blizzard A New Round of Layoffs at Blizzard

[Staff 1,378]

Blizzard is restructuring the Hearthstone team and we've seen reports of multiple new layoffs at the company.

The first report comes from Senior Producer Joe Belousek who got laid off from the Hearthstone team without prior notice after 2 years.

The second report is from Hunter C. who was laid off after 18 and half years at Blizzard Entertainment. Apparently, the "Hearthstone team is being restructured" and his "Tools Engineer role is no longer needed".

We will be updating this post with more reports as they come.

[Cham79 76]

Hearthstone lol

[Dejo93 984]

Wasn't there a recent leak that said HS is in the worst situation ever?

[Krimzin 60]

Add them to the WoW Teams

[Migol 429]

Laying off without notice is not a great look.   Especially for long term staff.

 Have to wonder if it's being directed by Microsoft, IE housecleaning before they take over and can be held morally liable.

[TheRagingwolf 202]

Just now, Migol said:

Laying off without notice is not a great look.   Especially for long term staff.

The layoff is the notice.

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Have to wonder if it's being directed by Microsoft, IE housecleaning before they take over

That's doubtful. The two companies may be in the process of approval for a takeover by MS, but it would not make financial sense for MS to allocate resources to Activision/Blizzard until their merger is approved.

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and can be held morally liable.

That's not a thing.

[TheRagingwolf 202]

Hmm, Metzen gets an official role, people get laid off. Sounds like Blizzard is making space for salary.

[Prophet001 545]

There's only so much you can do with a digital card game.

Had a good run imo.

[Pandabuffel 153]

1 hour ago, Dejo93 said:

Wasn't there a recent leak that said HS is in the worst situation ever?

I wouldn't be surprised. Battlegrounds was already much more popular than the standard gameplay for a while and I saw all the streamers that I used to follow on Hearthstone leaving 1 by 1. I personally played standard since the beta until the Descent of Dragons expansion, and pretty much all my friends already quit before that. After DoD there was nothing that came even close to pulling me back to standard. I did enjoy Battlegrounds for a while, but I basically quit that too about 6 months ago since I just wasn't feeling it anymore with the latest updates. Nowadays I only occasionally log in to do a quick solo adventure for fun, but I'm pretty much done with Hearthstone. And I didn't even mention the playmodes that they spent so much time and energy on just to fail miserably (like Mercenaries).

It's just not the same game as it was anymore and I can understand if the game is at an all time low right now.

[Migol 429]

1 hour ago, TheRagingwolf said:

The layoff is the notice.

That's doubtful. The two companies may be in the process of approval for a takeover by MS, but it would not make financial sense for MS to allocate resources to Activision/Blizzard until their merger is approved.

That's not a thing.

Notice implies you tell them before the fact.   A layoff is the fact.   Acting all sociopathic about it is a bad look.

Removing employees through layoffs is the opposite of allocating resources, it's freeing up funds and placements.     Typically when a merger or takeover happens, "the synergy kills people" to badly quote dilbert.    Roles that overlap have the better performer cherrypicked and the other let go.    People that are struggling are let go to free a lane up for promotion of talent that had nowhere to go previously, etc.

Moral liability isn't a legal thing, but it certainly does matter to a company when they're seen as amoral, encouring cultures of drunken behaivor, etc (see basically half the problems Blizzard has had lately).

[TheRagingwolf 202]

14 minutes ago, Migol said:

Notice implies you tell them before the fact.   A layoff is the fact.   Acting all sociopathic about it is a bad look.

Layoffs are terminations. I have never seen anyone terminated with notice. It doesn't make sense to tell someone on Monday "We're going to fire you on Friday". You tell them the day of, that's just how it works.

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Acting all sociopathic about it is a bad look

Not sure where this is directed but it has no place in this discussion.

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Removing employees through layoffs is the opposite of allocating resources, it's freeing up funds and placements

My statement about resource allocation was not in reference to the termination of employees, it was in reference to your statement that MS had some role to play. In other words, for MS to be influencing management decisions at Activision/Blizzard, they would need to allocate resources, for example their own managers, to be in the loop and be able to determine what needs to change. You cannot be on the outside looking in and know enough about the current situation to determine what, if any, changes need to be made.

