If you truly believe that is the reason for layoffs I got a slightly used bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
The orginal ceo for blizzard and guys ex blizzard from starcraft made new company gameing company go figure
Idk why but this made me think of a guy playing, then noticing something and muttering “told Josh the falling grapefruits were dumb here”
It’d be fun to have that kind of inside info
meanwhile CEO gets 200 million bonus
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the fake news from the last couple of batches of layoffs is still being touted as truth.
apparently they’ve had no GMs and no QA for a couple of years now 
According to Bloomberg, 190 workers were laid off across Actiblizz. But short attention span people in the public focus on the headline about the 50 in esports at Blizzard.
People zone in on the gift cards but not the three months severance pay.
Shows how easy it is to manipulate people in general with PR and reporting?
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I remember when the whole Overwatch League thing was announced, and a bunch of the higher-end eSports commentators kinda all collectively winced.
The consensus was that it was being overly forced, and that it had a real chance to set the eSports scene back 5+ years if it failed, because the advertisers would pack up and leave if they felt like they’d gotten burned.
And people knew it was an extremely risky gamble considering just how little viewership Overwatch had to begin with.
LoL manages to make it work because the eSports grew organically. It started itself, and then Riot bought in. Dota2 could do it because LoL had opened the door and the playerbases were made up of similar types of people (if more elitist in Dota2).
Bliz didn’t recognize that at the time (and neither did/have a number of other studios) and it’s come back to bite them.
The real question now is if things like Overwatch League full on fail, will it actually set the larger scene back as far as was worried about?
who cares, people get laid off all of the time and i’ve always hated esports. really hate it in wow
I don’t think that this is one that is unexpected. They’re just getting press for it because they’re big.
My company had to lay off a lot of contractors because of the money we lost due during COVID. Nothing at all personal, just purely a business viability issue.
California unemployment maxes out at about $475 a week. There may be extra from PUA, though that may now just be an extension.
I’m not sure about California’s Unemployment laws but the severance pay is the only thing that looks like it was appealing here. That’s 6 additional paychecks and they’re not going to dispute unemployment claims.
But people focusing on the health benefits seem to be getting this mixed up. Much like the discussion on WoW’s sub numbers—we really don’t know what benefits package Activison/Blizzard was or is offering to these people.
This could be a plan that is a high deductible plan, also we don’t know what % Blizzard contributes to the plan. If any of the employees have to contribute than that means they have 6 paychecks left before they get billed premium.
Job placement and counseling sounds great, but what is it exactly? Is it some kind of CA mandate? This would be a great package if the company was in say Arkansas or Texas but without knowing what their package includes you can’t say it’s great or not.
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e-sports for me is like any sports. Boring.
Give me a streamer who drops the F bomb from time to time and is laid back enjoying the game legit and not taking things to the extreme. That’s more entertaining than watching a bunch of organized teams do the same strats over and over and some announcer not being able to keep up. You don’t even need an announcer if you have eyes and are watching, you can clearly see it.
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League of legends and dota seem to be doing well with it.
Yea except they have a meta that works.
Blizzard doesn’t.
They should dump eSports because it hurts the nature and quality of their games.
Too much focus on competition and not enough focus on story and personal adventure.
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It is.
But some people on the forum really hate Blizzard and World of Warcraft: they spread their hatred whenever they can.
This is something i don’t understand: I wouldn’t waste my time attacking a game I don’t like. Logically: either they pay Blizzard to insult Blizzard, or they are paid by others to insult Blizzard.
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But it’s worth absolutely nothing to employees who don’t play the game. And it costs Blizzard absolutely zero.
Blizzard employees get a subscription to the game as part of their employment package. That doesn’t mean they are all full-time players. We have no way of knowing how many play the game.
My thoughts exactly whenever layoffs happen and the summer children come out to protest.
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That amount doesn’t include the $600/week ui plus-up prior to January 2021 or the $300/week since.
Lol at a corporation thinking they can monetize a grassroots system like content
streaming.