. When the slaves were taken away, they just had to adjust the legal frameworks accordingly, but the US has powerful trade unions, why are their employment laws still so barbaric?

SolvableKnave

Shiminay wrote: »

I cannot understand how Americans continue to allow themselves to be so badly shafted by the companies they work for and why their laws are set up to protect the company and not the person working for it. I know why it was set up that way - the rich white dudes in power owned all the companies (no to mention a literal slave labour workforce) and wanted to make all the money. When the slaves were taken away, they just had to adjust the legal frameworks accordingly, but the US has powerful trade unions, why are their employment laws still so barbaric?

Because those same rich white people are still in power. Those big multinat's still lobby politicians. The amount of money raised through lobbying is staggering. That will not change in America. America set itself down this road, and unfortunately for the average joe and jane soap, there are no turn offs. And that's across the board: Medical / Education / Emplaoyment Law / Insurance. The companies own the politicians, the companies set the policies.

Cordell

Does skin color make any difference?
Anyway, it's not a kick in the butt straight to the dole/foodstamps. These people (tech industry) will usually get severance payments way beyond anything required in either US and EU.

Sonics2k

Shiminay wrote: »

I cannot understand how Americans continue to allow themselves to be so badly shafted by the companies they work for and why their laws are set up to protect the company and not the person working for it. I know why it was set up that way - the rich white dudes in power owned all the companies (no to mention a literal slave labour workforce) and wanted to make all the money. When the slaves were taken away, they just had to adjust the legal frameworks accordingly, but the US has powerful trade unions, why are their employment laws still so barbaric?

Sure, you know what the yanks are like. Anything around unions or fair treatment for worker is dismissed as communism and socialist behaviour to be abhorred.

Cordell wrote: »

Does skin color make any difference?
Anyway, it's not a kick in the butt straight to the dole/foodstamps. These people (tech industry) will usually get severance payments way beyond anything required in either US and EU.

A lot of these guys aren't 'tech industry' though. Largely we're looking at CS reps, forum reps and PR people. Blizzard even let go some of their leading and most respected personalities. Blizzard US also has that disgusting policy of keeping 'temporary' employees on basically full-time work, often for less pay and no commitment. In many cases these folks can be with the company for several years.

johnny_ultimate

Complete lack of regulation; corporate / partisan propaganda posing as mainstream or local media; a judicial system tragically susceptible to ideological bias and political interference; a political system owned by lobbyists and special interests; an electoral system fatally compromised by gerrymandering and corporate funding; a congress basically unable to get anything meaningful passed due to chronic dysfunction; a lack of the basic social welfare supports and labour laws taken for granted in almost every other western country; an economic system that demands unrealistic and in some cases delusional levels of corporate growth... one could go on :pac:

As said: the system's broken in the US (and let's be honest to varying degrees almost everywhere else as well), and I'm really glad to see it beginning to come up in conversations about gaming. These systemic failings seem, on the outside, reasonably far removed from loot boxes, Activision lay-offs and the likes, but really it's all intimately connected.

There's cause for some quiet optimism. The nascent, increasingly influential democratic socialist movement led by Sanders and AOC shows early signs that more people are realising that corporations and most politicians really don't have their best interests at heart. In gaming conversations over the last few years, I've definitely noticed a mounting push for unionisation and more persistent, louder critiques of the outrageous demands placed on workers with in the industry through crunch, worker insecurity etc (hardly restricted to the US of A). Hopefully the pressure continues to mount, and at some stage there'll be a breaking point that will prompt genuine change. Little solace, of course, to the 800 people just let go by their enormously successful employer.

Varik

For mass layoffs there is notice period are for larger companies, but there's a lot of rules to it and it's more to do with a "they shut down the plant/mine" kind of thing rather than a spread out employer.

People can bitch and complain all they like but it's all at state level. Look at recent and highly reported BuzzFeed and Vice layoffs, it vastly differed by state in terms and notice period. It's a lot easier to move state than move everything from Ireland to Poland.

Also it's not just the US, from the non committed answer some of the 500 in Cork might go.

Retr0gamer

The government basically crippling any power trade unions had under Reagan was a big step backwards for the US. A lot of progress was lost as socialist changes are labelled as communist. And it's why you see people like Sanders still struggling to get support from the very people that are in dire need of the changes he is proposing.

gizmo

The specific terms of the severance packages offered to employees may differ legally from state to state, the Buzzfeed example Varik mentioned being the most high profile one recently, but in 49/50 states in America, the default grounds for employment is At-will employment which, in rather simplistic terms, is the perfect combination of the US-centric view of "freedom good, government bad".

