Blizzard lays off over 600 employees

[Grooveriding]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02/29/blizzard-announces-layoffs-of-600-employees-worldwide/

Blizzard Entertainment creator of the perennially popular World of Warcraft announced today that it would be laying off 600 of its employees worldwide. While Blizzard takes care to note that WoW's development won't be impacted by the layoffs, we find it a bit difficult to take solace in that fact when hundreds of people are losing their jobs....

It's always the most successful companies in a given field doing the layoffs. Sad days, guess the shareholders need that extra dime a share.

 

[Red Storm]

How many employees does Blizzard have? 600 seems like a pretty big number for a dev company (even one as big as Blizzard).

 

[dougp]

Probably all the gold farmers in China because of the new working conditions concern brought on by Apple.

 

[nageov3t]

wonder which divisions the firings are coming from.

surely Diablo 3 production/marketing must be ramping down.

 

[terry107]

How many employees does Blizzard have? 600 seems like a pretty big number for a dev company (even one as big as Blizzard).

That was my initial thought as well. Wikipedia says they have over 4,600 employees.

 

[sigurros81]

Once in a while cleaning house/consolidation is a good thing. Sometimes when a company gets too big, they start to be mismanaged and hire on people to do a single simple task, and all that really happens is a bloated overhead.

I was with an agency that had people working there that I seriously wonder everyday "they really created a position for your job, are you kidding me?"

 

[Red Storm]

That was my initial thought as well. Wikipedia says they have over 4,600 employees.

Wtf?! lol Valve has ~260 by comparison.

 

[gorcorps]

How in the hell can a dev that has basically only 3 series of games ongoing fire 600 people and say development won't be affected? "It's done when it's done" my fat ass...

 

[Ns1]

How in the hell can a dev that has basically only 3 series of games ongoing fire 600 people and say development won't be affected? "It's done when it's done" my fat ass...

Qa/support for wow?

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Wtf?! lol Valve has ~260 by comparison.

Valve isn't running any MMOs though...with appurtenant billing et al services.

Although I thought most MMOs used unpaid "guides" to help manage their servers and keep numbers of paid CS employees down?

 

[Aikouka]

Qa/support for wow?

I would assume that the positions are something more related to this as well. They could be reducing the number of support positions for WoW around the world, because over the past year or two, they've implemented a lot of measures that cut down on the number of submitted help tickets.

I doubt that their core development teams are being hit at all.

 

[AFurryReptile]

Didn't WoW lose a couple million subscribers this past year? Maybe those layoffs are the in-game moderators that they no longer need.

 

[Anteaus]

http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012...-off-600-likely-primarily-in-customer-service

Update: Blizzard president Mike Morhaime posted in the official Battle.net forums with further explanation of the staff reductions. "In order to keep making epic game content while serving players effectively, we have to be smart about how we manage our resources," Morhaime said. "This means we sometimes have to make difficult decisions about how to best maintain the health of the company. We're in the process of making some of those hard decisions now."

Though he didn't specifically mention customer service, Morhaime said that certain departments were found to be "overstaffed," and were being scaled-down as a result. He assured readers that Blizzard will offer severance packages and "other benefits" to folks affected by the layoffs.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Qa/support for wow?

Yea, I was guessing this too. It's probably been losing steam with a lack of excitement about the expansion. Seems like I don't know anyone actively playing it anymore, which is anecdotal of course.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

What is the current wow subscription price and is there a free 2 play version, and do they count f2p people as "subscribers" in the numbers they boast?

 

[coloumb]

Probably just cutting the excess fat which will be turned into excess profits for the execs.

The company I work for did this a few years ago [during downturn in the semi-conductor industry] and didn't hire any of them back during the upturn. They instead had us absorb their workload into our already busy schedules without giving us a raise [until recently - which was a "catch up" raise to make up for the years we didn't receive any]

 

[PowerYoga]

blizzard does a lot of other stuff and have a lot of in house testers/QA/support. 600 employees != 600 DEVS. You don't lay off that many devs unless you close down a whole division.

 

[Glitchny]

One of the articles I read had a source that claimed over 90% of the people being let go were from support or call center positions. They've streamlined a lot of the call center operations and didn't need the staff anymore, also WoW has been shedding subscribers so that might be a reason as well. Doubt this will impact their work on current projects.

 

[Ns1]

The jobs represent 8.2% of the total workforce at Santa Monica-based Activision, which reported having 7,300 workers at the end of 2011.

Blizzard, which publishes the popular World of Warcraft title, said in a brief statement that 90% of the jobs being affected are not related to game development. As a result, the company said its game release schedule for upcoming titles Diablo III, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard DOTA and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm remain intact.

"I also want to emphasize that we remain committed to shipping multiple games this year, and that our development teams in particular remain largely unaffected by today's announcement," Mike Morhaime, Blizzard's chief executive, wrote in a blog post.

txt

 

[DucatiMonster696]

How in the hell can a dev that has basically only 3 series of games ongoing fire 600 people and say development won't be affected? "It's done when it's done" my fat ass...

According to that wiki posted they have 4,600 employees for those 3 games. So I'd say they are bloated with employees in comparison with other gaming companies who put out new titles yearly.

 

[Doppel]

I am shocked they are that big, really. Apparently not enough people to get Diablo 3 released, though.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

According to that wiki posted they have 4,600 employees for those 3 games. So I'd say they are bloated with employees in comparison with other gaming companies who put out new titles yearly.

An enormous number of them are probably slightly above minimum wage customer service people. Most gaming companies don't need to support a fraction of the infrastructure that something like WoW demands.

 

[drebo]

Maybe they're firing the entire Diablo 3 production team for fucking it up so badly and they'll rehire the team behind Diablo 2 to fix the mess.

We can hope, right?

 

[thejunglegod]

According to that wiki posted they have 4,600 employees for those 3 games. So I'd say they are bloated with employees in comparison with other gaming companies who put out new titles yearly.

Exactly my thoughts. 4600 employees. Good God. That is huge. I used to wonder what Blizz did wiht all the revenue they generated from WOW. Now i know. And also, it makes the Diablo 3 "late release" even more ridiculous.

 

[Craig234]

I guess 'bad customer service' is going to be ok with them. They have had pretty good customer service in the past.

So now when you're on hold for an hour and it says 'your call is important to us', yell at the recording, "liar".