The Blizzard Situation Is Worse Than They Told Us

Down with corpos!

I do wonder, I dunno if anyone knows though. A lot of the games that started on pc as MMOS are not available on consoles. Will WoW be following suit?

We all agree that QA doesn't work at microsoft, right?

they laid them all off so they dont reap the benfits of their new expac launch this year. 100% BS for those affected

So what this is happening in every company not just hame companies

Translation: "Micro-transactions, real money tokens, and easy-game-modes (aka WoW Retail)? You haven't seen anything yet!"

Why go through and buy up all these studios if you can’t afford to keep the employees of said studios employed?? 🤦‍♂️

I hate when stupid companies do this shit

Feb 5/6 ill be getting my sub back for wow. That ceo is out the door xD

"OH NO!!!!!!! Anyways......" Crymore.

I guess I'll be continuing with the private servers. At least there, they still have a flare for creativity & listen to their community. I am saddened to hear about the many employees impacted by corporate greed & irrational decision-making.

Dont see any problem with this, blizz employees driving every game into the ground. Kick everyone outside maybe the SoD team that is carrying hard.

Microsoft thinks they know what they are doing cause the are a big software company, their buying up of all these companies and what they are doing with them shows they should have stuck with fkn XBox cause they have absolutely NO IDEA what the fk they are doing in ANY of these Genres, they refuse to listen to the playerbases who PAY FOR THE CONTENT, and wonder why some random people in japan became billionares nearly overnight cause they LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE PLAYING THEIR FKN GAME. Its not hard,

if I could say anything to the people in charge, start listening to us or you will lose fkn everything, gamers are getting tired of pages microtransactions, partially complete fkn games full of bugs MONTHS after launch, trying to sell us an ACTUAL reskin of a title they already had and wonder why no one wants to play it, Microsoft has had big games HANDED to them and dropped the ball over and over again, SoT, Halo, Etc etc etc. they cant make a fun game to save their fkn lives.

Microsoft is the common denominator here, they are actual garbage at what they are doing and are so sure they do know its actually sad to watch.

Layoffs should always reflect negatively on management. It means you hired a bunch of people you didn't need.

Free to play soon

Create game. Fix bugs then fire the programmers. Ahhh gravy train mindset.

Always layoffs in winter time and mergers. Do people spend less on games in winter time?

🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀

Err what exactly is he supposed to say. Dude is unemployed and looking for work. He did what everyone does makes sure he looks the best for the next company.

Time to start investing time in a new MMO or at least begin shopping around for one, if you haven't already 😂 It never hurts to have a new boat to go to in life when the Titanic you're on hits a Blizzard Berg

TheY are preparing to make these departments fully AI controlled

Still.. I'm still gonna appreciate what Blizzard has done for gaming and for me personally in that perspective through the years.. Nothing last but nothing is lost... :) And being proud to have been part of building that company is all fair to be proud of..

Agile development is killing software (including gaming) quality. In terms of Blizzard, and as the great Sir Mix-A-Lot once said, there’s only one direction you can go once on the top.

Good fire them all. Ow2 TRASH, retail wow TRASH. No love for hos. No love for sc2, only semi good thing is wow classic and its shit weve already played.

microsoft is where game studios go to die

as a creative, i understand like those employees do if there is no work to be done then there’s no money. why would microsoft keep staff for so many dead/dying games? i don’t think it’s shortsighted either since they didn’t have any plans whatsoever to revive those IPs like overwatch for example, we all know and they know it’ll never be what it was. at the end of the day those people knew this is how the industry works, and im sure many of them where prepared for it, and the ones that weren’t probably are victims in a lot of aspects of their life already so why not cry some more that they chose a company to work for that hasn’t had a banger drop in years

Sad that people are now out of work as that always sucks if you are on the receiving end, but the hypocrisy of many of the comments is amazing. Many of the areas that you mention job cuts have happened at Blizztavision, are the exact same games/divisions that I've seen players complaining about for years. Now those games or divisions have had the axe fall and people are surprised? We asked for it with stuff like "Overwatch sux now", "I remember the days when GM's used to listen", "They asked don't we have phones" and too many more whinges to mention. Then you mention a game that was scheduled to be in development for 10 friggin years getting the axe and blame the engine? That's a damn long time in the gaming business and with new owners walking in the door, you'd need to have an amazing presentation and solid work to show if you're already halfway through that timeline (which you also reported some said was an optimistic timeframe).

Im in gaming for the games ... dont care about companies. 🤷🏾‍♂️

You donnt have any antimonopoly policy in US ? - this seem to my as they bough blizzard to eliminate it - to eliminate concurrency

Microsoft/Xbox dont give a damn about their employees. I worked i. Austin doing customer service for a year and a half, and i loved my job. They promoted me but didnt do my credentials so i got fired 2 months later for their mess up.

Ah yes, the bottomless stomach of corporate greed.

Oh shit, here we go again

As Boeing has proven, you don't need QA. Before building the 737-Max, they eliminated the QA division. And there have been no consequences.

Honestly a good clean out has been much needed at Blizzard. Too many poor developers have been covered for a long time, or hired for unnecessary diversity quotas.

Most successful companies don't wait until they are burning cash to layoff, restructure, or set new priorities. I have worked for a couple F500 companies and smaller companies, and I feel the most valued at Microsoft. Not only that, but it is one of the best companies to work for in the world (Time), has some of the best benefits, and when MS laid off employees awhile back, way above average severance packages were given. No one likes a RIF and I would hate it even more if it happened to me, but I am realistic and realize this happens.

All that being said....I think ABK will do amazing things under MS and I cannot wait to see what comes from it.

the first thing you cut is labor because there's always a surplus of volunteers

I would laugh so hard if they laid off Metzen. Hahaha!

They never wanted to own Blizzard, they wanted to destroy it. Yet again the ability to predict the future turns out to be totally worthless.

I've never touched any Blizzard game.

this will be the year of layoffs in general. The biden admin has destroyed our economy and has people cheering for it. Yall better vote this November.

Microsoft is replacing CSR roles with AI especially with Copilot on the forefront.

You are a wonderful example of the integrality and honor reporters and journalists should have, you're a great example of genuine journalist, so happy to see you are as dignified with your integrity, gives me hope for people looking at you as a role model. (:
Thanks for making this video and covering it.

Kotick is gone as of 2024 as far as i read before after the merger. Blizzard to me are a game company and I play/support their games that I like. We are not friends or mates.....same as any company I choose to do business with.

It sounds like game developement employees should union up. Couldn't do this to union employees.

The bigger the team the worse they preform.

So you didn't mention it was thee Esports division the suffered most of thee lay offs

"...both [companies] are profitable..." were. If they have managed to eff this up? They may not stay that way.

If so, the VPs who depend on their stock boosts may not be so happy as they hope.

Anyone who didn’t see this coming from miles away was smoking the Copium pipe.