Looks like Daybreak just completed round 2 of the mass layoffs.. It's been reported that 140? have been given their walking papers, effective in April from what I'm reading..
This is really becoming interesting to see what happens to the line up of games this year.. I can't see how you can give each game "LOVE" with so many cuts in personnel.. I'm starting to think it's only a matter of time before we see the next big layoff announcement.. Smed being shown the door? If SOE became this fat and mismanaged under "HIS" rule, then you have to get rid of him, and quickly..
This is interesting, but still doesn't give us any clue as to why CN purchased SOE in the first place. Were they simply raiding a development company for some of its tech (SOEmotes), as has been suggested, or did they really want to get into this market space? Personnel cuts are a byproduct of any buyout / merger scenario. If they are interested in competing in the MMORPG arena, we may have seen the last of the mass layoffs for awhile. If they're just raiding, or bought debt for tax purposes or some other reason we haven't speculated about, then there will be more cuts once CN figures out whatever they wanted.
Smedley, I figure he's safe through the end of the year. My guess is that he's there to facilitate the first year merger plans, whatever they are. After that, I think his history might catch up with him.
My guess is they wanted an experienced but cheap company / house to make mobile games. Having the EQ franchise in their lap makes no difference to them.
I was reading that other thread about Turbine former employee spilling beans and he said something about why WB had acquired them and it was not for the games but for their expertise. Might be the case here too.
Its an investment company and at this point all I can guess from their actions is that they are trying to put this in a shape where they minimize expenditure while keeping people enough to maintain some of the games until the titles are out of a ''not profiting'' zone after which they will most likely sell it all for a higher cost.
Sad to say. I can no longer play any of the games bought out. I had hopes for EQ Next. But alas they are shattered. I will miss my EQ and EQII accounts. The same way I already miss my Vanguard account.
A losing situation is a losing situation. No matter what kind of fluff people try to put into it to make it seem like a different thing.
This does indeed appear to be more information about the earlier announcement rather than a "second wave". (The core information being a formal legal posting.)
And 140 - from one studio - would lend support to the 200 number reported which may or may not include sub-contract / consultants etc. plus any Austin staff.
A local San Diego news site so it wouldn't really be interested in what happened at Austin.
When news broke about staff being cut to c. 250 I expected at least one office to be closed - or both merged somewhere cheap. This suggests San Diego is closing. c. 250 staff could fit in a medium size open plan office; or in the case of Turbine a parking lot warehouse structure was it.
Gamasutra have updated their story on the lay-offs with news (from a source claiming that):
CN advised staff last week to expect mass-layoffs but that game teams were "sacred" and cuts would come from divisions like QA and International Operations and estimated that nearly 200 positions were cut, suggesting that the company may have lost nearly 45% of its staff.
Edit for typo: mass not madd!
LOL gamasutra making up numbers (more like 50-70 employee's were laid off). Buddy got paid a full years salary when he was let go and alas was REHIRED at a 12% pay cut.
severance pay = full year = 12 (month)
severance pay ~= Half the time in months they expect for you to find another job. The formula is :
severance pay ~= (yearly salary / $10,000) / 2
Let calculate what a 12 month severance package made.
12 (months) x 2 (per month [for those who want units]) x $10,000 = $240,000
yearly salary severance pay
$20,000 = 1 month
$40,000 = 2 month
$60,000 = 3 month
$80,000 = 4 month
$100,000 = 5 month
$120,000 = 6 month
$140,000 = 7 month
$160,000 = 8 month
$180,000 = 9 month
$200,000 = 10 month
$220,000 = 11 month
This is what I have seen for the last 24 years, from small to large companies.
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Most of the layoffs were in customer service believe it or not.
They also no longer offer chat support which shows how deep the cuts were in that department.
This is a sad trend with games now days. Customer service has been boiled down to email support often taking days or weeks to resolve simple problems. I find it odd where MMOs are getting added revenue from cash shops and cutting back services lol. Why this is acceptable in every MMO I have no clue.
My guess is that CN bought DBG for the revenue streams of 5 active games. If that money is not being spent on development, then there is a lot of it. When I look at the names let go, I see Community Managers, Lead Designers, and Department Heads. All the high cost of work delegation. All the people doing the work are probably still in place. Some companies have work flow mapped out and pre-delegated. Others do not. As work is finished, I suppose the reaming management can delegate new work assignments. But the development will all be fast tracked to release and profit generation.
