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World of Warcraft: 600 Jobs Going 'Redundant'
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Develop-Online.net is reporting that World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo developer, Blizzard Entertainment, is making 600 jobs 'redundant'. According to the report, 10% of the jobs will come out of the game development crew with the rest coming out of business oriented departments like customer support.
The announcement of job cuts comes as World of Warcraft is slowly but surely losing its grip as the top game in the MMO space.
“Constant evaluation of teams and processes is necessary for the long-term health of any business, said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime.
Read the full article at the link above.
Comments
Guess they are hurting a little bit.
Edit: And by hurting, I mean not raking in as many millions of dollars hand over fist.
Interesting move. They seemed to only have a few projects going. Titan, WoW continued development, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2. How many total employees do they have? This has to affect some of these titles in some way...
Yep, pretty standard business procedure to save money. They are developing several games right now, which is significantly more than pretty much every other gaming company out there. I mean, how many gaming companies have 600 employee positions to begin with? Not many.
BRING THE BEAST DOWN!!!!
*runs over to help a group of men pulling on one of the chains wrapped around the large behemoth*
THIS BEAST WILL TERRORIZE OUR WILDS NO MORE!
I wish my company send me in Redundancy))) you got like 5000-15000$ and can sit at home all day
Those 600 people were probably the world of warcraft content designers. Blizzard - These suckers actually signed a contract to pay for a YEAR!? Might as well drag out 4.3 as long as possible and ditch the content designers. $$$$$$$
Haha I really do feel like most of these if not all have to be attached to WoW. Diablo 3 already seems understaffed and under treated as one of their top IPs. SC2 maybe they can get rid of some coders and anyone that could enhance the game so they can churn out big content packs for $60. I can't imagine they would lay many off of Titan unless they are restructuring it.
Maybe the company just got lazy with the success of WoW and they want to bring in some new driven young talent to raise them up again. Diablo 3 has kind of been a let down when it comes to Blizzard development teams and resources.
I wonder if they have to make decisions on if they want to keep the big wigs wallets as fat as possible by firing people.
I doubt they lose any money, but their trimmed employees now make $0.
Reading is fun!
Reading between the lines is fun. Developers aren't the only ones who work on games.
So 600 people. I can see why they wouldnt need a lot of the development team from D3 or SC2 any more...just less people needed to wor on those expansions. But only 10% is from development they say, so 540 people from areas like 'customer service'. What? Im guessing with hacking down to the authenticators becoming far more common, they dontneed those people anymore. but why cut the jobs? Surely they can be moved to in game customer service (whch still sucks) or maybe replace them with people that can run in game events like EQ used to have. WoW clearly needs MORE people working on it, not less, and that can go beyond developers.
That dragon mount probably paid those 600 people's salaries for a year. Its not like Blizzard is hurting for money.
Nasty. Will it cause a chain reaction in other company's to lay off? Ouch anyway.
I wonder if the CEO's bonus package will be affected...
For the sake of that one lucky Porsche salesman, I hope not.
Maybe they are just outsourcing their CS now to save money. Thank you come again.
Funny ,look it from the bright side.Least those 600 people there is % some of them join in,join up other companies,make own projects and actually make games.Like those from dota split up and in the end 3 diff dota style games,plus this torchlight from other bliz employe.Least those losses might end in favor to us ,players.
This is trouble for Blizzard, no doubt about it.
This may be a cost-saving move, but it is not purely about that. It recently came out that there would be only D3 and one other major release this year - and given that SC2's expansion appears all but ready to go, it has to be Mists of Pandaria that is getting pushed back.
And then there is the cancellation of the convention. Yes, conventions lose money, but any marketing professional would know that they are "loss leaders" - they cost money but drive sales more than enough to make up for the cost. I suspect the decision made was one related to absolutely needing everyone on board to get their new titles out, as older titles are flagging.
The way I see it:
SC2: Expansion almost ready to go, will come out later this year after a minor delay.
D3: Badly behind schedule and experiencing design problems, but may still make the cut before the end of the year.
WoW: In serious trouble, with subscriber numbers falling faster than anticipated. They would not be laying off customer support people - the vast majority of whom support WoW - if subscriptions and logins were still growing.
MoP: Not out this year, and may not even be out early next year. Very likely badly behind schedule and/or being completely revamped.
Titan: May never see the light of day.
"I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
Nothing lasts forever.
Why cut the jobs? Because they are realizing, just now, that trees do not grow to the sky, and that subscriptions to WoW were not going to grow forever.
WoW has been the cash cow that generated tremendous amounts of money for the company, but they made the mistake of assuming that they could just keep cranking out generic expansions and that people would keep paying for them. Well, they haven't. Subscriptions are dropping, and there is not much excitement for the next expansion.
But Blizzard expanded their organization as if they would have subscriptions growing forever, and took on huge amounts of people (600 is several times the size of other major studios - and that's just a fraction of their workforce!) They have a huge, cost inefficient structure, and are having to make painful cuts now because they were not willing to make more sensible decisions earlier.
The big mistake Blizzard made was in not having a replacement ready for WoW the second WoW subscriptions dropped. They didn't want to do anything to threaten WoW's success, and now cash flows from WoW are dropping, and they don't have a follow-up. They should have started working on the WoW sequel the day Burning Crusade shipped, but instead, they thought they could just keep releasing expansions for WoW forever. Big mistake.
As for the money: it's gone. Companies may keep some money sitting around, but most pay out their income to their shareholders. Activision didn't buy Blizzard so that Blizzard could just sit on all the money they were making.
'We'll have exciting news to share in the coming weeks regarding Diablo III's release date,'
march .31. 2012!? -took me 30sec.
<.< thats all i got out of this letter.
anything else is really the company and employers business.
Kamasutra's article from 2009 says that there are 4 600 employees at Blizzard, so they'd be cutting 13% of their workers.
lol losing top dog status? Uh, yeah come back when they are below 3 mil ten years from now, or if some other game manages to get above 5 mil in a few years.
The question has never been whether or not WoW would last forever, but whether or not the mmo genre would survive WoW.
I hate hearing about anyone losing their job, let alone 600 people. It's a tough market out here now. You can have 25 people to compete against for any given job interview.
Cutting their CS staff it seems. A shame since that is what mainly a subscription is good for. I wonder if they will outsource their CS now like some other companies do.
Understandable they might do a bit of belt tightening with fewer new titles on the horizon, revenues flat or perhaps even down a bit, they can always bring back more CS help once things pick up again.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I wonder if Morhaime's $16.5M compensation package will be reduced as well? Or does he and other uppity-mucks just want to keep preserve their bonuses at the expense of 600 other people? Is this all about EBITA or are these jobs really just "redundant"? Finances of companies should be much more transparent than they currently are. I'd pick and choose which companies to support based not only on the quality of their products but the quality of life of their employees as well.