Microsoft lays off 1900 Activision Blizzard & Xbox employees. Mike Ybarra is out

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/25/24049050/microsoft-activision-blizzard-layoffs

Usually I don’t main post stuff like this, but since it’s wow related I think its interesting. Any takes on if this will be good?

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I’d be curious to know how laying off 1900 employees could be a good thing?

Especially if it’s removing any of our game developers?

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Yeah I didn’t even notice this, cause sad blizzard news doesn’t really paint the picture as well

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Like they were useful to begin with :roll_eyes:

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They’ve made far more bad than good decisions over the years. The only good thing I can think of recently was going back to the old talent tree style which was forced on them by the popularity of Classic.

This can be a good thing because now Microsoft could (them doing this is something else entirely) hire people capable of course correction. Hire people who are actually qualified to finish a product by its release date. Hire people who actually look at testing data and make good decisions based on that. If not, they are able to course correct. The current team can’t do that, not even close.

I’m sick of 200 shadow priest reworks every expac b/c the devs are too bad at their jobs to develop and stick to a vision for the spec. I’m sick of watching heals bail out of pve and pvp because they feel like they don’t matter. I’m sick of idiot one shot mechanics in raid. I’m sick of not getting any new arenas/bgs every single expac.

I hate that Healer MMR/CR works the way it does in solo, it encourages them not to q. I really dislike gutting pvp gear in pve. I want gear vendors, and content specific (pvp vs pve) tier sets. Or, no tier sets and more points to use in the tree for pvp.

I’m sick of current blizzard corporate to death, and the devs doubling down on stupid decisions they’ve made.

It’s been time for a change for awhile now.

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It’s common in M&A to remove redundancy.
I’m sure they walked away with a package.

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maybe we lost the guy that made augmentation and shadowy duel and vulpera :pray:

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As unfortunate as it is to some workers, specially the ones with a family to provide for, the reality is that some big companies have a lot of workers that simply dont contribute to anything. Some got there because someone in the company had influence there and that got them the job. As soon as someone new takes ownership of the place and starts going over things, they easily figure this out and fire a lot of people.

In 2022 this happened with Twitter

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from the people i know that have been in similar, they got pretty solid severances anyways so not like they were instantly dead

I’m curious, is Twitter worth more, or generating more revenue since Musk bought it and fired all those employees who did “nothing”? Is it objectively better? I haven’t used it in years, so genuine question, I’d love a link to a resource as well.

Or maybe market cap is a better indicator?

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I don’t disagree, I complain every day about this game and I pay my $15/mo too. I’m just saying my only worry would be “oh we’re not replacing the people - we’re just giving an even smaller crew the responsibilities and they will get to it when they can”.

If we think it’s bad now, imagine that.

I agree with everything you said, especially this because I am a healer around the 1900-2K mark and it sucks. I’m just saying I worry they don’t actually fill those seats and we go into the dark ages where there’s literally no hands on deck.

Are we just assuming these ppl worked on wow or do we know they did?

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We only know that it was a combined number of 1900 people, some Xbox, some Activision Blizzard + Mike Ybarra. We do not know if they were devs, qa, community cms, etc etc.

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At the time was all over the news, idk how it is now. At the time Musk said Twitter wasnt even worth half what he payed at the time (20 billion i think?), he said like “I want ownership of this platform to make sure people dont take advantage of it, wont sell it for even 40 billion unless i know the person im selling it to has good faith” or something like that.
About the people he fired, Twitter had around 8k workers and he pushs it down to 1.5k, saying for every 10 workers “1 pushed the acelerator, other 9 were holding the breaks”.

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On the one hand DF has been my favorite expansion ever.

On the other hand, they could be doing so much more.

So probably a good thing.

Hopefully not like D4 though that went through 50 different teams all with different vision so the end product is absolutely trash.

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These are all good. I’d add one novel idea, hire people who PLAY/PLAYED AND ENJOY THE GAME and actively play PvP and know what is going on. A group of dedicated “PvP devs” if you will.

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Yes.

I wouldn’t hold your breath on this one. Wouldn’t be surprised if the package is weak, compared to companies like Riot. The package they provided their employees for most recent round of layoffs was very strong and their approach is an example companies should follow if met with the need to trim fat.

Yeah free speech is better regardless of the loss , not a big musk fan but he is a lot better than what twitter had before. I’ve actually debated dl’ing X just to see how it works but social media is cancer.

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