Blizzard Entertainment Laying Off 600 Employees

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Blizzard has just announced that it will be laying off 600 employees. The company is reassuring players that the WoW team was unaffected by this move but is that really what matters when 600 people are without a jobs now? :(

As Blizzard and the industry have evolved we’ve also had to make some difficult decisions in order to address the changing needs of our company. Knowing that, it still does not make letting go of some of our team members any easier. We’re grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the people impacted by today’s announcement, we’re proud of the contributions they made here at Blizzard, and we wish them well as they move forward.
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Wow, that's horrible. If it's not from the WoW team, which team is it from, SC2, D3, what? I hope this isn't the beginning of the end of the Blizzard of old.
 
I'm throwing out some made up numbers here but:
BC - 50% recycled content, 3 - 3 1/2 tiers of raiding
WotLK- 75% recycled content, 2 1/2 - 3 tiers of raiding, paid mounts, paid pets
Cata - 90% recycled content, 2 - 2 1/2 tiers of raiding, paid mounts, paid pets, attempted (but shot down) paid features
MoP - ??? recycled content, ? tiers of raiding, paid ??

WoW isn't even ran by the "B" team anymore. I suspect MoP to be a joke, at least from a traditional MMO player's standpoint. I'm sure the casual majority will eat it up, but get bored very quickly, just like they did with Cata.
 
what... the... fuck? I've seen nothing but Blizzard go up, up, and up since Starcraft 1. If anything, they should be hiring more as they branch out from their series of only 3 types of games. Titan was one of them that hasn't even been announced yet - but they are laying off 600+ employees? Wow... I didn't see that coming AT ALL.
 
I wonder if the Titan team was part of this...or is that project still going?
 
they will need to hire most of them back as customer service reps when the new Xpac comes around and china figures out how to farm accounts again.

At this point with the final bosses defeated in WoW and a lot of players not even liking the cataclysm expansion of world of Warcraft; it's not surprising to me @ all that people are getting laid off. I know several people who have left their account go into a suspended status.
 
Blizzard has made nothing but hit after hit as far as I can remember from my first experience with this company playing Warcraft 2. Everything they make turns to gold, so I wonder what's happening behind the scenese with them. They've always seemed infallable to me. This is THE game development company by which all others measure themselves against.
 
Nearsite said:
Blizzard has made nothing but hit after hit as far as I can remember from my first experience with this company playing Warcraft 2. Everything they make turns to gold, so I wonder what's happening behind the scenese with them. They've always seemed infallable to me. This is THE game development company by which all others measure themselves against.
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My only thought was this: Just like any corporations, there is always ways to "Trim the fat". With the original popularity of WoW, they really found their biggest success and thought to hire a lot. Now they are trimming that fat. But it's not from WoW... then where could it possibly be? I don't know.... Never the less, I quite WoW just before WotLK was announced, and thank the fuck christ I did :p

Nevertheless, I don't have the gaming time I used to. I blame college for making me quit. However, there must seriously be something screwy going on that we don't know about.

Everyone here knows they aren't even doing Blizzcon this year, right? So sad... :( I always go.
 
AthlonXP said:
Could this be coming from Activision??
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..possible point here? I can definitely see Activision able to lose a lot of people... considering they suck and I was pissed when they merged with Blizzard....
 
with John Staats possibly laid off, could this meant that Titan is cancelled ?

600 people sure does sound like a cancelled project.
 
600 people certainly could make an entire project group, however, what is the % of 600 from the total employee count for Blizzard? Could most of these be customer service reps?
 
It's just a bunch of CSRs and positions related to support. I would be very surprised if any of these numbers included any of the dev/test teams.
 
Nearsite said:
600 people certainly could make an entire project group, however, what is the % of 600 from the total employee count for Blizzard? Could most of these be customer service reps?
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No mater how you look at it, 600 is a lot of people. Doesn't matter if they came from a dev team, customer support, admin -- six hundred people. That is a lot of people to let go. Most likely passed down from bean counters high up the food chain. With that number, they probably cancelled a project (or two), but if you at all familiar with lay-offs at big companies, 80% were likely "dead weight" - meaning losing those positions would not impact the functionality of the company (only a better bottom line).

six hundred... wow.
 
