blizzard Activision Blizzard Layoffs to Be Announced Soon?

[Stan 5,021]

According to Bloomberg, Activision Blizzard plans to cut hundreds of jobs due to slowing sales Tuesday. 

The layoffs are reportedly part of a restructuring aimed at centralizing functions and boosting profit. Activision Blizzard shares dropped by 2.5% to $42.88 on Friday. Hearthstone and Overwatch playerbase is shrinking. Destiny 2 sales were disappointing, and as a consequence, Activision handed over publishing rights for the game back to Bungie earlier in January. Two CFOs left Activision Blizzard so far in 2019. Spencer Neumann left to join Netflix and Amrita Ahuja left the company for Square.

Video game giants are struggling and it's not just Activison Blizzard. Electronic Arts share fell 13% Wednesday, following the latest Battlefield V disappointment. Activision Blizzard is supposed to announce these mass layoffs Tuesday. What do you think? Let us know in the comments!

[MZLICH 43]

When overwatch and hearthstone's playerbase decrease it means nobody plays games like hots anymore and then some like starcraft 2 ..and it also means we will see overwatch as a free game soon and maybe diablo idk but they will try to attract people and they should..I think it is time to leave selling games itselves and it is time to focus on in-game-items for making money..

sadly im really worried about hots..people are leaving it and now devs are leaving it and we dont get updates as fast as past. im afraid of hearing that they want to close the game

[jinsu2301 273]

So how much longer until the memes get real and Blizzard actually becomes a small indie company?

[Nosky 15]

It’s like a self fulfilling prophecy with publishers these days.  Make really bad decisions on how to screw over the player base.  Make cuts internally that see’s the quality of games go down.  Lose more player base.  Announce a mobile game in the hopes of placating the playerbase.  Lose even more player base.  Profits down (notice “down”. Profits are still being made but not “enough”).  Rank and file employees lose jobs, executives stay though (you know, the ones that made the bad decisions in teh first place).  Game quality continues to plummet.  Profit?

[Dejo93 984]

Not really surprised

[Dvanom 34]

Serves them well, the Activision cancer destroys everything from the inside.

It’s sad because many ppl like me grew up with blizzard, the Real blizzard is already dead and all hope is lost. I wish They just end WoW with smth really good before it gets complete *filtered*. Other gamet like diablo or hots wont survive that long. 

please dont compare cashgrabmicrotransactionworstcompanyever EA to Blizzard. EA was always shitty

[Stan 5,021]

19 minutes ago, MZLICH said:

When overwatch and hearthstone's playerbase decrease it means nobody plays games like hots anymore and then some like starcraft 2 ..and it also means we will see overwatch as a free game soon and maybe diablo idk but they will try to attract people and they should..I think it is time to leave selling games itselves and it is time to focus on in-game-items for making money..

sadly im really worried about hots..people are leaving it and now devs are leaving it and we dont get updates as fast as past. im afraid of hearing that they want to close the game

Nothing like that will happen in the near future. Albeit the game lost players and some devs since Brack's announcement, the recently-announced changes to the monetization model look like improvements to me. Also, they haven't still determined a release cadence for HotS. The latest reworks and the new Hero are not impacted by the slowdown yet. You have to keep in mind that reworks and new Hero releases are planned out months ahead.

[Badadada 184]

So much

Doomsayer

s.
He's almost been right so many times. He was sure it was coming during the Cataclysm.

[Rooach 34]

They lived long enough to become the villain. This is so sad. I met michael morhaime at gamescom a few years ago and he was near to tears when we talked about the merge with activision

[Plergoth 277]

While the discourse and debate about the games and the future of the company will carry on, I can only think about the people who are currently worried about their careers and if their time working for what seems to be an awesome place to work at is over or not. Job layoffs are not fun. 

[dsc 18]

sadly it won't be upper management like Ion or before him Ghostroller that get the axe, It'll be cafeteria staff and art people

The game is broken, on a system level.

It's kept creeping that what for a decade.  It's not an MMO anymore, but a FPS. 

the story is decent and has a ton of potential, even greatness to come, the art team is awesome,

and then we get issues like gear scaling/loot-boxes and casino stuff with "AP" to force a sub.

where are professions?  heck even fishing content?  Hell I hate pets, but I have an insane collection with TONS more I want but the dummies haven't given us more space despite adding hundreds more/

 

It's like whomever is calling the shots doesn't play their own game.

