Malthael Isn't The Only One Reaping Souls - 8% of Blizzard Laid Off, Dev Teams Increasing, Message From J. Allen Brack
Today is filled with news out of Activision. Many non-developer employees at the company were let go and we learned some more information out of Activision's quarterly.
- Employees were let go prior to today's earnings call.
- Activision Blizzard saw record numbers for 2018.
- Hearthstone's numbers stabilized since the last earnings report.
- Hearthstone's developer team is going to increase by around 20% during 2019.
- Activison Blizzard is investing more in developers over other areas.
Blizzard's President, J. Allen Brack, who received the title last October before BlizzCon, wrote a message to the community following the news.
- They continue to be commited to creating "epic games and entertainment experiences".
- They want to maintain their development standards across their game catalog.
- Esports is still a priority and they will continue to produce competitive content.
- To support their priorities, they are reducing the number of non-dev positions in North America.
- Impacted employees were granted severance which included additional pay, benefits continuation, and career / recruiting support.
- Blizzard will continue to work hard towards their mission and our expectations.
Sources
Quote from Earnings ReportBobby Kotick, Chief Executive Officer of Activision Blizzard said “While our financial results for 2018 were the best
in our history, we didn’t realize our full potential. To help us reach our full potential, we have made a number of
important leadership changes. These changes should enable us to achieve the many opportunities our industry
affords us, especially with our powerful owned franchises, our strong commercial capabilities, our direct digital
connections to hundreds of millions of players, and our extraordinarily talented employees.”Blizzard had 35 million MAUsC in the quarter, as Overwatch® and Hearthstone® saw sequential stability
and World of Warcraft® saw expected declines post-expansion-launch. Fourth quarter segment
revenues grew 15% year-over-year to $686 million and operating income increased 51% year-over-year
to $241 million.In 2019, the company will increase development investment in its biggest franchises, enabling teams to accelerate
the pace and quality of content for their communities and supporting a number of new product initiatives. The
number of developers working on Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Overwatch, Warcraft®, Hearthstone and Diablo®
in aggregate will increase approximately 20% over the course of 2019. The company will fund this greater
investment by de-prioritizing initiatives that are not meeting expectations and reducing certain non-development
and administrative-related costs across the business. The company is also integrating its global and regional sales
and go-to-market, partnerships, and sponsorships capabilities. As part of these restructuring actions, the company
expects to incur a GAAP-only pre-tax charge of approximately $150 million, the majority of which is expected to
be incurred this year.
Quote from J. Allen BrackBlizzard Community…
Over the past few months, I’ve met with many people throughout Blizzard, talking about how we create our future. One thing that remains constant: we are committed to creating epic games and entertainment experiences.
Our development pipeline is strong, and we have the largest lineup of games that we’ve ever had. At the same time, Blizzard tries to have a level of craftsmanship and excellence in all that we do. Maintaining those standards as we continue expanding these worlds takes both time and talented developers.
With that in mind, we have plans to add to game development. We are dedicated to bringing you more content across existing game franchises and bringing our unannounced projects to life. Esports and the Overwatch League are also important priorities, and we will continue to produce great competitive content.
To better support these priorities, we need to reorganize some of our non-development teams. As a result, we will be reducing the number of non-development positions in North America and anticipate a related process in our regional offices over the coming months subject to local requirements. This was an extremely difficult decision, and we want to acknowledge the effort of everyone who has contributed to Blizzard. To assist with the transition, we are offering each impacted employee a severance package that includes additional pay, benefits continuation, and career and recruiting support to help them find their next opportunity. These people are members of the Blizzard family—they’ve cared deeply and contributed greatly to our work here and we are extremely grateful for all they’ve done.
As difficult as some of these organizational changes are, I am confident in Blizzard’s future and we will continue working hard to live up to not only our mission, but your expectations. We look forward to sharing everything with you when it’s ready.
J. Allen Brack
The idea is that learning soft skills in a professional setting is much easier to teach than learning how to code. You are right that excelling at both things is rare; those people generally become managers and there aren't as many of those.
That doesn't mean developers at these companies need to raise their Charisma score to 20 to be successful, it just means they need to write unit tests for their code and learn how to write user stories for the work they do and maybe take social media training. It's not that big of an ask.
Happened to me years ago, the company where I was at made record profits, and then laid off 25% of the workforce. I don't get it.
That's really unfortunate for the people who got laid off. I hope that this is a blessing in disguise for them and they find projects that they maybe enjoy working on even more. Its bittersweet, but I think its great news for the community who enjoys Activision games that they are focusing resources on development. Lets hope this tough decision they had to make pays off for everyone involved. I can see this being nothing but positive for all parties.
HOW DID BRODE KNOW???
When your boss is an a-hole, you know. That's why Brode knew to get out. Even if the company treats you well and you know your spot is safe, when you work for an a-hole, you just want to get out.
So the Matheal pun.... I mean people just lost their jobs. That sucks. The joke about it seems like a low blow.
Activision it's "The Evil"
Savjz Wife (Christina Mikkonen) wrote on her twitter:
"
Myself and my entire team were affected today. They are great, hard-working people and will bounce back quickly. It has been a pleasure building up the Hearthstone community and global communications efforts these past six years."
For sure, next to your spouse leaving you, being laid off is one of the worst feelings in the world. I hope they gave her a severance package or something to help her get by until she finds a new gig.
This means Hearthstone will finaly have more content and will be updated regulary?
If only it was that simple
I'm glad they're not cutting on developers but rather they will hire more of them even for Hearthstone. I believe HS can surpass the peak it once had in 2017 if they do things right moving forward. Lots of potential for Hearthstone, the game is still fairly young.
Seems like a terribly insensitive headline.
Activision was not very sensitive to its employees nor was it in widely publicizing it was going to do this for weeks, basically using it as a goddamn advertisement of their brand. As the saying goes, "you reap what you sow."
"Impacted employees were granted severance which included additional pay, benefits continuation, and career / recruiting support."
Seems pretty sensitive to the employees to me, 10,000x better than most layoffs that happened this year that received nothing.
Good news everyone :)
There will be more games like Diablo Immortal. There will be worst customer support, less quality in games and so on. In sum: There will be more Activision, less Blizzard.
True.
Bubbles grow and burst for all kinds of reasons which are unrelated to the intrinsic value of the underlying property (as is currently the case for Blizzard). As you point out, the process isn't exactly exceptional - the growth of Blizzard's market value over the past five years has far out-paced its intrinsic value, and an inevitable correction has hit the company. But not reacting to the burst, as many geniuses on Hearthpwn and elsewhere apparently recommend, would be categorically worse for everyone - stockholders, employees and the geniuses themselves . . .
Very corporate. Very expected. Nothing much to say other than I hope the devs find work at a company that is less shit.
do you even read?
they clearly said that non-dev people were let go, also lay offs are natural and happen in every company on any level of growth, sometimes it's necessary, I've been let go myself even though I was doing very good job
also saying the company is shit without knowing anything of how it is to actually work there(which I assume you don't, but still I'm 99% sure of my assumption) is just ignorant