Massive layoffs at Activision-Blizzard

[abija]

Senior in 2 years means they game the titles.

 

[AfterVirtue]

This is very likely. I saw similar things in other lines of work, recently in bookstores management, same tier; exactly the same dynamics at work.

He is implying he literally did his old 8 hour job, a leadership role, and another intern's job. That was my issue with it. Increased responsability for no or minimal raise yes it's a common abuse. I've even taken the deal a bunch of times but I wouldn't say I did 2 jobs/the work of 2 people and nobody ever asked me why I output considerably less code than before. The abuse is also very relative. I took those deals because the jobs had low workload and overall it was still a much better deal than in other places. From whatever he posts and the output volume of the OW team I'd say he had it even better.

Since it's clear the "work" part is embelished heavily, him taking over the taks of the intern is ... a normal thing? It's not even a new role. Intern with low output gets fired, team gets his workload and a lot of times they don't rush to rehire because it's not clear it's worth it. So that part of the story is what... drivel to pad the qq metters?

Regarding the salary... I first thought he is from UK and just moved to US on work visa. But if he is working in UK offices and comparing his salary to Cali... just lol.

Of course it depends on the details of the situation. Why one person might choose a specific offer, externally (the case of bookstores management was a job offer for people outside the corporation) or internally might vary. For the first case naivety or "manchildren" can be a cause, united with ambition not kept in check by experience and common sense (again, manchildren); The second case might be because, as Damned Registration said

If he didn't take the offer eagerly, they'd just sack him and it'd be some other dude posting the exact same story.

For the pay it depends, from the country, legal sheningans, legal know-how of the worker (there are many that do not know what their rights even are) etc. etc.

Anyway, this is not to say that what happened was in the way the man in the article said it happened, only that given what i know of the situation, very little just the citation of the article, broad strokes, i do not find it unplausible.

 

[Azdul]

"The game becomes the living document". Fuck me.

First Bethesda now Blizzard.

What the fuck is going on with AAA. They just straight up stopped doing GDDs. That basically tells us that chances are there aren't any actual qualified Game Designers nor Project Management because in both cases they would adhere to GDD, its been industry practice ever since its origins, hell Chris Crawford wrote the book on it and I own that book.

Game design is straight up dead folks. Effectively they're just cloning ideas not even designing shit anymore, they see something cool and shiny, they implement it. Freaking magpie ass game dev.

My process is, you start with feasibility testing, those feasibility tests become the evidence you put in the GDD, the GDD becomes the plan for the game to lock in the scope and prevent feature creep, from the GDD you develop the manifest - ie. the conditions that need to be met in order to successfully launch (I learned this from THQ of all places, this is what they made us do so I've gotten stuck doing it this way), once the manifest has been 100%ed you QA and polish the shit out of the game, take it to conventions to get user feedback, release a demo to also get user feedback and generate hype, do a final QA polish phase and then release it hoping to god you didn't miss anything (spoilers: you did - you always do because no game ever launches perfect). The whole idea of a GDD is to focus the development team on the overall goal and make sure that there is a consistent plan in order to hit milestones. Without the document the game is just a mess of features with no scope for release and no metric for success.

Further more GDDs are an excellent way to postmortem your game and catalogue experience so that you'll be even better the next game.

The fuck are modern developers doing?! lol

It must partially be the "agile mindset" mutating and creeping into new areas. Proper planning is effectively dead in the modern MBA-driven IT industry and it is a big reason why everything is shit and I get paid ridiculous amounts to do almost nothing.

Agile manifesto and it's consequences have been a disaster to the human race.