If CN keeps the remaining development expertise, it will be for contract work on other companies projects.
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Most of the layoffs were in customer service believe it or not.
They also no longer offer chat support which shows how deep the cuts were in that department.
This is a sad trend with games now days. Customer service has been boiled down to email support often taking days or weeks to resolve simple problems. I find it odd where MMOs are getting added revenue from cash shops and cutting back services lol. Why this is acceptable in every MMO I have no clue.
New guidelines have been posted in the various games and the changes go beyond chat support.
However I am not sure we can say "most" of the layoffs were in Customer Service for two reasons:
they had a round of lay-offs in mid-2013 in order to "bring costs into line with revenue". Clearly they didn't work! And there was a round of cuts before that as well. So any "easy" cuts will have already been made.
there are many - many more than posted on mmorpg.com - names posted who are leaving' a lot are "development".
Not saying that the majority are not "customer support" related - a category that can be used to cover chat support to keepin gthe servers running - just not sure we can be positive. I think we can be sure that these cuts are deep.
Most of the layoffs were in customer service believe it or not.
They also no longer offer chat support which shows how deep the cuts were in that department.
Most of the customer service team was let go, but that doesn't mean most of those let go were from customer service. The cuts were deep and no department or project was spared. Some just didn't get cut as deeply as others.
I'm just not sure anymore where Daybreak is going to focus its remaining employees. Supporting old games as a revenue stream while cutting projects in development or milking existing games with next to no support while throwing everything at EQN in order to get something released.
It would be noble if they tried to both support old games and continue development of EQN, but there just is no way anymore.
It was obvious from the first day - they are putting the games they have into maintainance mode. And will only have minimum crew to keep them going, until there is any profit.
I'm just not sure anymore where Daybreak is going to focus its remaining employees. Supporting old games as a revenue stream while cutting projects in development or milking existing games with next to no support while throwing everything at EQN in order to get something released.
It would be noble if they tried to both support old games and continue development of EQN, but there just is no way anymore.
H1Z1, PS2, EQ1 and EQ2 dev teams are all about the same size (I don't know DCUO dev team size). The idea is that if H1Z1 team can make a new game with only ~20 people and churn out stuff that fast, the other dev teams should be able to so as well.
EQNext team is still the largest and it was never the size of some of the recently released MMOs either. It had about 100 people in it before the layoff.
Most of the layoffs were in customer service believe it or not.
They also no longer offer chat support which shows how deep the cuts were in that department.
This is a sad trend with games now days. Customer service has been boiled down to email support often taking days or weeks to resolve simple problems. I find it odd where MMOs are getting added revenue from cash shops and cutting back services lol. Why this is acceptable in every MMO I have no clue.
New guidelines have been posted in the various games and the changes go beyond chat support.
However I am not sure we can say "most" of the layoffs were in Customer Service for two reasons:
they had a round of lay-offs in mid-2013 in order to "bring costs into line with revenue". Clearly they didn't work! And there was a round of cuts before that as well. So any "easy" cuts will have already been made.
there are many - many more than posted on mmorpg.com - names posted who are leaving' a lot are "development".
Not saying that the majority are not "customer support" related - a category that can be used to cover chat support to keepin gthe servers running - just not sure we can be positive. I think we can be sure that these cuts are deep.
I dont see your point, everywhere I snoop the majority is support staff. IMO that over shadows the few lay offs that were not support. Their ability to make a game has not really been hindered this round. EQN still can be made and launched. My point is the great customer servers SoE had will not be part of DGC. Game launch and I am sure it will come, the many problems that come with it will slow down the needed help customers will need.
When Guild Wars moved to Trion and moved customer server to NCSoft support team, it became an utter pain. Even took me once taking them to the BBB to get something resolved because of my tickets being answered with automated replies and never getting a person to help me. With Skyforge I am now 2 weeks waiting for a reply to a simple ticket. Again Talking to a live rep my problem could have been fixed in 2-5 min. Even live chat would be simple and done in a few min.
Unless Nova part of their shared resources gives them access to their support staff I am very unimpressed. Like I said above, games are now making more money by adding cash shops while they remove more support. This is becoming the standard and IMO, gamers need to say no to this. This industry to worth billions and most games dont even have chat support any more. Automated replies that dont help anyone. I have left games over bad customer support.
