Activision Blizzard facing layoffs.

[fishbowlhead]

Apparently facing huge layoffs next week. Staff are bracing to see who’s going or not.

https://kotaku.com/activision-blizzard-employees-brace-for-massive-layoffs-1832488999

Nice to see all the shareholders being looked after once again.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Are you a developer?
Yes.
Then piss off.

Are you a member of the board who played golf all day?
Yep.
Golden goodbyes ahoy!

[Asura]

They are making ~$10 per month of every single World of Warcraft subscriber. That's got to be at least 50 million a month, after costs.

They have no basis to lay off anyone, unless it's a case of "okay guys, we made ****loads of money, but we could make even more money!"

[fishbowlhead]

I mean it’s absolutely f*****g outrageous that anyone, staff or even floor sweepers, could ever loose their jobs at Blizzard given the Blizzard war chest.

Pretty unbelievable.

I’m guessing two things have happened here.

1: Activision shareholders have finished draining the Blizzard war chest after years of draining it.
2: Activision were wasting money hand over fist propping bungie up with 2 extra teams keeping Destiny 2 to deadlines, which was draining profits from other franchises.

[Asura]

I mean it’s absolutely f*****g outrageous that anyone, staff or even floor sweepers, could ever loose their jobs at Blizzard given the Blizzard war chest.

That's what I mean. It's not like they've made 50m last month, or the month before... They have been making that, potentially more, for FOURTEEN years. Even in my conservative estimate, they've taken in $8,400,000,000.

Now running WoW isn't free. There are server costs, advertising costs, the price of making new content (though they charge for the expansions and will expect all of the playerbase to buy them, so that's got to be quite easy to budget). Even so, the sheer success of that product should completely dwarf any costs they've incurred, or something has gone very, very wrong.

[Brad]

Business doesn’t work like that though. At no point does a business say ok that’s enough money. They look at people who aren’t making them even more money and then they get rid of those people. It sucks.

[Asura]

Business doesn’t work like that though. At no point does a business say ok that’s enough money. They look at people who aren’t making them even more money and then they get rid of those people. It sucks.

True, but a business built on creative products should be wary about that. Obviously they shouldn't waste money on completely non-profitable enterprises, but par for the course is accepting that some things make money, some things don't. It's a fickle business after all.

Then again it makes me wonder why people invest money in videogames unless they personally like videogames. They don't seem like a very good business in which to invest.

[briareos_kerensky]

Then again it makes me wonder why people invest money in videogames unless they personally like videogames. They don't seem like a very good business in which to invest.

Because they like money. They invest money into a blooming market to get more money back. I'm pretty sure every other creative market works like that.

[Asura]

Because they like money. They invest money into a blooming market to get more money back. I'm pretty sure every other creative market works like that.

I know; but they just seem particularly fickle as a business. Even moreso than movies.

[eastyy]

Lay offs here in ireland a while back from them to in a tech support call center, thing i was a bit wary of when it was phrased as it was not a redundancy payment but a years payment if they quit...and the way welfare and taxes work here i was a bit worried about that

[fishbowlhead]

What’s really disgusting about western corps.

Nintendo don’t do as well as they predict, board takes a pay cut out of shame.

Activision don’t do as well, new cfo gets a 15m signing on bonus plus his wage, boby kotic draws 27m bonus, Blizzard staff get laid off.

Errrrrm, right.

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah, how many people could 15 million pay for? The wage gap is stupid. All kinds of messed up.

[fishbowlhead]

Just based on their bonuses of 42m you could pay

840 employees 50k each for a year.
Or
84 employees 50k a year for 10 years.

[Neon Ignition]

Pure guesswork but given the mindset Activision has I wouldn't be surprised if this was the inevitable dawn of their GAAS era.

If they plan on continuing to milk WOW, Overwatch etc for years to come without any real plan to develop full blown successors then they may think there's little need for years of sustaining bulk staffing. Cut the workforce and they make the profit easier to maintain as new content for those games costs a fraction to produce when piecemealed even if user bases fall (look out for Overwatch repackes on XB4 and PS5). Sure, one day each game will reach a level where Blizzard needs to produce new full scale projects but the mindset will be that they can hire replacement staff as need be. Now, the obvious counter argument is that you've lost all the skill and knowledge that created those hits but Mr CEO doesn't care, he'll have jumped ship with a multi-million dollar weaner shake by then so what does he care if it's more likely the studio will collapse?

This is how the house of Activision has run for years. By now WOW has to be a low concern to Acti as well, they can milk it for a while yet but they must be thinking that when it finally ends they won't be able to recreate that success.

[Digfox]

I think it was inevitable given the demand for YOY growth from publicly owned companies, and not really to do with GAAS persay.

Blizzard has been treading water for a while and WoW is certainly not the cash cow it was (you probably are talking closer to 2m than 5m subs atm). The long development cycles and rumours of reboots is probably not helping Blizzard and they have a huge number of employees. That said Blizzard taking their time to craft masterpieces is a good thing imo but clearly there has been a change there. I think that's why they are outsourcing IP, trying to implement quick-win and doing conversions to Switch. Quicker ways of generating revenue.

They obviously would not have planned for the ending of the Bungie contract although we don't have the full picture there.

I would assume this is related to the Activision Blizzard financial results tomorrow and because of smaller profits they are looking to reduce costs (I'm guessing mainly in the back office staff) to reduce the ire of shareholders.