We once again achieved record results in 2018
all that without the new shiny Candy Crushes. so, yes, Fyanta, very very pumped, like... pumpissimo!
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800 non-developer personnel? Sounds like all they are doing is trimming some fat. I wouldn't read a whole lot into this.
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and it's only 8% of the workforce. i wouldn't say that the gains of the top ranked in that company are fair, but people just like to get on the bandwagon to uproar against evil company firing employees even when said employees are superfluous/not needed anymore
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Most anyone on Glassdoor complains about Activision that it is ridiculously top-heavy with a giant number in management.
Also, they are cutting 800 jobs while their dear CEO issues himself 30-million dollar salary with the highest management taking over 80 million in total.
So, it is not trimming the fat, it is the company leaders deciding to fire people so they don't have to reduce their own seven-digit yearly bonuses. Robert Kotick is universally regarded as the personification of greed in the video game industry, especially after they release the mass lay-off news while also stating that their income and profits were the highest ever in the company's existence.
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I like how 800 people ending up on the street just because their overlords wanna meet some arbitrary profit number as they personally rack in 7 and 8 figures qualify as trimming some fat to you.
Are you secretly Kotick? Be honest, that would explain that level of disregard for other people's well being.
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Yeah pretty normal. I've seen it firsthand as well on my previous company. They also got severance packages so win-win.
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I mean, what can you expect from a company that puts profit above everything else, to the point of ruining their products? They slowly start to fail. It's been like that again and again with multiple companies from multiple fields and time periods. But the "experts" working at some companies are still repeating the same mistakes. Good for massive companies such as Activision, is that they can pretty much always bounce back. Look at Capcom. They started doing some bad stuff but learned from their mistakes and have bounced back tremendously. And so did their finances.
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This is what happens when your company answers solely to the board of directors, who in turn answer directly to the shareholders.
Edit: Remember when Iwata took a pay cut instead of firing Nintendo employees a few years ago? Despite what corporate capitalism wants you to believe, it is possible to treat your employees like actual human beings.
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What do you mean, "human beings"?
It's well known there is no such thing. We're just numbers on one side of the equation or the other. No?
And if only that was just the big corporations. That's why I quit my office job a couple of decades ago.
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I've worked for big companies that decided to 'trim the fat' before now - and then ended up finding out the hard way what all those experienced people actually did and how hard it can be to replace them with new recruits once business suffers. Sad for everybody involved but these things seem to be cyclical.
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So they plan on investing in more developers for their ever-shrinking portfolio of franchises.
I'd rather see them invest in reviving franchises, or starting new ones.
I mean, they have a lot of stuff laying around for which they could do remakes or new entries with a lower budget, sell those for a lower price and invest in some goodwill.
Lost Vikings or Blackthorne remakes probably would sell with the retro-loving crowd, they could do a proper non-Skylanders Spyro following the remakes, they could get back to doing licensed games (since they were one of the few companies that could produce licensed games that don't suck ass, they just need to learn how to negotiate for perpetual licensing deals)...
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Lost Vikings was a lotta fun, for sure. With Frozenbyte having dropped the ball with Trine 3, there's an open niche among modern gamers that they could make use of if they're careful with their marketing, as well. That said, while Blizzard may be open to it, that kind of IP runs contrary to the kind of content Activision is established as being willing to back. The most likely thing that Activision'd be willing to go for would be a mobile title, and that'd leave us unsure as to the resulting game's quality.
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Well, after this cost-cutting it's probably the same people calling the shots for all of ActiBlizzard. And Blizzard would be less likely to do it anyway because it isn't designed for online multiplayer from the ground up - unlike basically every game they actually published since Starcraft.
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because it isn't designed for online multiplayer from the ground up
If you're talking a remaster rather than a remake, then that may actually a bit easier to push through.
Beam Software was the developer for the second Lost Vikings game, and they got bought out by Krome Studios.
These days, Krome Studios seems to exclusively be focusing on producing remasters and mobile games.
Given their current business outlook, it seems like remastering Lost Vikings would be right up their alley. Moreover, given Beam Studio's development of the second game, their approval might be required for a remaster of the second game to go through in the first place; Meaning that at some point they'd likely need to be roped in to some degree anyway.
That said, I'm pretty sure Blizzard already released a DosBox version of Lost Vikings for free through Battle.net. :P
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What do you mean no major release in 2019 Diablo Immortal is the biggest thing that gonna come out in 2019 !! do you not have internet ? /s
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If they don't call that a major release it can mean only one thing... They don't want to deal with another controversy about their outsourced Chinese reskin-the-same-game cash grab.
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diablo immortal a major release?? are you kidding me?? it's a mobile phone that born by recicling another game (i don't remember the name just google it by yourself)
any mobile phone can't be considered a major release, absolutely never.
omfg i still can't believe it that there's even one person that consider diablo immortal a major release..... what the hell it's happening with the people....
because people like you, the game industry only care about benefits and stop doing great games or taking care of the customers. You are the cancer for the rest of us, that don't get conformed seeing how they destroyed a franchise just for make more money.
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calm down /s mean sarcasm and my comment was sarcastic. do you not have humor ?
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next time write something more visible to the not english native :)
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Most people know that it was sarcastic comment even without the "/s" and the whole point of "/s" is to point out the obvious for people that isn't native and/or don't understand that it is sarcasm, This is commonly used and known you must be very naive or new to the internet either way, next time please don't go and insult random people until you fully understand what they meant or maybe just don't insult anybody at all because you know people are allowed to have opinions of their own.