Just read the leaked stories of game development at studios such as Blizzard:

1. Very important manager - who made good game 20 years ago - has a GREAT idea for a new game - but no time to design it.
2. Peons implement the idea for a year - but managers have no time to look at it.
3. After a year and a half - there is presentation for management - and the game is NOT the BEST THING EVER.
4. Peons are ordered to change fundamentals of technology and gameplay - and prepare some production-quality assets.
5. Year passes with no feedback.
6. There is another presentation for management - game somewhat sucks - and is further away from release than a year before.
7. Stormtroopers from Microsoft / Sony / Activision show up - fire 30% of the team to increase morale - and kill the project.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Just read the leaked stories of game development at studios such as Blizzard:

1. Very important manager - who made good game 20 years ago - has a GREAT idea for a new game - but no time to design it.
2. Peons implement the idea for a year - but managers have no time to look at it.
3. After a year and a half - there is presentation for management - and the game is NOT the BEST THING EVER.
4. Peons are ordered to change fundamentals of technology and gameplay - and prepare some production-quality assets.
5. Year passes with no feedback.
6. There is another presentation for management - game somewhat sucks - and is further away from release than a year before.
7. Stormtroopers from Microsoft / Sony / Activision show up - fire 30% of the team to increase morale - and kill the project.

Sort of, but that very important manager likely has a questionable relationship with the studio owners which is why they're able to persue passion projects.
As development turns into a meat grinder, they essentially disconnect from the project that they basically created in the first place to do it all over again on some new stupid project.
Core team get fed up with leadership abandoning the very vision that they created, they eventually leave because its obvious the studio is collapsing - they're veterans they can see the first signs of it and they know its better to leave early than run the risk of suffering unpaid wages and legal battles.
New Hires and QA will take the brunt, they always do and are often treated to illegal abuses - its why the veterans leave first. ActiBlizz proved that Unions are necessary and do in fact work.

Once your veterans start leaving you need to get out. Its why I have no sympathy at all for the recent firings that have happened in the industry, everyone that gave a shit left already, why the fuck haven't you yet?! Oh because you enable this stupid process to continue. If we starve the meat grinder it will die so lets kill it already.

 

[abija]

Just read the leaked stories of game development at studios such as Blizzard:

1. Very important manager - who made good game 20 years ago - has a GREAT idea for a new game - but no time to design it.
2. Peons implement the idea for a year - but managers have no time to look at it.
3. After a year and a half - there is presentation for management - and the game is NOT the BEST THING EVER.
4. Peons are ordered to change fundamentals of technology and gameplay - and prepare some production-quality assets.
5. Year passes with no feedback.
6. There is another presentation for management - game somewhat sucks - and is further away from release than a year before.
7. Stormtroopers from Microsoft / Sony / Activision show up - fire 30% of the team to increase morale - and kill the project.

How exactly do you think games are made? You think those "peons" that had no balls to publicly complain before would do great working with an actual publisher? They had the opportunity and more than enough time to deliver, they failed, simple as. They also earned money during that time and aren't in deep shit after failing.

 

[Azdul]

Just read the leaked stories of game development at studios such as Blizzard:

1. Very important manager - who made good game 20 years ago - has a GREAT idea for a new game - but no time to design it.
2. Peons implement the idea for a year - but managers have no time to look at it.
3. After a year and a half - there is presentation for management - and the game is NOT the BEST THING EVER.
4. Peons are ordered to change fundamentals of technology and gameplay - and prepare some production-quality assets.
5. Year passes with no feedback.
6. There is another presentation for management - game somewhat sucks - and is further away from release than a year before.
7. Stormtroopers from Microsoft / Sony / Activision show up - fire 30% of the team to increase morale - and kill the project.

How exactly do you think games are made? You think those "peons" that had no balls to publicly complain before would do great working with an actual publisher? They had the opportunity and more than enough time to deliver, they failed, simple as. They also earned money during that time and aren't in deep shit after failing.

In some cases there are no clear goals - just the expectation of delivering something that will fit never clearly defined 'vision'.

You can sabotage any project by changing the requirements during production phase:

• change the engine to more graphically impressive (or cheaper) one,
• 128 simultaneous players instead of 16,
• persistent world instead of arena shooter,
• add vehicles,
• add destructible terrain,
• make it more like last month best selling game.

In Blizzard - decision about the engine was made by the board. Not CEO, not CTO, especially not by project lead - but by the group with not a whit of personal responsibility for any project decision.