Edited February 9, 2019 by dsc

[blackstar128 30]

Im a casual player. so i don't clear mythic raids or dont push for top of pvp charts. in patch 8.0, 2 month after release of uldir i found myself reluctant to play the wow. that uldir raid was very dull, and for an aliance player like me had zero backstory or relevant rest of content were simply worst of what i played in legion. so after awhile i decided to stop playing till next next raid opens. in this period i opted to play tbc (were i started playing wow). when people say earlier versions of wow were better i usually disagree and say "they were good for their time and you wouldnt enjoy playing them now". so all prepared to hate tbc after so many years i started playing tbc. initially lack of newer versions conveniences was off puting, but after i got used to that it was quite enjoyable. There was alot great stuff that tbc did right but three major ones for me were 1: as a level 70 killing mobs required effort, if a quest required a group to do, you did need a group ! nowdays if i look in general direction of a current content npc i dies, even rares and elites are pretty trival to solo ! 2: getting gear was hard, you needed to do a very specific thing to get a specific good gear! even getting out of leveling gear wasnt that easy and as a result when you got something it felt realy good and you end up loving your gear ! nowdays you get gear left and right, and raid level gear seems pretty ordinary so when you get let say a 385 or 400 ilvl gear it feels meh ! and 3: power level gap between different patches are HUGE, its crazy ! these 3 are not unrelated so it was my thoughts on the matter

[Guest]

Actually, that could be great news. Not for the next 2 years, but if you look at 5 or more years.

Let profits drop even more, let them make more and more cash-crabs with Skins, Lootboxes...

Let them fire more and more personal.

Maybe someday they will realize that in the end you need to make good games to make money.

Sure, they won't be able to invest 100k bucks and earn 10 Millions - but they will be able to get a fair ROI.

Most of the big publishers are way worse then they once have been. Games range from horrible, to acceptable, to decent. But they are not good or even great anymore.

No matter if this is EA, Bioware, Blizzward, Ubisoft - or a few years ago Lucas Arts.

 

But profits need to go down MUCH more. Let some of them go bancrupt. It is up to us players to stop sinking (still too much) money in those games. Then there is the chance, that games will get better in a few year.

And that is in fact not a sacrifice for the players. There are still great games, often by only a few people. Or by big companies that still make great games. CD Project e.g.

Or take a look at XCom - a big game, but awesome.

We do not need Bioware or Ubisoft.

And we do not Blizzard / Activision either.

 

Maybe we will see some of them out of buisness in a 2 years. There are several rumors, that Bioware will be terminated if Anthem won't be a huge sucess.
It would be great to see more of those "big names" fall. I'd be laughing. As every player should.

"Out of the ashes" - that is the chance we have.

[VegaPl 88]

10 hours ago, Stan said:

Nothing like that will happen in the near future.

Agreed 100%, the message Blizz sends is quite clear - "we want to cut down on expenses for HOTS, as it is not profitable enough, but we still want it to be operational, as it does bring some revenue". They are just going for min. effort, max. effect. In case you guys haven't heard, HGC was a cost of several mil. $$$. For a game that if free to play that is a heck of a lot of money. If it doesn't bring enough promotional value to the table, why keep it in the first place.

 

10 hours ago, Rooach said:

 I met michael morhaime at gamescom a few years ago and he was near to tears when we talked about the merge with activision

Looking back, I think that moves from Morahaime and Metzen were already a bad omen. I presume they knew that wouldn't be able to work freely and involve / shape the projects that they wanted, so this is what they chose.

[Migol 426]

Would hope the bulk of it is destiny 2 personel (since that game's pretty much doomed atm).   But I'll bet they cut -even more- customer service/GMs (are there still living GMs?) and try to replace it with more automation, with like 5 guys to answer a miles long phone queue of people who get past the red tape and put on hold.

 

[Majeye 0]

14 hours ago, Nosky said:

It’s like a self fulfilling prophecy with publishers these days.  Make really bad decisions on how to screw over the player base.  Make cuts internally that see’s the quality of games go down.  Lose more player base.  Announce a mobile game in the hopes of placating the playerbase.  Lose even more player base.  Profits down (notice “down”. Profits are still being made but not “enough”).  Rank and file employees lose jobs, executives stay though (you know, the ones that made the bad decisions in teh first place).  Game quality continues to plummet.  Profit?

This is the most true statement in this entire thread.

[POTATOEMPN 1]

17 hours ago, Rooach said:

They lived long enough to become the villain. This is so sad. I met michael morhaime at gamescom a few years ago and he was near to tears when we talked about the merge with activision

First, we all know you did not meet Michael anywhere.

Second, the merger happened nearly 20 years ago, so your timeline is waaaay off, and I doubt he was anywhere near to tears. I do not want to be mean about it, but your lie is pretty obvious. Stop spreading misinformation.