Personally I don't understand how anyone in their right mind would favour the US led approach to employment rights over a more European-centric one.

Stone Deaf 4evr

gizmo wrote: »

The specific terms of the severance packages offered to employees may differ legally from state to state, the Buzzfeed example Varik mentioned being the most high profile one recently, but in 49/50 states in America, the default grounds for employment is At-will employment which, in rather simplistic terms, is the perfect combination of the US-centric view of "freedom good, government bad".

Personally I don't understand how anyone in their right mind would favour the US led approach to employment rights over a more European-centric one.

For all their bravado, the yanks have a lot of it very wrong, they work crazy unpaid hours, have feck all holidays and feck all rights. My skin crawls when I see lads on boards posting about taking emails at the weekend and out of hours. Its nonsense, and everyone should stop doing it so it doesn't become the norm.

ShadowHearth

We talked about this crap going on with gaming companies before. They became so blown out and the only gods who they listen to are share holders.

So such big and old company as Blizzard did something like this after making stupid amount of money. Their response: we made metric **** ton of money, but we wanted to make 2 metric **** tons of money. Disappointing... Let go 800 people.

So funny with EA too. They were going down and had so much bad press. Then they threw a bone to gamers in a shape of Apex and all is good again. Stock prices went up, everyone is happy. In no disrespect to Respawn, they did a decent game, but aren't gamers a bit stupid?

raze_them_all_

ShadowHearth wrote: »

We talked about this crap going on with gaming companies before. They became so blown out and the only gods who they listen to are share holders.

So such big and old company as Blizzard did something like this after making stupid amount of money. Their response: we made metric **** ton of money, but we wanted to make 2 metric **** tons of money. Disappointing... Let go 800 people.

So funny with EA too. They were going down and had so much bad press. Then they threw a bone to gamers in a shape of Apex and all is good again. Stock prices went up, everyone is happy. In no disrespect to Respawn, they did a decent game, but aren't gamers a bit stupid?

The public doesn't decide what big companies are worth, stock markets and wallstreet does. If apex doesn't make a dime from now they'll be in bother, its cos wallstreet expects it to make money share price rose

Dyr

Did we ban all Goobergate discussion just so the mods could turn this into a People Before Profit branch meeting?

dreamers75

ShadowHearth wrote: »

So funny with EA too. They were going down and had so much bad press. Then they threw a bone to gamers in a shape of Apex and all is good again. Stock prices went up, everyone is happy. In no disrespect to Respawn, they did a decent game, but aren't gamers a bit stupid?

Yeah EA threw Anthem or Apex under the bus......a ****ing gain..T2 release is still now 3 years later ****ing retarded. Probably the best FPS game ever...even better than that Half Life thing.


Time will tell if Respawn or Bioware got the bus treatment, Anthem is out tomorrow for some people.

Varik

A free to play battle royal and a loot shooter don't really cross over much.

dreamers75

Varik wrote: »

A free to play battle royal and a loot shooter don't really cross over much.

They kinda do, I have played both and will play both in the future.

One will still be played in 3 months time.

kunst nugget

Bambi wrote: »

Did we ban all Goobergate discussion just so the mods could turn this into a People Before Profit branch meeting?

Yeah, discussing the implications of those layoffs and showing some empathy for the situation these workers now find themselves in is soooo gay. And communist. Probably.

raze_them_all_

https://twitter.com/ForceStrategy/status/1095826493626814465?s=20

Sonics2k

Bambi wrote: »

Did we ban all Goobergate discussion just so the mods could turn this into a People Before Profit branch meeting?

Because people have been talking about it for like 4 years and we're sick of it. 800 people lose their jobs in the last 24 hours in a massive gaming company is a bit more worthy of this actual thread.

SolvableKnave

People have gotten so worked up in this thread, their english has gone to 5hit.

Dyr

Sonics2k wrote: »

Because people have been talking about it for like 4 years and we're sick of it. 800 people lose their jobs in the last 24 hours in a massive gaming company is a bit more worthy of this actual thread.

The same chappies who moan about some broohaa thats 4 years old being played out then immediately launch into bandstanding about Ronnie ****ing Reagans presidency (40 years lads ) and the evils of American Corporate Culture like they're auditioning for a job in Kotaku

Sometimes you have to call bull**** on the carry on.