Hundreds laid off at Activision Blizzard

ant1fact

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsH_SJS6nn0
Has anybody on this forum been affected by this? If yes I hope you will find a new job soon somewhere where you are treated with a bit more respect.

What do you all think about Blizzard? Can it ever find its way back to what it once was, or is it forever corrupted by Activision? Is there any reason to hope that one day Blizzard could make a move away from Activision like Bungie did?

slosh

I haven't watched the vid you posted but just to be clear, this was Activision as a whole.  Blizzard devs were largely unaffected.  They still lost a lot of people in PR, marketing, esports, etc.  An entire studio under King in Seattle was shut down.  As for Blizzard escaping Activision, that would be tough.  Bungie wasn't owned by Activision.  I believe Blizzard has creative control but are still owned by Activision which makes it much more complicated.  It will be interesting to see where this goes from here.  Blizzard has been pretty invulnerable to layoffs but this changes that mentality.  I hope they can make something new and continue their success.

JacqueChoi

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2019/02/13/in-an-industry-of-imagined-corporate-villainy-activision-blizzards-layoffs-seem-uniquely-cruel/#49c2c8716f1f


It doesn't really look like devs were really affected at all. Seems like they're trying to increase dev teams by 20%.


It sort of makes sense. They lost Destiny and Bungie, and had a LOT of people supporting and doing marketing/PR/ComDev for them. Overwatch and Hearthstone are waning, so cuts to their esports division kind of makes sense.


And that video title is misleading. They weren't "Fired".
"Fired" means there were actual transgression, or a history of poor performance.

Laid off means there is no longer any work, and therefore can no longer retain services of that employee.

Brian "Panda" Choi

InXile is hiring, if anyone from ABVI is reading this.  Feel free to message me.

Spag_Eddy

Thoughts and fist bumps to anyone affected by this. This is a real downer 

ant1fact

JacqueChoi said:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2019/02/13/in-an-industry-of-imagined-corporate-villainy-activision-blizzards-layoffs-seem-uniquely-cruel/#49c2c8716f1f


It doesn't really look like devs were really affected at all. Seems like they're trying to increase dev teams by 20%.


It sort of makes sense. They lost Destiny and Bungie, and had a LOT of people supporting and doing marketing/PR/ComDev for them. Overwatch and Hearthstone are waning, so cuts to their esports division kind of makes sense.


And that video title is misleading. They weren't "Fired".
"Fired" means there were actual transgression, or a history of poor performance.

Laid off means there is no longer any work, and therefore can no longer retain services of that employee.

Thanks for the link. Even if devs weren't affected, the manner in which the laid offs were communicated, could negatively affect morale as a whole. (TL;DW version of the video is basically the same: the problem wasn't necessary the layoffs because this is something that happens every now and then with big corporations. The problem is how it happened)

Regarding firing vs laying off - interesting point. As I am not a native speaker I never knew there was this kind of a difference in the meaning of these two words.

Burpee

Still it was people who were here for years, even if they were less useful in a some department they could have relocated them somewhere.
I don't even speak about the how it has been make, I can't realize how stressful it has been for them, they read a few days earlier on bloomberg that some people'll be fired and the next day 10% on them need to just leave, it's complete nuts. 
Everything is wrong here, how it has been made and the reason both of them are a total shame. People can always say it's capitalism blabla, Making money doesn't mean you need to lose your humanity.

I bet in a few years they'll export most of their dev and artist in Russia & Eastern Asia 🤷

Aabel

If you work for a publicly traded company you need to pay attention to the quarterly reports, earnings calls and any other investor communications you can. While paying attention to how the business communicates with it's share holders won't save your job it will at least help keep you informed enough that you won't get caught completely unprepared for layoffs.