Ahh cannot be helped as this is coming from someone who thought triple triad is a hearthstone wannabe . Does not really check his facts I think . The part about Trion made me chuckle.
Most of the layoffs were in customer service believe it or not.
They also no longer offer chat support which shows how deep the cuts were in that department.
This is a sad trend with games now days. Customer service has been boiled down to email support often taking days or weeks to resolve simple problems. I find it odd where MMOs are getting added revenue from cash shops and cutting back services lol. Why this is acceptable in every MMO I have no clue.
New guidelines have been posted in the various games and the changes go beyond chat support.
However I am not sure we can say "most" of the layoffs were in Customer Service for two reasons:
they had a round of lay-offs in mid-2013 in order to "bring costs into line with revenue". Clearly they didn't work! And there was a round of cuts before that as well. So any "easy" cuts will have already been made.
there are many - many more than posted on mmorpg.com - names posted who are leaving' a lot are "development".
Not saying that the majority are not "customer support" related - a category that can be used to cover chat support to keepin gthe servers running - just not sure we can be positive. I think we can be sure that these cuts are deep.
I dont see your point, everywhere I snoop the majority is support staff. IMO that over shadows the few lay offs that were not support. Their ability to make a game has not really been hindered this round. EQN still can be made and launched. My point is the great customer servers SoE had will not be part of DGC. Game launch and I am sure it will come, the many problems that come with it will slow down the needed help customers will need.
When Guild Wars moved to Trion and moved customer server to Trions support team, it became an utter pain. Even took me once taking them to the BBB to get something resolved because of my tickets being answered with automated replies and never getting a person to help me. With Skyforge I am now 2 weeks waiting for a reply to a simple ticket. Again Talking to a live rep my problem could have been fixed in 2-5 min. Even live chat would be simple and done in a few min.
Unless Nova part of their shared resources gives them access to their support staff I am very unimpressed. Like I said above, games are now making more money by adding cash shops while they remove more support. This is becoming the standard and IMO, gamers need to say no to this. This industry to worth billions and most games dont even have chat support any more. Automated replies that dont help anyone. I have left games over bad customer support.
Guild wars moved to Trion??????
What in the world are you talking about?
Trion support only does their own - Rift, Defiance, Trove ArcheAge and Glyph related issues.
This is taking it to a new level - now Trion is getting blamed for other devs games - wow
Sorry got my companies mixed up, meant NCSoft. But I would not toot Trions Customer Servers as something awesome as well. LOL
Most of the layoffs were in customer service believe it or not.
They also no longer offer chat support which shows how deep the cuts were in that department.
This is a sad trend with games now days. Customer service has been boiled down to email support often taking days or weeks to resolve simple problems. I find it odd where MMOs are getting added revenue from cash shops and cutting back services lol. Why this is acceptable in every MMO I have no clue.
New guidelines have been posted in the various games and the changes go beyond chat support.
However I am not sure we can say "most" of the layoffs were in Customer Service for two reasons:
they had a round of lay-offs in mid-2013 in order to "bring costs into line with revenue". Clearly they didn't work! And there was a round of cuts before that as well. So any "easy" cuts will have already been made.
there are many - many more than posted on mmorpg.com - names posted who are leaving' a lot are "development".
Not saying that the majority are not "customer support" related - a category that can be used to cover chat support to keepin gthe servers running - just not sure we can be positive. I think we can be sure that these cuts are deep.
I dont see your point, everywhere I snoop the majority is support staff. IMO that over shadows the few lay offs that were not support. Their ability to make a game has not really been hindered this round. EQN still can be made and launched. My point is the great customer servers SoE had will not be part of DGC. Game launch and I am sure it will come, the many problems that come with it will slow down the needed help customers will need.
When Guild Wars moved to Trion and moved customer server to Trions support team, it became an utter pain. Even took me once taking them to the BBB to get something resolved because of my tickets being answered with automated replies and never getting a person to help me. With Skyforge I am now 2 weeks waiting for a reply to a simple ticket. Again Talking to a live rep my problem could have been fixed in 2-5 min. Even live chat would be simple and done in a few min.
