A moment of silence for the devs who have to weather the storm

I’m pretty sure that the actual development team is pretty much innocent in this whole debacle. The whole ordeal screams that fkin activision beancounters were the shot callers in this.
Just imagine the following:
Your boss is fired, or resigns because of stupid higher ups. Then you get the task to rework the game in a way that you are absolutely sure that it won’t work. Problems are piling up, you and the team start to crunch on a game you know could be good but you are forced to make it in the way somebody who has never worked on a game imagined it up.
You slowly start to burn out as december nears, they forbid you to talk to the press, you work your a… off while more and more people are removed from the project to “minimize the losses”.
It’s time, it has to be published but it’s nowhere near finished. You know it will fail but you are too tired and broken to actually care, you accepted this thing. Then they announce the delay.
You are utterly depressed. You know full well that the game would need months of work with a much bigger team and there is absolutely no way you can deliver what was promised. You still try to make the best of it, but you know that even in the best scenario it would only be enough to dampen the inevitable fall. Yet you give your best, and brace for impact.

Then it happens. It’s a complete disaster, players are furious and feel betrayed. You gave your best but nobody will ever know, they will only see your work as a pile of garbage. You literally feel utterly destroyed and burned out, to the point of feeling your whole life is pointless, and even the thoughts of suicide aren’t that far away. You feel like all these people are mad at you, they hate what you have spent your last 2 years working on, oftentimes long hours into the night at a cost of great personal sacrifice, broken relationships, abandoned friends…

I’m a dev myself and this happens. I’ve seen colleagues and friends burn out, pale, lifeless who can only talk about their life with bitter cynicism, even I have been there… and at the bottom level there are always young aspiring talented people who has nothing to do with the problems of the game, and they are forced to suffer all the backlash because of some a-hole’s decision at the top who doesn’t even know what the hell the game is about.

So go easy guys. Pretty sure that there are some people even amongst the devs who can be called responsible, and it doesn’t matter if they worked on art assets in Malaysia or major things in the USA… the majority are victims just like you but they paid a much heavier price than 30 euros/dollars.

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This is definitely worth keeping in mind. Thank you for this post. I hope people read it and temper their anger with more thought.

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The developers really should consider going indie at this point.

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From one developer to another… with respect. Great post !

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Sometimes it’s just like:
“Two years, I only have to do this for two years to look good on my CV… I can do this… I can endure whatever they throw at me. I MUST.”

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You don’t need a CV to go indie. You just need to have the passion and the drive to make a game. Going indie is the only way to move forward in this industry now.

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I don’t blame the devs at all. I’m sure they did everything they could with the resources they had. I blame Activision.

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My hope is post-launch support will be stellar and Reforged, down the road, will be made much better. I can be patient.

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Well, you don’t. You only need money and time. Right now I’m working on an indie project with my friends in my freetime and it’s extremely taxing on me, as working 70-80-90 hours a week for a year now (I have a main job, as the bills won’t pay themselves) is not something to be looked over. Some even put more hours into it, and their own money. And it’s stressing our friendship. Not easy, it’s different than developing in a big company, but not without sacrifices, far from it.

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I’m sure this is not fault of the 1 or 2 devs that were working on this game (aside from the art team). It’s the fault of whoever decided that there should be only 1 or 2 devs working at it, so that they spend less and profit more.

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I’m not devaluing the struggles of making an indie game. I’m just being realistic, if you want a future in the gaming industry, you go indie, everyone else, go work somewhere else, it’s not worth the hassle. Heck I would rather work at Mcdonalds than Activision-Blizzard, there I said it.

Job security is nonexistant in Activision-Blizzard so you’d be better off doing agency work.

Actually I can understand the sentiment. I function very poorly in a strictly regualted environment, I think I would literally suffer at Blizzard… A few years back it was like a dream for me to work there one day. Now… I would not rule out straight up, but definitely would be a hard decision, always leaning against it.

Game development isn’t even a well paid job… there are better paid jobs out there like being a lawyer or a dentist. People develop games not just because they need the money, they do it because of passion.

Problem is that Blizzard are sinking their own ship and taking their staff down with it. They have to get on a lifeboat and escape ASAP or else they are going to drown.

My message to all developers at Blizzard, get packing and get ready to leave ASAP for your own good. There is no future for you there, you can do so much more elsewhere, going indie is one of the best routes you can take because you have total freedom.

There really is no easy way to solve the problem though, bad things are happening for us all.

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Don’t have to look far to see companies that kick hundreds of devs to the street with no healthcare and no forewarning after they crunch for companies for months / years.

Thank god I live in Europe where getting fired is not a lifechanging development…Our laws at least protect the employee to some degree and provide some social security… But damn, just imagine, you crunch 2 years to publish WC3R and then bamm, you are fired because it’s universally hated… Now come to think of that I’d never want to work at Blizzard…

They’d just hire you as a subcontractor and still kick you out without benefits.
It’s not like Europe’s worker protection laws are without loopholes, you know?

What developers? They outsourced development to a Malaysian studio who already got paid.

Wtf, are you talking about. The dev team is the main cause, they are the ones who developed the god ugly graphics of this steaming pile of garbage.

Yeah sure, they can still fire you… But at least you won’t lose healthcare, and have unemployment benefit (had to look up this word, I’m not entirely sure that it’s the correct term)…

Since you were a subcontractor, you are your own company and therefore weren’t employed. You still “run your own business” and do not have any rights to apply for unemployment benefits.