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ok first of all isn't than common as you want to show.
second i never insulted you
third yeah you "insulted" me telling me naive
fourth and not less important, talking about diablo and how fanboys are, your commentary isn't that easy to see it as a sarcastic, just go to a lot of forums and you will understand.
next time don't go and insult people when they don't insult you.
just don't insult anybody at all because you know people are allowed to don't know what means /s and other things that almost no one use in internet.
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omfg i still can't believe it that there's even one person that consider diablo immortal a major release..... what the hell it's happening with the people....
because people like you, the game industry only care about benefits and stop doing great games or taking care of the customers. You are the cancer for the rest of us, that don't get conformed seeing how they destroyed a franchise just for make more money.
I don't know how you perceived naive as insulting, I kinda view it as innocent,pure and lack of experience but okay my bad :) I stand corrected you're too naive pessimistic.
naive
too ready to believe someone or something, or to trust that someone’s intentions are good, esp. because of a lack of experience: - Cambridge dictionary
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second i never insulted you
you started this
You are the cancer for the rest of us
that's a pretty serious insult, in ANY language.
considering diablo immortal is a game thus it's just a matter of opinion/taste, it's normal some people will find it super funny and enjoy it a lot.
besides
any mobile phone can't be considered a major release, absolutely never.
yes, they can and they are. check numbers for popular mobile games, they put AAA games to shame.
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Nah, you're just coming off as an asshole who doesn't want to admit misunderstanding something. WhipCream's comment was clearly sarcastic, and would be seen as such by any competent English speaking person. The onus isn't on her to "write something more visible to the not english native."
Approach others with the same understanding you feel you are owed.
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Maximum profit.
Infinite growth on a finite system is the mentality of a cancer cell
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How many developers do you need to phone some Chinese studio and tell them to make a mobile game for you? :>
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1- the one that use his only neurone to think about... "hey let's let chinese studio make our game"
2- the one that say yes
3- the one that go to E3 etc.... and say "hey do you have a mobile phone no??"
4- the one that hold the microphone for the questions of the customers.
so i count 4 in total....
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i bet it's valve's fault.
quick, find an excuse to blame them!
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Finds out Activision didn't have many developers in the first place, and that "20% more developers" would mean 17 new jobs
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Yeah because we all know all a company needs to make games are devs. Nothing else. Hence all the great games put forth on Steam by one-dev-studios.
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Yes, it's the most important obviously.
Gameplay?
Next I'd say art and writing.
Didn't see anything about them firing writers or artists.
Nowhere in the equation would marketing or publishing, esports.. or community management effect the quality of a game.
When you have a good game you can add these things to improve or grow the experience.
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Well first they say "non developers" "publishing, marketing, community management, esports, etc.", not just publishing, marketing and esports. Writers, artists, project leads, directors, UI, sound designers are not developers.
And art and writing after developers? Please.
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Pretty bad for those in nondev areas. pretty good for those who can now apply for a job.
PS: had no clue that they owned Candy Crush. what happened to Saga?
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Guess somebody forgot to tell them that the US was back in business...
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Sounds like clearing the board for 140 actual development jobs they're hiring for now on the site. People go all feelgood for these causes and it is bad when people lose their income, but have you looked at who got fired? I feel for GMs because they're basically company's problem solvers in games, but social media strategists, e-sports coordinators and such? I wish I could get paid for imaginary jobs.
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Please don't be so sure.
I'm not saying that they are kicking out some made-up jobs, but usually companies first kick QA and DevOps employees and PR latest. Social media jobs are needed so they still look good in media, but since people are pre-ordering unfinished products, why would they need testers? Even swapping experienced Devs with novices is way to cut cost.
GM's rarely solve problems, they just try to find cutting cost measure, and regular wrench monkeys are one who actually solve real issues.
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And how many upper-management were fired and/or took a cut in their paycheck?
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so funny read this
"We once again achieved record results in 2018."
and then read that they are going to fire 800 people xDD, this is the sing that they only care about money. no more to say, just a garbage comany.
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Looking forward to Candy Cru$h $aga: Advanced Warfare 4
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Unfortunately this is quite common in game development but this might be the biggest I've heard of. When other studios closed in the past staff members at Blizzard let them know to apply and join their team and some found jobs there and hopefully other studios do the same for the many people who lost their jobs this week. That truly sucks for everyone that was laid off and I hope all of them find studios to work at.
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wow not a single worthy new game in there, all remakes or p2w milkcows
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Hey everyone! I didn't see this posted, so I thought I'd share.
Source
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1095069373822365698
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1095374774728048640
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1095435875222241280
The Fallout Of Activision Blizzard’s Massive Layoffs
It looks like a total of 800 non-developer personnel are being laid off, i.e from publishing, marketing, community management, esports, etc. This ends up being around 8% of it's workforce, BUT Activision plans on boosting its number of developers by about 20% in 2019 to ramp up new content for its biggest franchises such as "Call of Duty" and "Candy Crush."
I don't know about you guys, but I'M FREAKING PUMPED FOR MORE INSTALLMENTS OF CANDY CRUSH! WHOOO :D
Also, Blizzard releases confirmed for a 2019 release are Diablo Immortal(Most likely a 2019 release), Warcraft Reforged and World of Warcraft Classic.
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