Titan was rebooted to incorporate new technology after 5 years of development - while 70% of team was moved to other projects - and later cancelled due to failing to control the scope.

I don't think that peons not working hard enough was an issue. Making hero shooter for 12 years - while not having defined goals, deliverables and scope for the first six - was. I suspect it was the same for Odyssey.

 

[abija]

Decision about the engine shouldn't prevent to build a game. Those are escuses. All their games run great on custom engines and the black sheep hearthstone runs on unity...

Titan had the issue of competing with WoW (just as original D3). And competing with WoW is not acceptable in Blizzard. Then Kern left, got funds, put out "Titan at home" with Firefall and failed. Still, they salvaged and put out a solid game and made bank.
They even salvaged D4 and made enough profits with it to go balls deep with multiple production teams for expansion and seasons.

Yet in a market where survival games make money and there's plenty room for an AAA product, that game was instantly canned. And we're supposed to believe those are great devs ruined by big bad blizzard, just from getting their side of the story or believing what Schreier spins?

Blizzard is most likely infested by bad managers, hr and their ilk like all corporations. But these "poor devs" that all of a sudden need to "get shit of their chest" wouldn't have been there at all if not for those scums hiring their cliques. And they kept quiet while there was anything to gain.

 

[Hobknobling]

Decision about the engine shouldn't prevent to build a game. Those are escuses. All their games run great on custom engines and the black sheep hearthstone runs on unity...

Titan had the issue of competing with WoW (just as original D3). And competing with WoW is not acceptable in Blizzard. Then Kern left, got funds, put out "Titan at home" with Firefall and failed. Still, they salvaged and put out a solid game and made bank.
They even salvaged D4 and made enough profits with it to go balls deep with multiple production teams for expansion and seasons.

Yet in a market where survival games make money and there's plenty room for an AAA product, that game was instantly canned. And we're supposed to believe those are great devs ruined by big bad blizzard, just from getting their side of the story or believing what Schreier spins?

Blizzard is most likely infested by bad managers, hr and their ilk like all corporations. But these "poor devs" that all of a sudden need to "get shit of their chest" wouldn't have been there at all if not for those scums hiring their cliques. And they kept quiet while there was anything to gain.

This video paints a fairly clear image on how badly managed the company became after the Activision merger:



This guy worked there from 2009 to 2016.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Thors been one of the main people I've been talking with on the subject before he blew up and became famous. But overall I do think Thor was naive about the merger, he thought Microsoft was going to come in and fix it, when I knew perfectly well from how Microsoft works first hand and from speaking to someone that worked for Lionhead, I had been telling Thor for months that this merger was going to end badly. Thor has also been on record pointing out that the mismanagement has been going on for decades which is why he left Blizzard. Pretty much its a similar reason why I left the industry as well.

Unfortunately his chats so damn bloated now he doesn't respond easily anymore so instead we just end up with a lot of repeat questions, the chat used to be a lot more controversial which I really preferred.
We said a lot of things about Todd Howard lol. (Joey Ray Hall's aka Thor's Dad aka He who has no life basically got asked "what do you think of Todd Howard" and his reply "I don't know that name" that's how much he hates him) I do worry that now Thor's a 1M sub streamer we're going to end up having to play nicely, well I don't want to play nicely.

 

[abija]

Yeah the gaming industry seems just as shit as it was 22 years ago when after 1 month intership I didn't want anything to do with it (even though as many I learned programming because I wanted to make cool video games). But I have 0 trust in these "disgruntled employee stories" because it's only their side and they were perfectly happy producing slop. Many of them joined Blizzard/Activision/EA/Ubisoft relatively recently and knew perfectly well how things were before signing up.


Something funny in the video: they start talking about how 10$/hour isn't livable wage in Cali because of local prices. Then at the end where they discuss that salary in UK vs Cali they both conclude different salaries suck. So which is it? Cause at the time Thor talks about, with 2000$/month in my country (and probably most of the world) you would have had engineers with many years of experience lining up for those QA jobs perfectly happy to do unpaid overtime.

