Over 2550 Gone: Activision Blizzard Is In Trouble

Activision-Blizzard staff rightly exist in a state of worry as the Microsoft led layoff waves continue.

Sources:

[joncarter]

It's why AAA gaming is heading for a sorely needed crash, no passion just profit.

[Hoigwai]

99% of corporations don't care about anything but turning profits.

[nebula]

A huge corporation obfuscating the truth and prioritizing profits for shareholders? I'm shocked! SHOCKED! 🙄

[Blisterdude]

The games industry killed itself. These companies forget where their real long-term profits come from, in favour of short-term shareholder cash boosts. Seemingly not realising that long-term you'll be bleeding to keep paying back parasite investors and cutting costs, delivering less to your customers to make up for it. All the big studios are in the death spiral at this point.
It won't be fast, but it will be ugly.

[chadwickmccarty]

These gaming companies nowadays are too top-heavy financially but keep axing too many of the actual workers & not the figure-heads enough.

[Spraybottle]

Im over Blizzard. It’s not the Blizzard it once was.

[spaceghost]

Nah, I've worked in games industry, big studios. Marketing and product people always make games lose their souls, I know it because I was in the concept art team, and voices from product and marketing would always be more important than the words from the ART DIRECTOR, REGARDING ART!
Yes, and usually marketing and product people are the farthest people can be from gamers. Leave the people that like to play games making games.

[viru]

Stock buybacks used to be considered stock manipulation and illegal for a reason.

[doltBmB]

Blizzard has been gone for years, they just took the remaining husk out back behind the shed. Good riddance.

[Darkmattermonkey]

“AAA” gaming. The imaginary standard that amounted to greed and destruction of the industry.

[williamedwards]

Support staff exist for a reason.
And they're not really optional. Or expendable.
Make no mistake. The workload will not change. And other employees will need to do the work that these support staffers did.

[ImproperStandby]

Remember when people thought them buying Activision Blizzard would be a good thing? Well... here we go.

[JaySimms-lfer]

These companies are eating themselves from the inside out, slowly cutting their own throats in the process.

[EdgePitSwing]

If something is anti-consumer, it's anti-business. When will they realize this?

[gameboardgames]

I quit working for ABK a few months before the merger was going to happen. Quit for a lot of reasons, the main one because I wanted to work on my own game (RoadHouse Manager) and they had a legally-suspect non-compete clause that didn't allow me to do so, but one of the other reasons was that ya, I figured they'd make many in my department redundant and possibly release me. That's part of the reason why the merger happened: it makes $ sense to reduce staff because you'll have a lot of overlap in the positions, and you basically can get one centralized person to do the job of many others that were previously spread out across different studios (for some positions, particularly infrastructure, IT and support).

[Tyrannus_Gaming]

Shareholders are *_never_* happy with turning a profit. They need *_infinite growth, _* or they start growing elsewhere... aka firing people, and cancelling potentially successful products.

[johnjohnson]

Fun how this matches any other big corporation, regardless of product.
The morale is: Find a small company to work for. You might not make tripple-A games, but you will be much happier.

[tomblewomble]

90% of the games i buy are indie or AA. Let the market sort this out.

[apoplexiamusic]

Companies that operate with the shareholders' interests as their first priority should just cease to exist.

[mitchelcline]

Gaming will be saved by the talented people who are being fired. They will create Indy companies that make all our new favorite games. Big budgets don't make great games, talented people do.