[POTATOEMPN 1]

13 hours ago, blackstar128 said:

Im a casual player. so i don't clear mythic raids or dont push for top of pvp charts. in patch 8.0, 2 month after release of uldir i found myself reluctant to play the wow. that uldir raid was very dull, and for an aliance player like me had zero backstory or relevant rest of content were simply worst of what i played in legion. so after awhile i decided to stop playing till next next raid opens. in this period i opted to play tbc (were i started playing wow). when people say earlier versions of wow were better i usually disagree and say "they were good for their time and you wouldnt enjoy playing them now". so all prepared to hate tbc after so many years i started playing tbc. initially lack of newer versions conveniences was off puting, but after i got used to that it was quite enjoyable. There was alot great stuff that tbc did right but three major ones for me were 1: as a level 70 killing mobs required effort, if a quest required a group to do, you did need a group ! nowdays if i look in general direction of a current content npc i dies, even rares and elites are pretty trival to solo ! 2: getting gear was hard, you needed to do a very specific thing to get a specific good gear! even getting out of leveling gear wasnt that easy and as a result when you got something it felt realy good and you end up loving your gear ! nowdays you get gear left and right, and raid level gear seems pretty ordinary so when you get let say a 385 or 400 ilvl gear it feels meh ! and 3: power level gap between different patches are HUGE, its crazy ! these 3 are not unrelated so it was my thoughts on the matter

Your whole post is just verbal sewage. How is anybody supposed to agree or disagree with you, when we have no real idea what you are saying.

Though to kind of counter everything you said, this article did not even mention World of Warcraft, so maybe keep things on track instead of trying to share your stuff in an attempt to derail the topic? There are plenty of WoW forums and such that you can go to to vent your concerns.

13 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Actually, that could be great news. Not for the next 2 years, but if you look at 5 or more years.

Let profits drop even more, let them make more and more cash-crabs with Skins, Lootboxes...

Let them fire more and more personal.

Maybe someday they will realize that in the end you need to make good games to make money.

Sure, they won't be able to invest 100k bucks and earn 10 Millions - but they will be able to get a fair ROI.

Most of the big publishers are way worse then they once have been. Games range from horrible, to acceptable, to decent. But they are not good or even great anymore.

No matter if this is EA, Bioware, Blizzward, Ubisoft - or a few years ago Lucas Arts.

 

But profits need to go down MUCH more. Let some of them go bancrupt. It is up to us players to stop sinking (still too much) money in those games. Then there is the chance, that games will get better in a few year.

And that is in fact not a sacrifice for the players. There are still great games, often by only a few people. Or by big companies that still make great games. CD Project e.g.

Or take a look at XCom - a big game, but awesome.

We do not need Bioware or Ubisoft.

And we do not Blizzard / Activision either.

 

Maybe we will see some of them out of buisness in a 2 years. There are several rumors, that Bioware will be terminated if Anthem won't be a huge sucess.
It would be great to see more of those "big names" fall. I'd be laughing. As every player should.

"Out of the ashes" - that is the chance we have.

First, from personal experience, Activision and EA are ruining it for everybody.

Blizzard is just fine without Activision, so stop trying to drag Blizzard down with them.

And Bioware was friggin sweet before EA stepped in and ruined it...so again, stop trying to drag the good guys down with the bad.

Though frankly I think Ubisoft is just out of touch, not in need of bankruptcy .

 

I agree on two things: first is that a good game will make good money, and the second is that good games can come from anywhere.

[DocNes 8]

What do you expect when you don't listen to your player base and release unpolished garbage expansions? Did they really think WoW would save them? It's a downhill slope from here. Game companies need to step it up or gamers will find something better to waste time on.. like watching paint dry.

Edited February 10, 2019 by DocNes

[Frostbeard 9]

8 hours ago, Thanilooh1 said:

I will be very sad if WOW is no longer around. I started playing a year after it launched as my Nephew got me playing, so my mind would be off the Chemo treatment. I kept on playing even after Chemo. Then I got another cancer and had Chemo treatments for a year and thank God for WOW and all the players that kept me going. It is hard playing WOW now as I had neuropathy so bad in my hands. My guild kicked me and so now I play by myself, as I am not good in raids or dungeons anymore. It looks like I am facing another cancer and I at least know for now I will have WOW to play. I hope Blizzard gets back to what they were doing best and the people who help make the game know how much good it is for so many. 

There are guilds out there I think you will find dont kick players for not attending raids or dungeons. The old RP servers will have guilds that focus on the guild as a community, not a means to getting m+/raid or pvp done.