Unless Nova part of their shared resources gives them access to their support staff I am very unimpressed. Like I said above, games are now making more money by adding cash shops while they remove more support. This is becoming the standard and IMO, gamers need to say no to this. This industry to worth billions and most games dont even have chat support any more. Automated replies that dont help anyone. I have left games over bad customer support.
Guild wars moved to Trion??????
What in the world are you talking about?
Trion support only does their own - Rift, Defiance, Trove ArcheAge and Glyph related issues.
This is taking it to a new level - now Trion is getting blamed for other devs games - wow
Sorry got my companies mixed up, meant NCSoft. But I would not toot Trions Customer Servers as something awesome as well. LOL
So the big bad old publisher NCSoft gave customer support responsibility to the developer of the game itself, ArenaNet. All of their (NCSoft) titles are basically on a ticket system. So what exactly is your point here? Even Blizzard ticks off their customers with their automated replies... get over it.
Most of the layoffs were in customer service believe it or not.
They also no longer offer chat support which shows how deep the cuts were in that department.
This is a sad trend with games now days. Customer service has been boiled down to email support often taking days or weeks to resolve simple problems. I find it odd where MMOs are getting added revenue from cash shops and cutting back services lol. Why this is acceptable in every MMO I have no clue.
New guidelines have been posted in the various games and the changes go beyond chat support.
However I am not sure we can say "most" of the layoffs were in Customer Service for two reasons:
they had a round of lay-offs in mid-2013 in order to "bring costs into line with revenue". Clearly they didn't work! And there was a round of cuts before that as well. So any "easy" cuts will have already been made.
there are many - many more than posted on mmorpg.com - names posted who are leaving' a lot are "development".
Not saying that the majority are not "customer support" related - a category that can be used to cover chat support to keepin gthe servers running - just not sure we can be positive. I think we can be sure that these cuts are deep.
I dont see your point, everywhere I snoop the majority is support staff. IMO that over shadows the few lay offs that were not support. Their ability to make a game has not really been hindered this round. EQN still can be made and launched. My point is the great customer servers SoE had will not be part of DGC. Game launch and I am sure it will come, the many problems that come with it will slow down the needed help customers will need.
When Guild Wars moved to Trion and moved customer server to Trions support team, it became an utter pain. Even took me once taking them to the BBB to get something resolved because of my tickets being answered with automated replies and never getting a person to help me. With Skyforge I am now 2 weeks waiting for a reply to a simple ticket. Again Talking to a live rep my problem could have been fixed in 2-5 min. Even live chat would be simple and done in a few min.
Unless Nova part of their shared resources gives them access to their support staff I am very unimpressed. Like I said above, games are now making more money by adding cash shops while they remove more support. This is becoming the standard and IMO, gamers need to say no to this. This industry to worth billions and most games dont even have chat support any more. Automated replies that dont help anyone. I have left games over bad customer support.
Guild wars moved to Trion??????
What in the world are you talking about?
Trion support only does their own - Rift, Defiance, Trove ArcheAge and Glyph related issues.
This is taking it to a new level - now Trion is getting blamed for other devs games - wow
Sorry got my companies mixed up, meant NCSoft. But I would not toot Trions Customer Servers as something awesome as well. LOL
So the big bad old publisher NCSoft gave customer support responsibility to the developer of the game itself, ArenaNet. All of their (NCSoft) titles are basically on a ticket system. So what exactly is your point here? Even Blizzard ticks off their customers with their automated replies... get over it.
That in an industry thats worth Billions and as a whole its customer servers was best 10 years ago. Seeing DGC laying off support staff. Seeing most MMOs move to the ticket system to deal with customers is unacceptable. To top this off, cash shops being in new sources of income and this in the face of removing more and more support. I think gamers should be upset. This is the new norm =- Im sick of submitting tickets that get automated replies that take days and weeks to fix problems.
I remember back in the day submitting a tick and a GM showing up in game to talk to you and that often took 5-30 min to get one show up.
This isn't surprising to me. After I heard it was an investment company buying the company I figured as much would happen. Investment companies care about a few things.... profit margins, sell-ability, and stability. I would lay bets that in about 1 year they sell of the company intact or in pieces.
I am sad for all those losing their jobs and look forward to see where many of them will end up.
Investment companies like Nova Columbus only care about return. I work in finance and all we care about is to make our shareholders wealthier which I don't see anything wrong with, I find it fun.
