Sadly no. They cancelled the Survival game and laid off the whole team. Some are admin, but others are not. People used to complain (incorrectly) that CS and TS were outsourced. They were not. They were in Austin TX. IF this is true, looks like people will actually get what they were complaining about. Not sure if they are keeping some specialists at Blizzard or not. Maybe just dropping most game support?
I don’t think that is clear yet.
IDK what Ybarra added to Blizzard. But who’s to say any of those are WoW employees? They did just completely cancel a game that’s in development.
Not trying to be unsympathetic, it really sucks that all these people are losing their jobs. I’ve been laid off before, it’s tough.
they were right to cancel the survival game. it had no chance in today’s market.
Oh no. I hope that’s not true. 
It seems like all the layoffs were for the unannounced survival game, Overwatch 2, Diablo, various CoD studios and their Customer Support team. I think the WoW team is mostly spared.
But damn does this suck. Feeling so horrible for everyone impacted, especially in today’s market.
I mean…no one expected this to happen? No one?
Microsoft is a huge company. And right now after Acquiring both ABK and Zenimax there’s a Lot of overlap positions and very likely a lot of redundancies. Meaning this was going to happen regardless. They aren’t going to pay two teams to all do the same job on the same project. Just not feasible in the long term.
As for the cancelling of the survival game…we haven’t gotten any development news on that game since its rumored production start I believe, could be wrong, It was probably always doomed for the scrapheap.
The big thing to take away from this is that We do not know hard numbers on how many Blizzard employees are being released. Nor do we know names. All we can do is wait and see what happens and how this will affect the game, and the content that they provide us.
I wish all those who lost their positions well in finding a new Job, and hope for the best for them and their families.
He was the new bright happy “just a gamer like you” face brought on after all the scandals.
At this rate I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Blizzard just shut down entirely. What a friggin clown show. lol
WoW will be heavily change to allow it be play on XBox so that means
This has happened before with Bethesda and Zenimax and also with other companies merges outside the gaming industry. But trolls gonna troll. They’re right now saying Microsoft is about to shut down Wow Diablo and everything. some people are just bored.
That would be hella forethought considering he was hired in 2019 and Blizzard’s PR nightmare didn’t happen until 2021.
You’re thinking of J Allen Brack.
A persons whose name I totally didn’t have to google just now.
eh, this was to be expected once the merger was complete.
sucks for the people who got laid off though.
Apparently Arenanet is actually hiring now, I’d expect some of these people to end up over there.
It’s never a good thing when people lose their jobs.
No, I’m thinking of Ybarra.
Mike Ybarra joins Blizzard after years as Xbox services boss | VentureBeat
He was hired on shortly after the Blitzchung incident. He was not brought on after the 2021 fiasco and resulting purge.
Doomsayers gonna doomsay to the tune of Doom. Just another day.
None of that is happening. Why would they move wow to Xbox just to kill it? Quit fearmongering.
Newspapers are increasingly irrelevant and outdated technology. They should “learn to code” as they used to always tell people losing blue collar jobs.
Feel pretty sad for those losing their jobs this week. Never a good feeling.
Ybarra started in 2021, he started after Brack stepped down because of all the allegations and stuff going on at Blizzard, events which predate both people.