I am in a guild that has survived for over 10 years. We have lost several members to raid guilds, but those guilds tend to dissapear and then they come back to us. So what if you have some carries that do less damage than the tanks, great people that socialize and are nice people bring great stuff to a guild.

Our guild is on EU I am afraid, but our motto is "Hardcore nothing, casual everything" We dont expect participation from you, you dont expect it from others. Still we manage ahead of the curve each time, and stick our toe into mythic with little success (no surprise there)

Find that guild, they are recruting.

 

 

[DocNes 8]

7 hours ago, Migol said:

Would hope the bulk of it is destiny 2 personel (since that game's pretty much doomed atm).   But I'll bet they cut -even more- customer service/GMs (are there still living GMs?) and try to replace it with more automation, with like 5 guys to answer a miles long phone queue of people who get past the red tape and put on hold.

I mean they did send a head developer to work on a project no one wants.. i mean thats pretty logical right? nope... Blizzard and all game developers have lost their minds.. they would rather make games that slowly (or quickly depending on your financial state) deplete the entire bank account of every paying customer.. they dont look at the future and see where the money will be in a year.. they only care about the here and now and what best way to mess our wallets up next.

[greatCraft 29]

9 hours ago, VegaPl said:

Agreed 100%, the message Blizz sends is quite clear - "we want to cut down on expenses for HOTS, as it is not profitable enough, but we still want it to be operational, as it does bring some revenue". They are just going for min. effort, max. effect. In case you guys haven't heard, HGC was a cost of several mil. $$$. For a game that if free to play that is a heck of a lot of money. If it doesn't bring enough promotional value to the table, why keep it in the first place.

 

Looking back, I think that moves from Morahaime and Metzen were already a bad omen. I presume they knew that wouldn't be able to work freely and involve / shape the projects that they wanted, so this is what they chose.

You keep it for the same reason you don't kill guests at a wedding...

HGC wasn't the problem. The game has been mismanaged incredibly well. The rate at which new skins that are released is incredibly slow. Most of the times, the store sold recolored versions of old skins and mounts. Free weeks encouraged people to play heroes they are only familiar with and whom they do not excel with, and essentially make matches 5v4s. Matchmaking hardly saw improvements. There is no surrender button to make it even worse. Voice chat was introduced really, really late. It gets a lot right, but it was FAR from optimal. If anything HGC made the game more respected by outsiders, brought more attention to the product, and more.. if you just think it through. It demonstrated confidence in the quality of the product for one. I can go on and on. It was worth the cost and was one of the game's assets in giving it more potential to grow and prosper.

$15 million to a person who supposedly has a magical glass ball to help guide a business. Really Blizzard? Does Blizzard have witch doctors on campus as well, that claim they can heal? They also announce Diablo Immortal at Blizzcon. And make a teaser for it. To a community eager for Diablo 4. Someone up top is definitely not 'up there.' If the USA is dumb enough to elect Donald Trump, I'm sure someone dumber can get up there in Blizzard World through the right circumstances.

 

 

Edited February 10, 2019 by greatCraft

[Guest]

46 minutes ago, greatCraft said:

' If the USA is dumb enough to elect Donald Trump, I'm sure someone dumber can get up there in Blizzard World through the right circumstances.

Well, if the Democrats wouldn't have voted for (probably) the only person in the whole USA that could loose against Trump, they would have won the election easily.

But what do you expect, if you nominate Hillary Clinton?

Sorry, they deserved to loose.

And if I would have to choose between those two I would have voted for Trump too. Like I said, maybe the only person in the USA that Trump had a chance to win against. Large parts of the country was fed up with the establishment. And the democrats had no better sense then to elect the one person who represents the establishment like no one else on the whole planet. Did they WANT to loose the election? Are they that dumb that they have not the slightest idea what the majority of people think/want?

In any case: Great job...

[Sombra 28]

hEY iTs JeFF FrOM tHe OVeRwaTcH TeAm 

We TRy tO Make ThE GamE MoRE FuN....

 

 

maybe try to balance the game and dont balance it to please every bronze player in the game

 

after the doomfist delete i knew this gane has no future and the dev team cant be taken seriously

[Rooach 34]

5 hours ago, POTATOEMPN said:

First, we all know you did not meet Michael anywhere.

Second, the merger happened nearly 20 years ago, so your timeline is waaaay off, and I doubt he was anywhere near to tears. I do not want to be mean about it, but your lie is pretty obvious. Stop spreading misinformation.

I got Pictures from like 10 years ago in leipzig *filtered*. But sure w/e