Reads like MSFT only wants the intellectual property rights to the brands, not the employees. Can’t blame them, Blizzard’s performance isn’t like Activision’s or King’s. It may not be the employees at fault for Blizzard’s financial performance, but cleaning house is the fastest and most efficient method to start. Getting them to leave on their own saves on severance checks later and also helps against any monopoly lawsuit by showing the company is dying and needs a merger to survive anyways.If MSFT’s long term plan is a relaunch of a lot of these games using their own employees, they only need to keep some of the core game developers, they don’t need a lot these employees. For example, MSFT already has an accounting department, HR department, etc. They don’t need to keep all of those employees post-merger. If they plan to relaunch an updated Starcraft, Diablo, or World of Warcraft on a new engine, they mainly need the story writers and a few older employees, not everyone.The only part of this that surprises me is that they are acting like the acquisition has already gone through. I’d think Bobby would reign it in, incase the anti-trust suit greatly delays or stops it, but they are probably lobbying heavily for it to go through and have back door assurances. The anti-trust is probably political theater.
I would imagine that happy employees would provide higher quality work leading to a better game, causing customers to also be happier so I hope they figure it out. I'm presently overall quite pleased with my game time, but if employees feel appreciated and properly compensated it could get even better.
Blizzard is such a dumpster fire. Every year it just gets worse and worse.
How about they fire their top, whom take most of the money and save millions.
Don’t worry everyone; Ybarra streams WoW and is good at it… Blizzard is going to be fine.
The vast majority of people who "work from home" leave their laptops running and pretend to do work while lounging about in their pajamas and watching Netflix. So yes. Back to work.
Honestly looks like there's going to be a mass exodus from Blizzard over the next year or so as some staff are apparently already applying for jobs elsewhere, and I wish them luck. Better to go somewhere where your talents are appreciated rather than stay and be treated like something the Execs stepped in.
Sound like Blizzard is trying to cut staff. A sudden change in work locations is going to be an inconvenience for nearly anyone. That's why some get to stay remote completely, can't lose all the smart ones. For those they haven't found value in they're just trying to weed out those they can't exploit as easily.And if the staff leave willingly it's not a cut by them.
So employees are still treated as *!@#ty as two years ago?@#$ing hell
I'm getting tired of people crying and complaining about having to go to work to work. Working from home is a biased practice and really needs to be done away with.
And we're back to business as ^&*!ing usual.