They may claim that this won't affect game development, but I still hope that Diablo 3 doesn't get delayed.

lilbabycat said:
I'm throwing out some made up numbers here but:
BC - 50% recycled content, 3 - 3 1/2 tiers of raiding
WotLK- 75% recycled content, 2 1/2 - 3 tiers of raiding, paid mounts, paid pets
Cata - 90% recycled content, 2 - 2 1/2 tiers of raiding, paid mounts, paid pets, attempted (but shot down) paid features
MoP - ??? recycled content, ? tiers of raiding, paid ??

WoW isn't even ran by the "B" team anymore. I suspect MoP to be a joke, at least from a traditional MMO player's standpoint. I'm sure the casual majority will eat it up, but get bored very quickly, just like they did with Cata.
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What do you consider "recycled content"? You're not referring to the previous stuff that the expansions, well, expand on right?

While I agree that cataclysm has become a huge joke in terms of gameplay, Blizzard did pretty well in the beginning with remaking many of the old areas. I just hate the direction that many video games are taking nowadays to cater to the inept players.
 
somecallmeTim said:
No mater how you look at it, 600 is a lot of people. Doesn't matter if they came from a dev team, customer support, admin -- six hundred people. That is a lot of people to let go. Most likely passed down from bean counters high up the food chain. With that number, they probably cancelled a project (or two), but if you at all familiar with lay-offs at big companies, 80% were likely "dead weight" - meaning losing those positions would not impact the functionality of the company (only a better bottom line).

six hundred... wow.
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Keep in mind that Blizzard has employees all over the world. Just within the past few months the have lost millions of subscribers from their 12M mark. Sure it may look big to most people on paper, but when you look at the bigger it really isn't.
 
I just learned yesterday from a Flash ad that WoW is now free-to-play up to level 20. Today I hear Diablo 3's almost finished with their beta phase and now this.

Blizzard's sure popping up everywhere this week.
 
AthlonXP said:
Could this be coming from Activision??
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Bingo, Bliz is not an independent company anymore. It was bought out by Activision. If blame is need, it's safe to say its at the top.

Sad that this is the type of reward for the employees that help make hit after hit.
 
Nearsite said:
600 people certainly could make an entire project group, however, what is the % of 600 from the total employee count for Blizzard? Could most of these be customer service reps?
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There was a recent article stating Blizzard has 4700 employees in 11 states, that's almost 13% of your total count. That sounds like more than trimming the fat.

Let's recap:

WoW loses 1 million subs in a year
Diablo III keeps getting pushed back, redesigned, project manager quits
No Blizzcon this year
Now 600 employees are laid off

Everything's fine, nothing to see here...
 
The company anticipates approximately 90% of the affected employees will come from departments not related to game development and noted in the announcement The World of Warcraft development team “will not be impacted.”
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Probably trimming customer service positions.
 
lilbabycat said:
I'm throwing out some made up numbers here but:
BC - 50% recycled content, 3 - 3 1/2 tiers of raiding
WotLK- 75% recycled content, 2 1/2 - 3 tiers of raiding, paid mounts, paid pets
Cata - 90% recycled content, 2 - 2 1/2 tiers of raiding, paid mounts, paid pets, attempted (but shot down) paid features
MoP - ??? recycled content, ? tiers of raiding, paid ??

WoW isn't even ran by the "B" team anymore. I suspect MoP to be a joke, at least from a traditional MMO player's standpoint. I'm sure the casual majority will eat it up, but get bored very quickly, just like they did with Cata.
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It was made pretty clear that Blizzard moved a lot of WoW developers over to Titan since they released TBC. Right now, WoW's biggest problem is how many players are left in the game. They have more Realms then they need to.

#1 A lot of WoW players are unhappy with the game for various reasons.
#2 People in low population realms are having a hard time finding people to play with.
#3 Blizzard still charges $25 to transfer to other realms, and the $15 monthly fee isn't likely to change either.