Restructuring is part of the equation to try to make a better return. I am pretty sure they will sell off the company or strip its assets and sell them separately.
What I find amusing is the use of the word "massive". Laying off 10-20 people is no where near massive. In the financial services industry we sometimes see layoffs of 1-10 thousand people lol.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Hmm, I don't really see how the partners that bought out SoE, who CLEARLY state on their own website at cntp.com "The CNTP Partners have started, scaled and EXITED several technology companies" can actually be acting in the best interest of pouring MORE MONEY (because from all accounts EQ Next is nowhere near ready for an actual release) into a franchise MMO that may or may not make them money. They appear to make acquisitions and perhaps build them up to raise their value in a very short term, and proceed to SELL IT OFF for profit, or am I wrong here in assuming that based on their own verbage noted above?
If they indeed use that strategy EQ Next will in NO WAY see the light of day as a proper MMO, that would clearly cost too much money to continue funding for an actual end result product so I see any current game that is making money only as the sole survivors and nothing more.
A damn shame too as my first, and most beloved, MMO "Everquest" that I played for nearly 6 years had me so hyped for EQ Next to at least experience a new version of Norrath just one more time.....
THat's how strategy investment firms work. Buy, restructure/execute turn around strategy, sell it off. The aim is to meet or exceed the required return on your investment.
Originally posted by TiamatRoar Why even bother buying out a company not related to your industry if you're only going to lay everyone off after buying it? Seems like a waste of money to me.
To make more money than you invested in the company when you sell it off. The reason why you buy into an industry unrelated to your current portfolio is quite clear. Do you even need to ask?
Originally posted by DMKano
Originally posted by strykr619
Originally posted by gervaise1
Gamasutra have updated their story on the lay-offs with news (from a source claiming that):
CN advised staff last week to expect mass-layoffs but that game teams were "sacred" and cuts would come from divisions like QA and International Operations and estimated that nearly 200 positions were cut, suggesting that the company may have lost nearly 45% of its staff.
Edit for typo: mass not madd!
LOL gamasutra making up numbers (more like 50-70 employee's were laid off). Buddy got paid a full years salary when he was let go and alas was REHIRED at a 12% pay cut.
Nope they counted contractors and temps too. if you think that everyone let go got a full years salary.... I got a bridge to sell you
Who knows, it's all dependant on what's in their contracts. Each firm is different but here in the UK you can't make someone redundant and not pay them anything. THere are minimum redundancy payments you need to make and no we are not talking about 100 bucks. More like at least 3-4 months salary. A colleague who was made redundant some time ago got 18 months of redundancy pay. She did have a non-compete for 6 months though.
If I was made redundant I will get 12 months pay (basically my annual salary). Now every company is diferent and people have different packages when they sign up for a new job. It's not completely outrageous to receive 12 months of redundancy pay.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Most of the layoffs were in customer service believe it or not.
They also no longer offer chat support which shows how deep the cuts were in that department.
This is a sad trend with games now days. Customer service has been boiled down to email support often taking days or weeks to resolve simple problems. I find it odd where MMOs are getting added revenue from cash shops and cutting back services lol. Why this is acceptable in every MMO I have no clue.
New guidelines have been posted in the various games and the changes go beyond chat support.
However I am not sure we can say "most" of the layoffs were in Customer Service for two reasons:
they had a round of lay-offs in mid-2013 in order to "bring costs into line with revenue". Clearly they didn't work! And there was a round of cuts before that as well. So any "easy" cuts will have already been made.
there are many - many more than posted on mmorpg.com - names posted who are leaving' a lot are "development".
Not saying that the majority are not "customer support" related - a category that can be used to cover chat support to keepin gthe servers running - just not sure we can be positive. I think we can be sure that these cuts are deep.
I dont see your point, everywhere I snoop the majority is support staff. IMO that over shadows the few lay offs that were not support. Their ability to make a game has not really been hindered this round. EQN still can be made and launched. My point is the great customer servers SoE had will not be part of DGC. Game launch and I am sure it will come, the many problems that come with it will slow down the needed help customers will need.
