Well, this is definitely not good. I guess we now know they won’t invest in this game at all, just keep with these bug fixes from time to time until they are all fixed.
What is even scarier is we don’t even know if Hots will have the servers up in the next few years.
wow what a middle finger that is!
It’s unfortunately ‘the norm’ for big tech to do layoffs either after a project is done, or before a quarterly report.
The layoffs come the same month Riot Games, Google, Discord, Twitch, Unity, eBay, and others announced cuts.
The software maker is due to report its fiscal Q2 2024 earnings next week, which, for the first time, will include results from the impact of the Activision Blizzard acquisition.
However, there are more pertinent details in this round:
Blizzard president Mike Ybarra has decided to leave the company.
Mike was about the only vocal assurance that something might yet happen with HotS (one of his streams saying “HotS isn’t done yet”)
Allen Adham, Blizzard’s chief design officer, is also leaving the company.
Blizzard’s previously announced survival game has also been canceled as part of these changes.
Video games ballooned from covid, and it’s been deflating in 2023/'24, so a number of companies are going to be laying off QA, customer support, artists and other personal that’ll be replaced with Generative AI.
I want to say this now coming from someone who’s trying to breach into the industry, its a living nightmare to see these.
Every week I open LinkedIn I get a “Company named >this< lays off (in the thousands)”.
Google, Twitter, Reddit, Twitch, YouTube, Duolingo, Ubisoft and now Microsoft are all hits to name a few.
This isn’t a new trend tbh, this has been happening for years now.
A lot of these layoffs always circulate to over hiring during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Don’t worry my friend at Microsoft said they’ll keep the servers up until I make it to GM.
HotS is now permanently playable.
I hacked your account. You’re GM since this morning 
Oh? Sorry then guys, I failed to keep hots alive…
Blizzard’s unannounced survival project is cancelled too. The team must be devastated. I know this is pretty common in Blizzard’s history, but it still stings. I was looking forward to a new IP instead of rehashing the same stuff. I wonder if we’ll ever get a behind the scenes look at what it was. Obviously, we don’t know all the details, but I can’t imagine how a Blizzard game wouldn’t make their money back. Blizzard is one of the few companies that can afford to spend time stewing and iterating in development, for better or worse. And if they’re not allowed to do that anymore, it’s a bit sad, especially for a company that just passed three trillion in evaluation.
Must have been extremely messy, I remember getting a recommend of job hiring for the project on my LinkedIn, the images they used were AI generated, it must have been this bad to not use some concept art.
That was something I was looking forward to. Diablo 4 looked very interesting to me, I’m just not sure I like the way that game is structured so I don’t think it was for me. I’m also not super fond of mobile games either which seems to have been the only real “new” content besides a sequel or remaster.
I love survival games though and I was looking forward to that one. Sad to see its not going to see the light of day.
My hope, is that this restructuring helps them be able to make masterpieces again. That’s what Blizzard was known for.
For me, Blizzard is a company that makes one game every 8 years lol
I am skeptical of even this much. 
A youtuber I follow has been discussing the cuts in the tech industry. A lot of the jobs being lost are fillers that offer little to no benefit to companies. If I recall correctly the job bloat was a result of loans having little to no interest with companies taking out massive loans. Now that interest is starting to go up and the economy starting to take a turn those same companies are all those jobs they created.
I know it’s the normal to be bought out and lay off happen after but there is a lot of laying off all around lately. Is this just grooming us to be used to never having a career/ job until retirement age? As is, a lot of us by the time we are old enough there will be no retirement to work towards. Just in a loop of career or job hopping til the day we die or until the bots take over…and then we die. Fun.
oh no. when I read the title I was just “oh no”
how so, like how it is now or do you think it could be better just as a “test” and then drop or better/Worse
oh no you’ll invoke that person
Given that Microsoft gaming employs over 20,000 people, this is the usual staff turn around of a publicly traded company. It is my understanding that cutting 5%-10% per year is fairly typical.
The number does not reflect on the actual size of the company year to year. Throughout the year an additional 1,000 to 2,000 people may be hired to replace those cut.
It is also expected that some Activision Blizzard jobs will be cut due to merger caused redundancy. Activision did the exact same with Sierra back in the early 2000s after the merger then. For example Microsoft is already a game publisher so it makes no sense to operate, and hence staff, the Activision Blizzard publisher aspect of the company. This is not just limited to the publishing aspect, and could extend to branches such as QA, administration, accountancy, game support staff, e.t.c.
It was a joke, read the post above that one.
yah I have a tendency to miss moments
could be cus I’m unnaturally optimistic with this game
could be delusion
As Doc Supergood said, this is only about 9% of the total gaming staff.
What bothers me is that the Blizzard president and cofounder and lead designer, Mike Ybarra, and Allen Adham respectively, are leaving. Which puts Blizzard in a, let’s say, precarious situation. I hope things work out with this situation, from what I heard Diablo IV was doing well. I think HOTS is going to be what it is now, but I still play it, so that’s something.