You’re not crazy, but unless you work in the finance and legal department of a major corporation that takes care of the high end finances, you may not realize that that’s not how those finances work and it’s not that simple.
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It’s like every day there’s a post where someone discovers that capitalism kind of DOES suck after all.
(Going all in on any one “-ism” is a bad idea. A mix is needed for a healthy, prosperous populace.)
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oh sorry, it’s normal here (in my country), to be paid per month.
If Americans can only understand annual or hourly pay, I can explain it another way >
100 DEVs, earning 10k per month, annually earning 120k each one of them.
this would cost the company 12M annually, if there are any taxes on the company, it would spend 24M more or less per year.
I think I got it right?
here I disagree.
100 employees working for 1 year, making the game improve enormously…it would make the number of subs increase and they would recoup their investment in no time. This would increase the product and the monthly/semester gain.
I meant improving the graphics, not modifying it so just new computers can run the game. Adjust old xmogs to eg shadowlands graphics.
Computers have improved a lot and can run this easily.
There’s a point of diminishing returns where adding hands to a project stop adding productivity. But WoW definitely isn’t there yet.
Blame capitalism, not blizzard for this one.
I mean the median is 61/hr - 10k / month for a cali dev is likely not enough.
If your question is “where is my money going?”
See HOTS/OVerwatch 2/Call of Duty whatever/Diablo 2 - 4/Hearthstone among others.
The money WoW earns is not proportional to the amount spent on it - even the server farms themselves are a drop in the bucket. We seen the evolution of WoW overtime.
Did you notice? In Cata your plate set was the SAME regardless of the dungeon drop - it was just a different color.
Did you notice? Blizzard started just morphing old assets to make “new” monsters using the existing frames (play monster hunter sometime to see what I mean)
Did you notice? PVP armor is now generally just a recolor of raid armor.
Did you notice? No more tier sets…blizzard is desperately trying to avoid us demanding the actual armor back with their “domination” shards (which iconically use the shadowmourne graphic effect) they really do not want artists having to make a armor set for each class.
WoW is a cost cutting exercise - notice how the new dungeons are filled with paperdoll mobs that you can change the gear of? The mobs that are already there are no new mobs…I mean necrotic wake is the same mobs as Plaguefall/Theater of Pain (full props to whomever at least put in the effort to make Mordretha a naga)
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interesting…
Ok. If 10k a month or 120k a year isn’t enough…let’s double that.
240k per year (20k per month). for each new dev.
240k per year, for 100 employees, would cost the company 24M per year. If there is any company tax or additional costs, let’s assume they spend twice as much - 48M per year on those 100 new employees.
in 4 years = 192M
there are still 8M left to reach 200M.
And each of the new devs would earn 240k per year - 20k per month.
And the game would be much, much, much better, it would attract players and that money would be easily won back…
Not that I disagree but reusing assets has been done since Vanilla. All those inns that are exactly the same model? And Necrotic Wake being the same mobs as plaguefall makes sense since they’re both maldraxxus themed.
We could hope - I think peak dev is something like 160/hr roughly.
agreed. need more 
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I have a friend that just turned over a townhome rental in San Jose for $3k/month (not too big, 3 bedroom, two baths, but it’s best selling point is a full sized two car garage, which is rare these days to find a newer home with a garage that can actually fit two normal sized cars).
Rents for decent one bedroom apartments in that area are typically $2500-$3000 these days, some homes go for closer to $4k/month. My friends’ mother has two rental homes that are nothing special, one is actually on the small side with tiny yards front and back and the other is right on a busy 6 lane road, and both go for just over $4k/month these days.
If you are trying to buy a house, asking price is really just a minimum bid, and the bidding wars are quick, just a couple of weeks. Some buyers are going in with all cash deals and accepting no contingencies (which is crazy, what if you buy the place and find it infested with termies?). Most people are making offers before even seeing the place in person.
My parents’ place is in a 55 year old neighborhood, decent schools, nothing that special, yet everything around there has been selling for well over $1M for months now, usually in the $1.1M to $1.5M range. And there was even one new listing this past month for a place down the street for $1.999M asking price. It’s just crazy.
Those prices are great for me, as my sister and I split the place when they have passed on (hopefully not too soon), but afterwards, it’s not like I could afford to buy a new place for half of theirs or even rent in the area.
Don’t kid yourselves about housing costs in CA. They are the single biggest drawback to living here.
/moo 
Well ya see, there’s a problem with your math here. You’re forgetting to factor in the fact that Bobby Kotick is not a human being but is instead a parasite who is comically evil.
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The ATVI shareholders were not happy about giving the CEO $200 million, but they signed a contract, and the stock doubled in value from the pandemic drop. It was like gambling and he won the lottery.
This doesn’t make any sense. Why would they guarantee him two hundred million if they didn’t want to?
Ok but with a 10~20k per month salary would help with it…
“A project manager is someone who thinks that 9 pregnant woman can create a baby in 1 month.”
Also, Brooke’s law: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”
Hiring more devs might help for future projects, but if you think Blizz isn’t actively working on 10.0 already, you’re way more cynical about them than I am…
No, you’re just dumb and don’t know how stock options work.
$200 million in stocks != 200 million in dollars.
Stocks aren’t actually money. Until you trade them for money, they aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.
They signed a four year performance-based contract and in that time span the stock value doubled and the company reached record high earnings. So the company earns $8 billion and he gets a percentage of that. It wasn’t $200 million it was like $40 million. He has to sell the stocks to actually pay taxes on it which afaik he’s just sitting on it.
I did a Zillow search for 1500 in L A
It gets a 500sf studio with one room.
the large corporate world doesnt work on common sense and decency. its mainly about maxing profits and providing competitive pay to top officers.
i mean, i get it. these people work all the freaking time doing amazing things for companies that provide something all over the world. pretty sure nobody’s efforts are worth 200 million bucks though.
Your math should account for the costs of employees other than wages. For example: the employer half of wage withholding, retirement contributions, paid leave, insurances, etc…and whatever awful tax CA imposes on companies to employ someone.