When Guild Wars moved to Trion and moved customer server to Trions support team, it became an utter pain. Even took me once taking them to the BBB to get something resolved because of my tickets being answered with automated replies and never getting a person to help me. With Skyforge I am now 2 weeks waiting for a reply to a simple ticket. Again Talking to a live rep my problem could have been fixed in 2-5 min. Even live chat would be simple and done in a few min.
Unless Nova part of their shared resources gives them access to their support staff I am very unimpressed. Like I said above, games are now making more money by adding cash shops while they remove more support. This is becoming the standard and IMO, gamers need to say no to this. This industry to worth billions and most games dont even have chat support any more. Automated replies that dont help anyone. I have left games over bad customer support.
Guild wars moved to Trion??????
What in the world are you talking about?
Trion support only does their own - Rift, Defiance, Trove ArcheAge and Glyph related issues.
This is taking it to a new level - now Trion is getting blamed for other devs games - wow
Sorry got my companies mixed up, meant NCSoft. But I would not toot Trions Customer Servers as something awesome as well. LOL
So the big bad old publisher NCSoft gave customer support responsibility to the developer of the game itself, ArenaNet. All of their (NCSoft) titles are basically on a ticket system. So what exactly is your point here? Even Blizzard ticks off their customers with their automated replies... get over it.
That in an industry thats worth Billions and as a whole its customer servers was best 10 years ago. Seeing DGC laying off support staff. Seeing most MMOs move to the ticket system to deal with customers is unacceptable. To top this off, cash shops being in new sources of income and this in the face of removing more and more support. I think gamers should be upset. This is the new norm =- Im sick of submitting tickets that get automated replies that take days and weeks to fix problems.
I remember back in the day submitting a tick and a GM showing up in game to talk to you and that often took 5-30 min to get one show up.
If the game was made well, you wouldn't need customer support now would you? Seems to me, the ones investing heavily in customer support have a need to. What's that say about the game?
Who knows, it's all dependant on what's in their contracts. Each firm is different but here in the UK you can't make someone redundant and not pay them anything. THere are minimum redundancy payments you need to make and no we are not talking about 100 bucks. More like at least 3-4 months salary. A colleague who was made redundant some time ago got 18 months of redundancy pay. She did have a non-compete for 6 months though.
If I was made redundant I will get 12 months pay (basically my annual salary). Now every company is diferent and people have different packages when they sign up for a new job. It's not completely outrageous to receive 12 months of redundancy pay.
In the USA, we have unemployment insurance, into which funds are paid as a person works per hour over time. I see the UK has jobseeker allowance which is considered to be about the equivalent. So if a person is laid off in the uk, do they get both jobseeker allowance and redundancy pay?
What I find amusing is the use of the word "massive". Laying off 10-20 people is no where near massive. In the financial services industry we sometimes see layoffs of 1-10 thousand people lol.
When a company fires nearly half of their employees, using massive to describe it is appropriate.
If the game was made well, you wouldn't need customer support now would you? Seems to me, the ones investing heavily in customer support have a need to. What's that say about the game?
Of course you still need customer service, what kind of question or implication is this? Even well designed software has an issue here and there as there is no such thing as perfection. They also deal with a lot more than bugged content or features.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I'm just not sure anymore where Daybreak is going to focus its remaining employees. Supporting old games as a revenue stream while cutting projects in development or milking existing games with next to no support while throwing everything at EQN in order to get something released.
It would be noble if they tried to both support old games and continue development of EQN, but there just is no way anymore.
H1Z1, PS2, EQ1 and EQ2 dev teams are all about the same size (I don't know DCUO dev team size). The idea is that if H1Z1 team can make a new game with only ~20 people and churn out stuff that fast, the other dev teams should be able to so as well.
EQNext team is still the largest and it was never the size of some of the recently released MMOs either. It had about 100 people in it before the layoff.
Who says the dev teams are the same size? There was talk on EQ2Wire that the EQ2 team was so slashed, they have no idea how they can keep developing at the previous pace.
We have heard the EQN team was cut the most and that CN was going to try to avoid cutting developers, but even so after the layoffs they were offering voluntary buyouts, which developers were taking. No need to file reports on those I guess.
What we do know is that SOE has gone through several rounds of steep layoffs over the last 5 or so years. People keep saying this is normal and how it shouldn't affect their ability to make games, but look at what SOE has done in the last few years.
H1Z1... alpha level release
Landmark... alpha level release
EQN... stuck in development for over six years with nothing to show yet.
