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Elder Scrolls Online: Zenimax Reduces Work Force
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Joystiq is reporting that it has received word from Zenimax's Pete Hines that the studio behind Elder Scrolls Online is reducing its work force. Hines cites it as part of the normal development cycle as the game ages and becomes more stable and runs more smoothly. Zenimax will maintain a large workforce to continue to add more content to ESO.
"As is the norm for games of this type, we had ramped up a large workforce to develop a game of vast scale, and ramped up our customer service to handle the expected questions and community needs of The Elder Scrolls Online at launch," Bethesda VP of PR and Marketing Pete Hines told Joystiq. "Now that we are nearly 6 months post launch, we have a thriving online community in a game that runs smoothly."
Hines continued that the studio has adjusted staffing to meet the ongoing needs and continues to operate with a large work force
Read more at the link above.
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Comments
Yep, it's a pretty standard practice that all MMOs and even some single player games do.
I'm glad to hear things are running well.
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"continues to operate with a large work force"
plz change topic name...
True but you know all the haters are going to jump all over this with prophetic zeal about how the game is bombing hard, f2p in a week blah blah yada yada..
Doesn't ultimately mean anything as people will just decide for theirselves based on their biased opinion whether the game/company are successful or not. Actual reports mean nothing to many "players".
Yep I knew it. The game is failing big time and first the cuts and then the remodeled F2P structure. I told you all!......
..... just kidding. This is standard business procedure. Not really sure why it received an article.
LOL yup. I'm sure they'll be along shortly.
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Agreed.
This is SOP and really shouldn't even be news. Especially with an inflammatory title like that to get clicks, for the masses that don't read the articles, just the titles, it spells doom when it's nothing more than standard practice for an online game that has settled in post-release.
I suppose it is the exclusion to the rule in that WoW constantly adds more and more people to maintain server stability and add content despite losing more people each year, and how FFXIV keeps on increasing the amount of people working on their project as well.
Most do let go a part of their workforce, but mostly it is attributed to other factors. Although the Public Relations is correct in that it is a normal thing for most MMOs. Though I usually atttribute that to
1) An underperforming product that did not meet the criteria for maintaining the current team size
2) The want for more money with less overall costs (presumable the mega server helps with less overall costs already); this will result in less overall content than the full team by nature of what it is (oft coming in smaller, but quicker doses to pull wool over the eyes).
3) Truly not needing more workers who already know the systems and could be of use in the future for expansions (directed to work on such); with regards to this, why would you let go people if all is going well? It takes twice as long to get new workers acclimated with your setup.
What of the console version? Surely more work is needed for that. I hate speculation and PR talk. Maybe those who were let go were server related as they said (though still does not negate much of the previous points) and that their Megaservers just need less work and maintenance than other games who have the income to constantly add staff.
If the game's profitable then it's not by definition a failure as people seem to like shouting; though it is worrying whenever a PR guy steps up and says it's "normal" to do something when people familiar with the process are in the crowd.
While everyone I know who bought the game has quit, and the RP guild I used to help run that moved there came back to WoW a few weeks ago, I still believe the game to be healthy. So this move just makes me quirk an eyebrow. Though again I do not not the process of their Megaserver nor their situation. Megaservers are still an enigma with me as I don't have experience with them.
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Is it? just few months after release?
How come GW2 didn't follow this standard practise? it is only now after almost 2 years that 2 people left GW2 team and that also on their own terms and were not fired.
SBFord's trolling them!
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I would love to see some actual research into the dev team sizes and layoffs from different games/companies.
I don't remember EQ, UO, WoW, DAOC, AC, doing layoffs within 6 months of release back in the day but could be wrong. I think it's more about the 150-200+ person dev teams that MMOs of today have.
Anyone have some graphs or data relevant to the subject of layoffs for MMOs since like Ultima Onlineto today. I'm sure it could be found someplace...
Even just looking for five minutes I found some interesting data.
Joystick article on MMO devs most in danger of layoffs
some data on 2013
It seems to be becoming more of an issue in recent years.
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Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/I didn't say every company follows it flawlessly. "Pretty standard practice =/= everyone does it!"
They could've just moved resources around, or never announced their layoffs, or even just let go of some temps they had working on the project.
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I am not talking about ESO but in general that it is a standard practise.
We have companies like Blizzard and Anet who have only increased their work force and not cut it down.
I never said standard means everyone does it but i also disagree it is common thing to do.
These are some good points and interesting thoughts to the generalized events transpiring in recent years. One could say that back in the day they may not have done such simply because the genre was fresh, their tech wasn't refined, and the products were, as a whole, profitable. With the boom of the Themepark, it because an amusement park right with "tourists" and people leaving, whilst spending on a particular title went to astronomical levels to try and attract and keep the tourists in their park.
Naturally after spending such -- as well as the decline of interest in Themeparks -- the companies would start letting go staff just by virtue of the process as a whole. But it may also indicate a flaw in the general process or games of today.
Personally I'm not satisfied with saying this is "the norm", as it is a vicious cycle that provides little job security for the developers and more of the same with those who consume the product and find that is just "the norm" when it comes to the genre as a whole. Why can't we have big time companies that add more staff? I thought Zenimax was a big time company? To date, the other "Big Time" companies have continued to add staff -- Namely FFXIV and WoW, in addition to Destiny receiving a $500,000,0000,000 budget (probably PR) for the next ten years.
Back then, the dev teams weren't of the same size as they are now. They also spend twice the time developing the game before releasing.
Back then 5-7 years Development for an MMO was norm, nowaydays it needs to be shoved out of the door within 3 years tops.
So they create larger teams, develop quicker and release faster. And after that, drop the overhead staff.
Back then also, after release most of the staff got transfered to expansion Project to start working on the first major expansion.
So by looks of it, no expansion is planned for ESO at current time.
Too bad they didn't break out what kinds of employee's are being laid off.
For example, how much voice acting do they need now? How much new area design (versus creating it all at the beginning)? Was it marketing? Sales? Support? IT? Level designers? Artists?
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I am not sure what the story is here?
Of course a developer requires fewer direct employees after a game has released and is fairly stable than when it is in development.
All it tells me is that game development is not a field I would want to enter; zero job security.
The customer service and operations group did their layoff ~4 months ago. This layoff is the development team. This is the second such layoff for them (the first was at launch, as a normal reduction in staff.
It is less about justified, and more about required. They are not discussing raising the price because they feel that they were not charging enough, they are talking about raising it because they are not making enough money.
I was aware of the services and operations layoffs a few months after release, but do you have a source that it was development? Granted, though... the specifically said that there is still a large group to make content. So that is the likely case, based on all existing evidence.
This is the first I've heard about there being talks about them raising the subscription fee. Do you have a link that I could read? Maybe I just haven't been paying attention.