Microsoft Lays Off 1900

Community General Discussion
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As long as we still have Metzen… all is well :slight_smile:

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Or consolidate their 2 running MMOs…Eldercraft

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46

ESO could just go away.

ES however… GOLD MINE!

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47

Relax guys, Microsoft went to a lot of trouble to acquire Blizzard IP.

But let’s face it, Blizzard also acquired a lot of baggage over the years. It’s normal for Microsoft to want to get rid of some.

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48

And nothing of value was lost.

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49

everyone in the sector is laying off employees. it’s not unique to microsoft. also, microsoft has a couple of other products besides wow.

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50

It’s just capitalism in full display.

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51

Just for the sake of clarity here, the article states ‘Activision Blizzard’ employees are being laid off.

This somewhat makes sense that corporate level (that is, above Blizzard, Activision etc) employees who’s jobs are already covered by the corporate level Microsoft gaming division employees, would be laid off. They do specifically cite redundancy.

The only reference to ‘game developers’ that I see here are the Blizzard survival game employees, who are being assigned to other projects. So not laid off.

I’m sure people will obfuscate here and make a lot of noise as if wow team members are being laid off, but this does in fact sound like corporate level only.

Think marketing, legal, accounting, HR, and other similar departments. All work that is already being done at the Microsoft or Microsoft gaming level.

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We knew this would happen. There’s always a restructuring and layoffs after an acquisition. I figure the bulk of the layoffs are in areas that ended up being redundant with Microsoft’s own departments: HR, legal, marketing, customer service, etc.

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53

My sympathies and best wishes for a speedy rehire to all affected (although there seems to be a wave of this sweeping the whole software industry)

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54

Oh no! :grimacing:

…anyways… :smile:

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55

it’s always wild to me how quickly people who mock the “real communism has never been tried” argument jump to “ahem, this is crony capitalism! it’s totally different!”

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56

Yee AI will slowly take all the jobs XD

Soon to be suites and AI.

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57

Is Ion gone? He isn’t gone, is he?

Oh well, maybe next time…

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58

This wouldn’t happen if they had blue collar jobs

There’s no such thing as layoffs as car mechanic for starters

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59

So does this mean we now know what the skull and crossbones on the roadmap meant?

( with apologies to anyone not in the mood for such quips )

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60

WoWHead article with Ybarra’s Twitter statement…nothing of note really.

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I mean, how many people do you think Blizzard had that didn’t actually do anything? 1900 sounds about right.

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62

So heres where I am at:

  1. Ybarra left, which people agreed was not that good at his job and had a lot of baggage due to one issue or another with his leadership

  2. Allen Ardham is gone, meaning the last of the founders are gone. He came back in 2016 - but as an executive officer, can we really say his role as chief product officer was well backed as Blizzard has fallen?

  3. Survival game is no more. Since there was no more news about it, that was fair to happen.

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With Ybarra and Allen leaving.

So did our hopes.