I don’t know the horrible decisions the management is making, and I’m sure they’re awful, but from this limited perspective, it’s hilarious to see people getting upset that they have to go in to work. How rich are we as a society that this is on the list of things that can make us quit our job.
We have such a good life.
Possibly.
but the problem seems that a lot of the big devs that are working on this game have a problem with it because they don’t even live near the offices. The change would either force them to move or quit and that is more inevitable lay-offs.
The amount of people working on this game is already a problem. They absolutely can’t afford to lose more workers right now.
Yes that part killed my sympathy for them.
I think some people really do believe that the work they do, or games they make are good and should be good but in most cases, their hands are tied. I mean look at the evil scum bag goblin they work for. I’ve always believed that most of the people working over there don’t actually want OW2 to be a F2P poorly monetized scam, but what can they do, tell the evil goblin no?
They are not immune from all criticism, however.
Let’s just say, if they aren’t living in or near Irvine, this is adding 3-4 hours to their commute, for no additional pay.
And if they are living in Irvine.
There’s not a lot of information in these tweets.
I only get the sense that it’s about returning to office, not sure if there’s more.
Does this help?
the market is fierce tho when you think about it. there is always “new” entry level hires wanting to get in at maybe less wages but of course the quality of the work will suffer. the investors, suits, and ceo’s dont care they just ride it till it dies and thats why its best to maybe start small in an indie company but thats pretty vicous too in this “VIDEO GAME” market since its so saturated right now
just go look on steam at the millions of indie games. have to be really lucky as a small stuido to even have a tiny sliver of being relavant
Even if it is, it would take newbies many months to get up to speed.
And they don’t really have that kind of time, if they want Overwatch to grow to it’s potential before PVE launches.
I’m honestly surprised they had not already been pulled back into a hybrid work week early last year.
Yeah, I was wondering if there’s more than that.
I mean, having to return to office sucks but it should be obvious that was always a possibility.
What is going on? Did someone force them to show up for work in a comfy office, and get things done for a salary that is better than 95% of americans?
Welcome to the rest of the world, Overwatch devs.
None of us have had any hope in Blizz for years, either.
Basically Blizz told their employees that they need to get back to the office. Bizzard employees don’t like that since they will have to see the Thrall statue that represents a bygone era when Blizzard wasn’t run by a bunch of soul-less, greedy, inhumane sacks of lard. I also imagine that several people have moved, or made set-ups to allow them for comfortable work from home. I know that here in Japan, a lot of people moved out of Tokyo because its the worst place, and continuously work (at companies based in Tokyo), remotely from the countryside.
That’s what they pay Jim Ryan to do. You can’t expect Sony to allow Microsoft to swoop in and purchase a franchise like CoD that produces the best selling game every year without fighting them over it.
Well that kinda sucks. The work-from-home model isn’t for everyone. I’ve seen too many people slack-off that way. Pre-covid, it was a hard-sell but my best jobs leveraged it properly. Now it’s almost standard. If a company really thinks my best work is sitting at a cubicle all day, no thanks.
I think it really comes down to how the teams are managed. Some managers (or directors) really can’t delegate tasks in a way that is conducive for remote work.
Of course, when an entire franchise is over-promised and under-delivered, there is going to be program change-ups at every level.
Yeah, I know I slack off when I work from home.
I really haven’t seen the OW developers lose much in terms of output though, so I can only assume they’ve been managing the work-from-home competently. Blizz is always slow, but the company being a US company and all, if there’s not growth, its not hard to imagine the big guys being impatient and try to force more progress, faster.
So what its all about? I dont follow twitter
Does this help?
Ah I see. Reminds of a big company that decided to cut on expenses and sent large amount of workers to work from home, before COVID and stuff.
The result was, after just 6 months they totally forbid working from home 
People slacking hard when out of office.
What gives you that idea?
That is nice and all, but was any peer reviewed studies done on the subject?
It’s really sad to see this type of thing happening. Overwatch has so much potential to become the greatest multiplayer game of all time, but Blizzard just doesn’t seem to want that to happen. I really hope the Microsoft deal goes through solely for the fact that it could make things better for our devs and maybe they’ll finally be able to work on the game they love as much as some of us do.