blizzard A New Round of Layoffs at Blizzard

[Staff 1,502]

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 87]

Hearthstone lol

[Dejo93 1,023]

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

[KrimzinOG 61]

Add them to the WoW Teams

[Migol 433]

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.

[Prophet001 599]

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

Had a good run imo.

[Pandabuffel 184]

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 433]

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).

[Ragingwolf 310]

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 24]

Good get rid of all these trash devs

[Arcling 898]

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 1,023]

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 1,023]

11 minutes ago, Grumar said:

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

 

[Arcling 898]

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

[Arcling 898]

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.

[Arcling 898]

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.