I wonder if this will end up being the straw that breaks the camel's back and leads to unionization in the game industry. I've seen a decent uptick in serious discussion about it already this year after so many other dumb decisions by AAA publishers.<p>I know a lot of people here don't think there should be unions in software, but I think the game industry is a special case. There's enough starry eyed people that love the idea of working on games enough that they are willing to put up with total abuse and just about no one who cares about raising a family can seriously stay in that industry.<p>I myself spent a few years in it, and even though I love making games, it's just a serious hobby for me because I can't put up with the expected constant crunch, low salaries, and layoffs after every finished project.
They fired a well know community manager [1] for their World of Warcraft franchise, this after making more promises during Blizzcon in November to increase communication with the community.<p>Well, seems they fire four and these were the well liked CMs from more than just the WOW property.<p>As I posted on a previous thread relating to this upcoming issue. Activision / Blizzard has been incredibly tone deaf with regards to the desires of their fans.<p>The most blatant on Blizzards part was the big Diablo announcement of it going mobile. Which was so badly received you could see the shell shock among the developers<p>[1] <a href="https://twitter.com/CadenHouse/status/1095450053001371649" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/CadenHouse/status/1095450053001371649</a><p>[2] <a href="https://twitter.com/LashesSashes/status/1095452768364457989" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/LashesSashes/status/1095452768364457989</a><p>[3] <a href="https://twitter.com/jjhill_ii/status/1095451189758455808" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/jjhill_ii/status/1095451189758455808</a><p>[4] <a href="https://twitter.com/hitstreak/status/1095456359594610689" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/hitstreak/status/1095456359594610689</a>
Here's some additional context for these layoffs:<p>As of June 2018 Blizzard employeed around 9,800 people[1]. So this layoff represents a turnover of ~8% of staff. Depending on Blizzard's base turnover rate, which I couldn't find, they may be better or worse overall than the industry turnover rate of ~15% [2]<p>Blizzard was considered one of the best companies to work for in 2018, at least by Forbes, though you can absolutely find examples of poor working conditions and unreasonable expectations as is the unfortunate par for the course in the games industry.<p>The 78 person studio mentioned in the article (Z2Live) was a second degree acquisition (acquired by King who was then acquired by Blizzard), with their last release being in 2012[3].<p>[1] <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/activision-blizzard/#2a4ede782599" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/companies/activision-blizzard/#2a4ede...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/team-building-and-staffing/technology-tops-list-of-industry-talent-turnover-rates-/d/d-id/1331668" rel="nofollow">https://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/team-building-...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z2_(company)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z2_(company)</a>
> In the future, Kotick said Activision-Blizzard will invest primarily in live services, Battle.net, and esports, with a focus on the following franchises: Candy Crush, Call of Duty, Overwatch, Warcraft, Diablo, and Hearthstone.<p>No mention of StarCraft. This makes me sad. While I don‘t play video games anymore StarCraft was a big part of my childhood and it had a big influence on gaming and e-sports. I don‘t think Twitch and streaming would be as big if it weren‘t for StarCraft and the amazing people around it. Something about this game attracted driven people with great personalities.
> The layoffs, which will mostly be in non-game-development areas like publishing, will impact Activision, Blizzard, and King. In one case, an entire studio of 78 people was shut down—Seattle-based mobile game studio Z2Live.<p>> The implication is that the positive results reported came thanks to a fairly narrow bench of franchises, with many of the company's efforts outside those franchises not meeting expectations.<p>Sounds like the good properties did great and the second tier properties did worse than expected. I'm not sure why a company would chase bad money with good, sounds like a reasonable choice to reduce properties and downsize in favor of bolstering properties that are working and growing.
There's a great thread on Twitter that I can't find right now discussions some of the second order effects of layoffs like these:<p>* Game dev with family has to choose to either uproot family and leave area to find new job, or chooses to leave game dev and go get a job writing CRUD apps somewhere. Net result is loss of expertise - who's training the junior devs?<p>Remember, layoffs like these are common in the AAA game industry. I used to want to be a game developer, now I'm sad I didn't pursue it, but also thankful for the security of my "standard" software job.
>>In the future, Kotick said Activision-Blizzard will invest primarily in live services, Battle.net, and esports, with a focus on the following franchises: Candy Crush, Call of Duty, Overwatch, Warcraft, Diablo, and Hearthstone. For those franchises, Activision actually expects to increase, not reduce, development resources in 2019.<p>While reading I suddenly felt good thinking "luckily my company's primary asset is not "Candy Crush" ". (no specific reason - for an old guy like me it just feels absolutely volatile - on the other hand it does make me feel I'm in the wrong parallel universe)
I did not know King was owned by Activision/Blizzard [1]. I wonder if/how it will affect the development of the Defold engine [2].<p>1: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_(company)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_(company)</a><p>2: <a href="https://www.defold.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.defold.com/</a>
Activision-Blizzard is a publicly-traded company. In such situations, the priority on "human" or emotional type issues comes second to the quarterly numbers, which investors look at. Is this good, bad? I don't know, but it's one of the perils of working for a publicly-traded company. Having worked in banking for years, a yearly layoff-and-hire cycle happened over and despite profits-reported. Investors care about future earnings more than they care about "community" and "communication," "best companies to work for" and some other words tossed around below. And I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm only reporting what I observe as the explanation.
before we all get riled up note from the article, notice the non-game-development part<p>The layoffs, which will mostly be in non-game-development areas like publishing, will impact Activision, Blizzard, and King. In one case, an entire studio of 78 people was shut down—Seattle-based mobile game studio Z2Live. This is in spite of Kotick saying that the company achieved "record results in 2018." Activision made a statement about exceeding its expectations, but other market-watchers clearly had higher numbers in mind.
Jim Sterling goes off on this: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMAUHXXMHPk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMAUHXXMHPk</a>
> The layoffs, which will mostly be in non-game-development areas like publishing...<p>> Currently, staffing levels on some teams are out of proportion with our current release slate.<p>hint: they've got nothing on the release slate for _years_.<p>and no, you don't get a source, because it isn't a URL.