I think we can safely say that even prior to these layoffs the company had already been cut deep enough to the point where they were unable to develop a game beyond the alpha stage. Losing nearly 50% of the company on top of that. No way it doesn't have dramatic impact everywhere.
Comments
Most of the layoffs were in customer service believe it or not.
They also no longer offer chat support which shows how deep the cuts were in that department.
My guess is they wanted an experienced but cheap company / house to make mobile games. Having the EQ franchise in their lap makes no difference to them.
Sad to say. I can no longer play any of the games bought out. I had hopes for EQ Next. But alas they are shattered. I will miss my EQ and EQII accounts. The same way I already miss my Vanguard account.
A losing situation is a losing situation. No matter what kind of fluff people try to put into it to make it seem like a different thing.
Some will with GRAND DELUSION!! GIVE HOPE!
The REALITY!!!!
THE END!
This does indeed appear to be more information about the earlier announcement rather than a "second wave". (The core information being a formal legal posting.)
And 140 - from one studio - would lend support to the 200 number reported which may or may not include sub-contract / consultants etc. plus any Austin staff.
A local San Diego news site so it wouldn't really be interested in what happened at Austin.
When news broke about staff being cut to c. 250 I expected at least one office to be closed - or both merged somewhere cheap. This suggests San Diego is closing. c. 250 staff could fit in a medium size open plan office; or in the case of Turbine a parking lot warehouse structure was it.
severance pay = full year = 12 (month)
severance pay ~= Half the time in months they expect for you to find another job. The formula is :
severance pay ~= (yearly salary / $10,000) / 2
Let calculate what a 12 month severance package made.
12 (months) x 2 (per month [for those who want units]) x $10,000 = $240,000
yearly salary severance pay
$20,000 = 1 month
$40,000 = 2 month
$60,000 = 3 month
$80,000 = 4 month
$100,000 = 5 month
$120,000 = 6 month
$140,000 = 7 month
$160,000 = 8 month
$180,000 = 9 month
$200,000 = 10 month
$220,000 = 11 month
This is what I have seen for the last 24 years, from small to large companies.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
This is a sad trend with games now days. Customer service has been boiled down to email support often taking days or weeks to resolve simple problems. I find it odd where MMOs are getting added revenue from cash shops and cutting back services lol. Why this is acceptable in every MMO I have no clue.
My guess is that CN bought DBG for the revenue streams of 5 active games. If that money is not being spent on development, then there is a lot of it. When I look at the names let go, I see Community Managers, Lead Designers, and Department Heads. All the high cost of work delegation. All the people doing the work are probably still in place. Some companies have work flow mapped out and pre-delegated. Others do not. As work is finished, I suppose the reaming management can delegate new work assignments. But the development will all be fast tracked to release and profit generation.
If CN keeps the remaining development expertise, it will be for contract work on other companies projects.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
New guidelines have been posted in the various games and the changes go beyond chat support.
However I am not sure we can say "most" of the layoffs were in Customer Service for two reasons:
Most of the customer service team was let go, but that doesn't mean most of those let go were from customer service. The cuts were deep and no department or project was spared. Some just didn't get cut as deeply as others.
I'm just not sure anymore where Daybreak is going to focus its remaining employees. Supporting old games as a revenue stream while cutting projects in development or milking existing games with next to no support while throwing everything at EQN in order to get something released.
It would be noble if they tried to both support old games and continue development of EQN, but there just is no way anymore.
It was obvious from the first day - they are putting the games they have into maintainance mode. And will only have minimum crew to keep them going, until there is any profit.
You can say goodbye to everquests
H1Z1, PS2, EQ1 and EQ2 dev teams are all about the same size (I don't know DCUO dev team size). The idea is that if H1Z1 team can make a new game with only ~20 people and churn out stuff that fast, the other dev teams should be able to so as well.
EQNext team is still the largest and it was never the size of some of the recently released MMOs either. It had about 100 people in it before the layoff.
I dont see your point, everywhere I snoop the majority is support staff. IMO that over shadows the few lay offs that were not support. Their ability to make a game has not really been hindered this round. EQN still can be made and launched. My point is the great customer servers SoE had will not be part of DGC. Game launch and I am sure it will come, the many problems that come with it will slow down the needed help customers will need.