If Blizzard doesn't act soon, the game will fall apart.

Cyraxx said:
what... the... fuck? I've seen nothing but Blizzard go up, up, and up since Starcraft 1. If anything, they should be hiring more as they branch out from their series of only 3 types of games. Titan was one of them that hasn't even been announced yet - but they are laying off 600+ employees? Wow... I didn't see that coming AT ALL.
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This is what I don't get. Even with the loss of subscriptions in WoW, it's not like they still don't make a boat load of money. They're about to release Diablo 3, and you know a lot of people are going to play that game. With Titan and another WoW expansion around the corner, why fire them to begin with?

Unless it's because they just finished Diablo 3 and see no reason to keep developers around that they don't need. Only to hire them again when they need them for another project. Which is a deplorable thing to do.
 
-- Its Blizzard way of saying...

" We're loosing huge amount of money every month paying 600 people mostly in support,
the reason why we lay off those people its because we are redirecting funds for
our Titan MMO project because some of our very good game developers, designers,
3d artist and animators are also planning to leave and we need to increase their salaries
in order for them to stay. Since we are running out of budget for the reason that as
you've read a post here in H that last year we lost 1 million WoW players and large part
of our income comes from WoW.. In addition, now that Guildwars 2 release is just
around the corner we are expecting loosing a lot of WoW players, and with that we're
going to fire more peeps in the very near future.." :eek: :eek:
 
It's the free-market at work, obviously.

Although in all seriousness, it sounds like they canceled a project.
 
surprising. I thought Blizzard was swimming in money. 600? That's a lot of people. And most of them non-game dev related? I didn't realize Bliz was that huge.
 
Sorry, I have no interest in playing WoW in this lifetime, but why did they lose 1m subscribers in a year? I saw nothing about this on the MMO sites I visit :mad:
 
inglewood78 said:
Bingo, Bliz is not an independent company anymore. It was bought out by Activision. If blame is need, it's safe to say its at the top.

Sad that this is the type of reward for the employees that help make hit after hit.
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No, Vivendi bought a majority stake in Activision and merged them with Blizzard.
 
trying to figure out how to delete my battlenet account at the moment, no longer interested in D3
 
Games don't last forever, they lose subscribers because the game is getting old. People are tired of the same old same old stuff. Many left for other newer MMOs like Star Wars the Old Republic or just quit in general
 
Oh well that makes sense, Mac. I kept wondering how WoW continued to be popular so many years after release and without a sequel or graphics overhaul.
 
You got us where we are, thanks. Now there's the door.
 
Well, even if WoW lost another million subscribers, that's still 9million subscribers that need support. This is far and away ahead of the sub numbers in the next closest game (SWTOR at 2 million?). It'd be helpful to know where these positions are cut, including their functions and locations.
 
Ashbringer said:
Unless it's because they just finished Diablo 3 and see no reason to keep developers around that they don't need. Only to hire them again when they need them for another project. Which is a deplorable thing to do.
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They said most positions were non-dev related.
 
NKDietrich said:
They have like 3000 CSRs.
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Yeah, I'm leaning towars what someone mentioned before - most ppl are service-related due to diminishing WoW numbers. Plus other areas that might've been over-staffed.

Who knows, there are a lot of different departments and teams in such large companies.
 
I just hope this does not mean that they let go of these people and will be outsourcing...
 
It really isn't that shocking to me... D3 is done pretty much, subscribers are down, they gotta answer to the stock holders.

90% was non-dev, so cut a few art depts from 12 to 10 people, a few coders, maybe a server admin or two .. it's not that hard in a company that size to find 60 people to let go who were redundant, or with their timelines of when it's ready could be spared since the remainder can pickup the slack given an extra month to work on something or another...

CS times are way down, last couple times I called I was talking to someone within 5 minutes, instead of the usual 30 I expect on hold, so sure fire a couple there too since call times are way above acceptable...

Outsource some janitorial jobs.

Yeah it really sucks, especially for those who were affected .. but it in no way means blizzards in any trouble.
 
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