Massive Layoffs at Blizzard

[Sam_Reynolds]

Blizzard announced today that it was laying off 600 employees, though its CEO said that the majority of those laid off were not directly involved in game development.

Read more here: Massive Layoffs at Blizzard | Hardware Canucks

[CMetaphor]

Prolly cause SC2 is kindof a flop compared to SC1? I mean SC1 still is fun to this day whereas SC2 just seems different... SC2 single player is kinda easy and over quickly. SC2 multiplayer can be stupidly hard to the point where its frustrating to play at all. lol...

[Galcobar]

They're not cutting much in the way of developers -- only 10% or 60 positions are game development. The rest, well, they didn't say but I suspect we'll continue to see "longer than usual volumes of petitions" warning when people try to access customer service.

The Blizzard unit of Activision-Blizzard has around 4500-5000 employees, so we're talking a workforce reduction of about 12 per cent. It's certainly significant, but not a crippling reduction. How much of it is related to the recently-completed server hardware changeover for World of Warcraft and the completion of localisations for several languages, we don't know.

[exelias]

Holy moly, Blizzard is that big?

[Omega_Phoenix]

Originally Posted by exelias

Holy moly, Blizzard is that big?

Gotta remember, Activision owns them now. There may have been a merge of positions or a transfer of a department.

Anyone who plays World of Warcraft may be interested in giving this a read:

Cataclysm Post Mortem -- Quest Design with Dave "Fargo" Kosak - World of Warcraft

[Soultribunal]

Blizzard is also getting competition from a lot more games that are making headway into there stagnent pool...
They need to change the strategy around a bit if they want to re-claim marketshare.

-ST

[Birk]

World of Warcraft + Panda Bear Expansion = Epic Fail

[Galcobar]

Originally Posted by exelias

Holy moly, Blizzard is that big?

No, the Blizzard unit of Activision-Blizzard is that big. All the non-Blizzard properties are still under Activision.

[Soultribunal]

Originally Posted by Birk

World of Warcraft + Panda Bear Expansion = Epic Fail

It goes beyond that in my eyes...they have made too many mistakes now to correct a lot of what many people feel is wrong.
There was almost a sense of adventurer when you first started WoW. Now it is a grind.
And the only way to get the highest end is to GRIND, and hope and GRIND.
They are adding 'content' without adding 'content' if you know what I mean.

-ST

[Birk]

Yea I agree with you there. I quit playing shortly after Cataclysm came out. I pushed server firsts in vanilla, TBC and Wrath of the Lawlking