I was trying to research to understand why world of Warcraft is going down hill as far as common sense and creativeness. I decided to look up pay scale and employee reviews.
What I have found is that Management seems to be happy promoting and working for blizzard, but employees seem disgruntled. Even ones currently employed.
One of the most common complaints was Management was out of touch and to elite to be bothered by lower staff. One person wrote “blizzard tells you you should be honored to work for them”
Lots did say that the Activision influence really killed the moral at Blizzard, and they seem focused solely on making max profits. I see nothing wrong with this as its what companies do, but I find it hard they would cut their nose off spite their face.
You can do this research yourself, but my question is due to a statement I kept reading by employees.
“The pay is low, but blizzard tries to pay you with Blizzard Swag, which is taxable also”. What the heck is Blizzard swag?
Is this like Lowe’s paying you under what the going rate is, and every Friday they give you a swag 2x4. Though a 2x4 now is worth $1000 so that wouldn’t be so bad
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I presume it means merchandise, like hoodies, clothes, and mugs.
If I had to take a guess, it’s likely their products or gift cards for their products offered at bargain rates compared to what the rest of us have to pay. Some companies do this as part of the compensation package. They probably have other perks like paid parking or paid lunches, but I would guess Blizzard Swag is related to merchandise specifically.
I mean if you worked for Blizzard, presumably you like Blizzard games. So it makes sense to offer their stuff at a discount.
I worked for Apple and we got huge discounts on their products all the time.
I’m assuming clothing, gym bags, free subscriptions to all games so they can enjoy the fruits of their labour, etc. Possibly paid lunches, massages, who knows what the hell else they bring to the yard to try & keep people happy.
Who the crap would want a hoodie vs real money to provide for their family.
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Google search revealed the following:
“Blizzard has a top notch facility, on site cafe, food trucks, gym, yoga, massage, volleyball court, basketball court, continuing education, library for digital and print media, and doctor visits.
Their culture is super laid back but at the same time everyone puts their 110% forward.”
Im just trying to figure out what went wrong with the game/company
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This swag thing sounds like slavery. If you work, you need to get paid, with money. This is even an international labor law principle.
They are now answering to a corporate master (Activision) where back in the old days they answered only to themselves.
obviously their higher ups are fairly out-of-touch with what their lower/middle class employees want, like a lot of employers are these days. they’ll do just about anything they can to justify not giving workers more money
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Its crazy imo. If they give people “swag” that is a tax write off for blizzard. An employee can even be taxed on it depending upon the amount in 1 year’s time. I used to defend the pay of the CEO but after learning and reading about this its rather appalling and disgusting. People have themselves and families to feed, they dont need hoodies, hats, free subs and what not. I do understand people do not have to work for them. But in all reality there are a limited amount of jobs out there. You have to work somewhere.
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this used to be true.
wasn’t uncommon to hear stuff like “i’d pay to work for blizzard” lol
idk if that’s a thing anymore 
Its a shame the wealth gap keeps growing larger and larger and larger. Pretty soon there will be kings again, and everyone else mere peasants.
It seems like this was a growing trend pre-covid. Companies would offer their employees all kinds of weird perks in lieu of giving them a decent paycheck. Of course, employees always knew it for what it was, but there wasn’t much they could do about it except complain. I mean, it’s actually kind of insulting when you think about it, as it makes it seem like the employers think the employees are stupid enough to fall for it.
These days, I’m hearing about a lot of companies trying to give perks in lieu of letting their employees continue working from home. This time it appears employees are actually quitting and have had enough of the nonsense. I’m hoping this trend of employees sticking up for themselves continues.
The country is become farther and farther apart pay wise. Now mind you, some jobs do not require a large wage for the amount of work or brainpower used to do the job. If they pay someone $15.00 to make a burger, burgers go up in price making in all reality the wage go down. The system is set up in America now where the rich get richer and the middle class becomes the poor class. I do in part blame the College degree scam that took place in America where people were pressured to go to college and learn squat all about chosen career path, but become 50k in debt to an school. You have people with 4 year degrees who thought they would make 100k a year just to find out. Those jobs are not there.
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Well, all I can say is I don’t give two hoots about having a butler bring me a danish every two hours on a silver platter. What I do care about is my pay. 
Everyone that made it great retired or moved on to other companies. Some around here will just hoist everything onto Activision because they can’t accept that Blizzard itself has changed.
I heard Blizzard employees get 20% off on their WoW subscriptions and store mounts.
Blizzard has paid low since before WoW was conceived. Sorry, you don’t have a real correlation here.
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Apparently people who want to work for Blizzard. According to all these “sources” Blizzard’s competitors pay more…Blizzard employees are allowed to look for higher paying jobs
Staying loyal to one company normally results in lower pay and opportunities in the long run.