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Activision Blizzard Closing France Office | MMORPG.com
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Activision Blizzard Closing France Office | MMORPG.com
It looks like Activision Blizzard, publisher of World of Warcraft, is shuttering its Versailles, France offices which employs roughly 400 people, according a Bloomberg report.
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You know we live in sad times when a third party "opinion" carries more integrity than anything the business actually comes out and tells us.
It is especially comical when some dude says "the game is doing great"3 weeks later it closes down.
I can look at Smedely,he completely destroyed one of the biggest game studios on the planet and yet many people still were interested in what he had to sell...sigh.People don't learn and don't pay attention.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
There are soooooo many other game studios all vying for cash shop and epsort $$$.During the early days of Wow it was simple,very little competition and easy to sell subscriptions and not compete for gamer's $$$.
So now if Blizzard tries to join the rank and file of Asian studios that are nothing more than very hardcore cash shops or like Rockstar and it's casino gambling ring inside GTAO they will be met with harsh criticism.
With the massive size and overhead they also cannot scale back the oppressive $$$ designs of their games or all the top end corporate staff take big hits and garner less bonuses if they still get bonuses.
So where does Blizzard move,they can't go up they can't go back,the yare sort of stuck right where they are losing numbers every year to all the other studios.They have tried to further monetize but for example inside Hearthstone that imo worked against them by segregating the player base into a battlegrounds community or a Standard community.This tactic SPLITS the revenue,it does not garner new revenue or even new players.
I chalk it up to greed and poor management and imo it was said MANY years ago,it was said that the only one to take down Blizzard will be Blizzard.So likely in the next 10 years we see some Headlines "Microsoft buy Blizzard/Activision".
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
China will just buy down their major share holders just like "poe", nowadays western and chinese trade is all about "who is the big brother" issue.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
..and you are, sadly right!
I mean, this jobs, while important to the people who had them, are very easy to do in other studio they own ( hence, London ). Marketing? Can be done from .. everywhere. Localizing? Same. Customer support? Same. And in most cases, can be done by people who are already working in this positions from ..say ..UK or US.
So from a ..business POV, it makes a lot of sense. You would do it. I would do it. Tech is also playing an important role here. For exemple in marketing, you don't need people in France to advertise in France. They can easily get the data they need from UK/US and then start marketing.
I know, people lost their jobs and it sucks, but this is how many corporate companies are doing since .. forever. They adapt and cut costs as much as they can.
..and, let's not forget that Blizzard is no longer BLIZZARD, at least in this regard.
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
It's time for the CEO's to get their raise again.
https://blackfridayvpn.me/
I thought it was mostly EU game support and local translations ( French, German, etc ).
All main development is done (and always has been) in their main office in US as far as I know.
I know that the game support division was already moved to Ireland long time ago, due to too strict labour laws in France.
400 employees is a huge number if all they do is manage and update the EU servers.
This amount was justified back in the Prime days of WoW when they had 10 million subscribers world wide.
WoW popularity has sunk in the gutter the last couple years, especially after the BfA expansion fiasco!
Most of the EU (and also US frankly) servers are low pop and never go beyond medium pop. Just a handful are High pop the last 2-3 years.
So I guess they might be preparing to just centralize WoW support or at least run the standard GM support from Ireland, while the rest will be run from the US office (including language translations).
It's very expensive to operate and entire office with 400 people, especially when the main game they support is WoW, which is in steep decline and hemorrhaging subscribers.
All because of Bobby Kotick that backwards cardboard cut-out cunt!
(I sense a report incoming- if this is the case- I am probably banned- but I had to f-king say it!)
mmorpg junkie since 1999
Now with Vivendi out of the picture for some years now, its pretty clear ActiVision is the true evil here.
Just look what they did to Bungie and Destiny 1 and how desperately Bungie tried itself to get away from ActiVision in the end.
Let's also not forget that leaked internal report from ActiVision, that revealed they hired psychologists to research how to implement addictive Monetization mechanics inside games and how far they can push it in what consumers would tolerate.
Take that for what you will, as to where ActiVision's priorities lie with future games.
No more Project Titan, no new inventions..just more of the same