Mass layoffs at Activision Blizzard on the way

Community General Discussion
103

I wouldn’t celebrate this too much.

This is basically what capitalism does. You can’t just make money, you have to make ALL of the money.

Battlefield 5 wasn’t great on launch and pissed people off but it sold 7 million units. 7 million. It was considered “a disappointment” despite almost certainly having completely covered all its development costs and having made a large profit.

The demand for exponential growth by STOCKHOLDERS is what drives this crap.

Apple makes 90 Billion with a B dollars and their stock tanks because the investors wanted 95 Billion. Guillotine the whole lot of them.

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104

My company I work for needed to reduce the workforce by 900 staff, we than needed to do it again but I forget what the number was. In total let’s say 2000 staff, total that at average wage for my work of $70K per annum = $140,000,000 savings for the company per year.

To put it into perspective we have some 45,000 workers.

The media had a field day, but they did not know the full story and no one inside the company had any issues with what was happening. Customers were calling our call centres and yelling at staff about how bad we were for firing those people.

But the kicker? We didn’t even fire anyone.

It was all natural attrition, re-shuffling jobs and introduction of new tech to allow for less staff to do the same job faster and easier. Therefore in the long run we would save hundreds of millions that could be placed into more tech, more expansion and better future for all employees.

Don’t always believe the media when they yell and scream about how the big bad company is firing all their staff.

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105

In case you run out of free article views on Bloomberg I’ve copied the full text of the article into the first of my replies on this thread.

The article does note this - Activision [Blizzard] employed 9,800 people at the end of 2017.

So if we assume 'hundreds" is any amount between say 200 and 900 that means the projected losses could be between 2.04% and 9.18 % ATVI’s total workforce. That’s assuming the number of people employed is still around 9,800 people.

Spread between 4 - 5 major divisions that’s between 40 - 225 from each division assuming an equal amount of people laid off from each division.

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106

I don’t invest but I do work for a Fortune 500 tech corp. and twice a year (April/Dec) layoffs press releases come out and it turns into a complete word salad.

107

How long as Acticrap had their hands in the Blizzard pot, though?
Why all this consolidation here and now instead of way back when?
Something changed. Something is worse than it was and someone is nervous enough about it to make the moves now when they could have quite some time ago IF this were just about saving a few bucks.

With all the information out there right now, this downsizing just looks like a company about to be filing bankruptcy.

108

:smiley:
yeah…they did that at my wifes company. Had a seminar too.
All management had to read “who moved my cheese” or whatever its called.
yeah…that turned into a big stink. Lots of firing with the ‘Hey, we’ll rehire you at half the salary’ crap.
Oddly my wife not only didnt lose her job, but ended up getting promoted and a lot more benefits, but she was one of the few.

one girl literally lost her management position and was ‘rehired’ a about 65% of her old salary.
Id have quit first, personally.

109

Flying is very far down on the “Big List of Things Blizz Screwed Up in WoW”…

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110

Ummm … did Blizzard file bankruptcy in 2012 when they let 600 members of their 1500 European staff go ?

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111

that sounds like when my mom asked me what has happened since I started carrying concealed, meaning if nothing HAS happened then nothing was GOING to happen.
I believe we can call that a non sequitur or something like that.
Doesnt matter what happened then. What matters is whats coming.

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112

It doesn’t help when an investor that owns 6.5% of the company leaves either…

113

Fake news.

114

Yes it does matter.

You seem to be making the argument that because the company is downsizing AKA letting people go then that is proof they are about to file for Bankruptcy.

I pointed out that in 2012 Blizzard Entertainment let 600 people out of 1500 member team go. And yet they are still here and have not filed for Bankruptcy.

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115

How is EA even still in business? It’s nowhere near the good company it used to be.

116

wow… try paying attention.
I have said REPEATEDLY that ONE of the things going on with this company probably isnt anything to worry about.
MULTIPLE issues, such as downsizing, people at the top leaving, being let go, “retiring”, whatever ADDED TO stock prices taking a nose dive a couple days ago AFTER a decline over a period of time…yeah…ALL that crap TOGETHER (as I SAID) is something any investor in that company should be stressing about if he has much money tied up in it.

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117

You know that if you really want to know what the average software developer, or other employee, makes at Blizzard you can just look it up on the Indeed site, right? I assure you that they make salaries comparable to the rest of the industry. It isn’t like software engineers/developers/data scientists are hurting for job opportunities.

Companies do everything they can to attract and keep quality software engineers/developers/data scientists. According to Indeed the majority of Blizzard employees are happy with their salary and jobs.

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118

Not good news to hear. If there are layoffs I hope those affected will find work again soon.

I wonder how this will affect some of Blizzard’s long term plans like the Classic servers and expansions after BFA?

119

I hope this is moreso on the Activision side and not so much the Blizzard side, but you never know…

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120

depends on who is getting fired, if it is from king’s games then probably no impact or very little impact

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121

There’s still plenty of work to be had, the recession isn’t here yet.

Classic is probably already ready to go, albeit a few tweaks here and there. They want to find a way to entice old customers back to the game with that, while subtly laying influence to get them to resub to the current product. Otherwise, they’d have let the pirate servers do whatever they want.

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122

The media had a field day, but they did not know the full story and no one inside the company had any issues with what was happening. Customers were calling our call centres and yelling at staff about how bad we were for firing those people.
But the kicker? We didn’t even fire anyone.
It was all natural attrition, re-shuffling jobs and introduction of new tech to allow for less staff to do the same job faster and easier. Therefore in the long run we would save hundreds of millions that could be placed into more tech, more expansion and better future for all employees.

This is a really good example to show people on the outside, how reshuffling works. I didn’t really understand, but this painted a very good picture :slight_smile: !

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