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Moral liability isn't a legal thing, but it certainly does matter to a company when they're seen as amoral, encouring cultures of drunken behaivor, etc (see basically half the problems Blizzard has had lately).

Terminations happen throughout business every day. There is no moral implication unless those terminations target people based on protected classes or retaliatory. No business is obligated, morally or legally, to give advance notice of termination.

[TheRagingwolf 202]

35 minutes ago, Prophet001 said:

There's only so much you can do with a digital card game.

Had a good run imo.

It was fun initially but the pace is usually painfully slow. Add to that the ridiculous number of decks and it almost becomes a pay to win scenario (almost).

[Ragingwolf 286]

Have not played HS in I think 2 years or more?  And when I did it was to obtain the mount to use in WoW.  

[Guz 20]

Good get rid of all these trash devs

[Arcling 877]

One of recent leaks mentioned that HS was on its last leg and their team was undergoing restructuring. I wonder if there was some truth in there or perhaps this is just a coincidence (leak had some other weird claims).

[Dejo93 984]

1 minute ago, Arcling said:

One of recent leaks mentioned that HS was on its last leg and their team was undergoing restructuring. I wonder if there was some truth in there or perhaps this is just a coincidence (leak had some other weird claims).

Was it the one that said that WoW will be F2P, but with a battlepass?

Because if that actually happened, that would unironically kill the game

[Dejo93 984]

11 minutes ago, Grumar said:

judging by who they are, blizz probably needed to make more room for diversity hires.

 

[Arcling 877]

3 minutes ago, Dejo93 said:

Was it the one that said that WoW will be F2P, but with a battlepass?

Because if that actually happened, that would unironically kill the game

Yes, that's the one. This thing about WoW going into F2P with battlepasses sounds stupid, but plausible. However, there were some weird claims there, like Dragonflight reusing assets from a canceled mobile game, which sounds ridiculous. There is no way to easily transfer assets between PC and mobile game based in different engines.

Edited September 27, 2023 by Arcling

[VegaPl 88]

You just gotta love the American labour law. Or lack thereof

[TheRagingwolf 202]

30 minutes ago, Arcling said:

There is no way to easily transfer assets between PC and mobile game based in different engines.

"Assets" are just images, models, and sounds. They tend to be created in standard forms before being included in whatever final product they are meant for.

[Arcling 877]

1 hour ago, TheRagingwolf said:

"Assets" are just images, models, and sounds. They tend to be created in standard forms before being included in whatever final product they are meant for.

Which again would be hard to move models over different engines, new coding, animations etc. It doesn't seem plausible that they would be able to do this on the fly. Art and sounds sure, but other stuff would require a lot of work. Mobile game would also likely have a very different artistic style.

[TheRagingwolf 202]

41 minutes ago, Arcling said:

Which again would be hard to move models over different engines, new coding, animations etc. It doesn't seem plausible that they would be able to do this on the fly.

If you're talking about porting assets then yeah, because you're trying to pull those assets directly from a specific game, for example. But it's rare to see a developer not have the "raw" assets set aside to be used for different platforms.

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Mobile game would also likely have a very different artistic style.

That would just depend on what we're talking about. For decades Sid Meier used the Civ engine assets throughout his games, even in the original SimCity. So, it wouldn't be unrealistic or unheard of to utilize assets across projects and genres.

[Arcling 877]

On 9/27/2023 at 9:49 PM, TheRagingwolf said:

That would just depend on what we're talking about. For decades Sid Meier used the Civ engine assets throughout his games, even in the original SimCity. So, it wouldn't be unrealistic or unheard of to utilize assets across projects and genres.

So far, all of their mobile games had vastly different styles. In my opinion, it's very unlikely they would have mobile game that looks like current WoW.

Edited September 28, 2023 by Arcling

[OpJustis 0]

I always used Hearthstone as the benchmark for a good free-to-play business model.  I bought the full $80 expansion bundle every set.  Then they added gems or whatever, and I never spent another dime on the game.