When Guild Wars moved to Trion and moved customer server to NCSoft support team, it became an utter pain. Even took me once taking them to the BBB to get something resolved because of my tickets being answered with automated replies and never getting a person to help me. With Skyforge I am now 2 weeks waiting for a reply to a simple ticket. Again Talking to a live rep my problem could have been fixed in 2-5 min. Even live chat would be simple and done in a few min.
Unless Nova part of their shared resources gives them access to their support staff I am very unimpressed. Like I said above, games are now making more money by adding cash shops while they remove more support. This is becoming the standard and IMO, gamers need to say no to this. This industry to worth billions and most games dont even have chat support any more. Automated replies that dont help anyone. I have left games over bad customer support.
EDIT: Fixed the company name to NCSoft
Sorry got my companies mixed up, meant NCSoft. But I would not toot Trions Customer Servers as something awesome as well. LOL
So the big bad old publisher NCSoft gave customer support responsibility to the developer of the game itself, ArenaNet. All of their (NCSoft) titles are basically on a ticket system. So what exactly is your point here? Even Blizzard ticks off their customers with their automated replies... get over it.
That in an industry thats worth Billions and as a whole its customer servers was best 10 years ago. Seeing DGC laying off support staff. Seeing most MMOs move to the ticket system to deal with customers is unacceptable. To top this off, cash shops being in new sources of income and this in the face of removing more and more support. I think gamers should be upset. This is the new norm =- Im sick of submitting tickets that get automated replies that take days and weeks to fix problems.
I remember back in the day submitting a tick and a GM showing up in game to talk to you and that often took 5-30 min to get one show up.
Investment companies like Nova Columbus only care about return. I work in finance and all we care about is to make our shareholders wealthier which I don't see anything wrong with, I find it fun.
Restructuring is part of the equation to try to make a better return. I am pretty sure they will sell off the company or strip its assets and sell them separately.
What I find amusing is the use of the word "massive". Laying off 10-20 people is no where near massive. In the financial services industry we sometimes see layoffs of 1-10 thousand people lol.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
THat's how strategy investment firms work. Buy, restructure/execute turn around strategy, sell it off. The aim is to meet or exceed the required return on your investment.
To make more money than you invested in the company when you sell it off. The reason why you buy into an industry unrelated to your current portfolio is quite clear. Do you even need to ask?
Who knows, it's all dependant on what's in their contracts. Each firm is different but here in the UK you can't make someone redundant and not pay them anything. THere are minimum redundancy payments you need to make and no we are not talking about 100 bucks. More like at least 3-4 months salary. A colleague who was made redundant some time ago got 18 months of redundancy pay. She did have a non-compete for 6 months though.
If I was made redundant I will get 12 months pay (basically my annual salary). Now every company is diferent and people have different packages when they sign up for a new job. It's not completely outrageous to receive 12 months of redundancy pay.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
If the game was made well, you wouldn't need customer support now would you? Seems to me, the ones investing heavily in customer support have a need to. What's that say about the game?
In the USA, we have unemployment insurance, into which funds are paid as a person works per hour over time. I see the UK has jobseeker allowance which is considered to be about the equivalent. So if a person is laid off in the uk, do they get both jobseeker allowance and redundancy pay?
When a company fires nearly half of their employees, using massive to describe it is appropriate.
Of course you still need customer service, what kind of question or implication is this? Even well designed software has an issue here and there as there is no such thing as perfection. They also deal with a lot more than bugged content or features.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Who says the dev teams are the same size? There was talk on EQ2Wire that the EQ2 team was so slashed, they have no idea how they can keep developing at the previous pace.
We have heard the EQN team was cut the most and that CN was going to try to avoid cutting developers, but even so after the layoffs they were offering voluntary buyouts, which developers were taking. No need to file reports on those I guess.
What we do know is that SOE has gone through several rounds of steep layoffs over the last 5 or so years. People keep saying this is normal and how it shouldn't affect their ability to make games, but look at what SOE has done in the last few years.
H1Z1... alpha level release
Landmark... alpha level release
EQN... stuck in development for over six years with nothing to show yet.
I think we can safely say that even prior to these layoffs the company had already been cut deep enough to the point where they were unable to develop a game beyond the alpha stage. Losing nearly 50% of the company on top of that. No way it doesn't have dramatic impact everywhere.