Regarding Thor, from what he says: he was obviously overqualified for qa, he went with a proposal to a bnet engineer who made a job for him without him having prior experience in that field (how many people get this opportunity ?), then he compares the salary he got in those conditions to a job "in the industry" and he prides himself with being hired in defense contracts (does he think he would have gotten that opportunity without his work on bnet?). He might delude himself that he was just abused while working for Blizzard, but I think he got plenty out of it. At that time just mentioning hacking could have gotten you on the "next round of layoffs" track in many companies.

Doesn't help he gives his company as example but they produce 1 dev games and that he appreciated amazon working conditions which produced shit for a serious amount of money.

 

[Hobknobling]

Doesn't help he gives his company as example but they produce 1 dev games and that he appreciated amazon working conditions which produced shit for a serious amount of money.

Yeah, he conveniently avoided acknowledging that Amazon Games has only produced turds despite having an unlimited budget and these amazing working conditions. I also didn't like how much he idolizes Morhaime.

Seems like a guy who is a bit too eager to drink the company sponsored Kool-Aid.

 

[abija]

Morhaime could very well be the nicest guy. Ultimately was still his fault for not being prepared enough to lead a company of that size and not hiring better management. Those stories where he fixed problems, why weren't all of those followed by management purges?

 

[RobotSquirrel]

There was an incident ages ago where Thor nearly ripped my head off in stream because I criticized Blizzard's decision for scrapping Overwatch 1. I made a point that people paid for a full price game and were having it taken away from them with OW2 - he was like "but they got OW2 for free" and I said "yeah but with 1 less player on each side and an inability to go back to the OW1 experience". He didn't like me saying that, but most of chat agreed with me because it was the majority opinion which was Blizzard fucked those people out of a $60 purchase. But anyway it pissed him off in a way I haven't really seen anyone else in his community do. So yeah but I think he saw it from my point eventually.

He also didn't like me stating with Diablo 4 that the bugs we were seeing were likely producer negligence, He takes way too much pride in what Blizzard was, not what Blizzard ARE. What they presently are is a miss managed hell hole. And I mean that with the utmost respect to Thor, he's been in this industry longer than I have but he is also very very very blind to Blizzard when they do something new. I saw Diablo 4 being a train wreck a mile away, it took Thor until they patched it to realize it. Modern Blizzard cannot be trusted.

That said he was 100% right about Hogwarts and he got unfairly shit on for that opinion, but I supported him in that stance. That said, I do find that the game was underwhelming which is what I watched him play it first and then said cbf when I saw the ending. It's not worth full price.

Anyway it'll be interesting to see how he reacts when I finally get this damn game off the ground. Don't be afraid to have an opinion.

 

[abija]

Tbf, production quality is by far the best (and might even be the only good) part of D4. Their designers have no fucking clue what they are doing.

As for OW1, yours is the only right take. The move is not really defendable in any way especially since they didn't even delivered what was promised with OW2.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Well it finally happened, Thor's mods banned me because I called that girl who was crying about EA kicking her off Steam's Front page a moron.
Thor should read the unban request where I justify what I said so I doubt the ban will hold. Will be interesting to hear what he says because he already sounded like he was going down a similar agenda that I had with his "the new release list doesn't matter anyway" rant. I don't feel like I did anything wrong as I said in the unban request, this is a teachable moment for all developers not to go on twitter crying and begging for chronically online people to come rescue you. Phil Fish did this shit and look at what happened to him. Now she'll be remembered as the dev that cried because meanie EA released CnC on her special wayman's day. Maybe don't release your game in March like an idiot when everyone knows July is the best time for indies to release (why, because its inbetween annual and quarterly reporting so there's no reason for them to release anything they might as well wait), this is a simple google she could have done in her 10 years as a damn game developer.

Meanwhile I say shit like this about Todd Howard and everyone loves it.. What gives?! oh its the whole Indie being sacred cows shit again isn't it.

*I'm now completely and permanently banned. So I guess I'm not friends with Thor anymore. Aw well. Was a fun year we had.