this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024

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576

Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees (www.theverge.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 213 points 9 months ago (7 children)

It is worth understanding that this is "different" than... all the other layoffs in tech at this point.

MS acquired ABK. Any acquisition almost always leads to "downsizing". At a high level: ABK would have had their own payroll department. Now they go through MS payroll. Why do you need an entire department whose job is now superfluous? Obviously this gets a LOT more complex with developers and the like (as well as local management) but that is the mindset.

But... holy fucking shit that is a lot of people getting laid off at one of the worst times to be unemployed in "tech" in the past decade.

[–] [email protected] 64 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

It is indeed a lot of people. A quick search says ABK employed 17,000 people. Laying over over 10% of your workforce is... intense, to say the least. Though, how much of that 1,900 is just from ABK is hard to say, so the percentage could be lower.

You're right though; HR, payroll, legal, and social media/PR departments would definitely be among the first on the chopping block, depending on how much MS wants to integrate ABK into their existing departments.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 9 months ago

Finance too. They're almost always first from the multiple I've personally been through. The new owners want those hands out of the pot asap.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Also considering the apparent toxicity of certain Blizzard employees it's probably a good opportunity to "purge" the Kotic gang and his following.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (2 children)

So that's a dozen people. 1900 is more than a hundred times that. (#mathFTW)

These cuts will seriously hurt product.

Also, I sense my less-than-new windows version will be unsupported; and I only had it so the one game ran better.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Blizzard Products were polished turds.

They need a huge cultural shift and I'm all for it.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Hence why acquisitions need more scrutiny. It literally kills jobs.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, it’s brutal out there right now. Reminds me of 2008 or 2000.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Similar to 2008 but the 1% found out a way to keep their wealth intact while still fucking everyone else over.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

In 2008, those responsible got the rest of us to bail them out and give billions in bonuses.

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[–] [email protected] 120 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I never want to hear "job creators" as a reason for tax breaks and special treatment again.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You're going to hear so much more of it now that we're cranking the unemployment rate back up again.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

Plus being an election year, they gotta cycle through everything and see what sticks.

[–] [email protected] 99 points 9 months ago (10 children)

68 billion to acquire IP, but can't afford to pay the people who make and maintain it.

[–] [email protected] 80 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Can*

Doesn’t

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 9 months ago

Well, yeah.

The shareholders demanded a sacrifice. You really think any of the top brass would be affected?

They literally do 1000 times the work the devs do to justify the millions in pay and compensation, and the whole place would grind to a halt if they were affected (/s if you believe that)

[–] [email protected] 37 points 9 months ago (9 children)

Layoffs after this size of merger are pretty typical. The number of people seems high, but it might be due to Activision's own acquisitions over the years.

First round of layoffs after a merger is consolidation of corporate administrative functions. ActiBlizz finance, accounting, HR, etc is no longer needed. Microsoft already has all those needs covered. And it wouldn't surprise me to learn ActiBlizz had a lot of administrative bloat.

Most of the knowledge workers will be kept for now. Will be future cuts there as objectives are finalized and staff needed becomes clear.

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[–] [email protected] 94 points 9 months ago (5 children)

The industry is at its most wealthy and yet it feels like its on fire.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Yup thats capitalism. Always need to make more money than previous year, or we have a depression.. Lol.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago

It’s all about instilling Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt to gain from it.

Right now what they are gaining are lower overhead and when they re-hire they will be paying less for the same roles.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

Software engineer (luckily not in games) here. Definitely feeling it in terms of looking for a new job. Everyone's only looking for senior engineers and they're SUPER picky because there are so many unemployed engineers applying, even in my country where there are a lot fewer layoffs.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You don't get rich paying a ton of people 200k. You get rich not paying them. So what you are saying is actually not a contradiction!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

You don’t get rich paying a ton of people 200k.

You literally do, though. Because wealth isn't a function of the volume of currency you've amassed, it is the quality of goods and services that the currency can purchase. When you've got a ton of highly educated people working as a team to accomplish something exceptional, what you get back is far more than what you put in.

Just ask Billie Beane, a guy who is a testament to what the upper limit of $200k/player gets you in terms of a baseball team. Yeah, you can beat the average for a little while by one exceptional administrator squeezing the system on the margins. But the only way you win that final game of the season is with a budget like what the Red Soxes or the Dodgers or Astros bring to bare.

And in that triumph, you do - in fact - get rich. You fill more stadium seats. You sell more cars or phones. You build more elaborate buildings. You send people to the bottom of the sea (without them getting crushed to death) and up to the moon.

At some point, you've got to put forward an investment. You can't run an advanced economy on poverty-level wages. And if you don't have those advances in medicine and engineering and logistics and technology, what the fuck kind of rich are you?

Do you want to pay competitive salaries in Heaven or run a robber barony in Hell?

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 9 months ago (5 children)

January hasn't ended yet and we are at 60% of the total layoffs of last year.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (7 children)

Curious for a source on that

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

https://publish.obsidian.md/vg-layoffs/Archive/2024 not sure if this is what you're looking for but someone has been tracking overall video game layoffs for the past 3 years. 2023 was approximately 10,600, we're halfway there at 5600 in 2024 and it's only been a month. That's pretty fucked.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

In Tech?

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I remember people on the Internet talking about the Microsoft Bethesda deal. I saw people saying that it's "actually a good thing" and how Microsoft can contribute more to Bethesda and they'll churn out better games for Xbox. Then I see shit like this and games like Starfield and understand why 99% of the people on the Internet have no fucking clue what they're talking about.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago

Starfield was basically done with their release development when Microsoft aquired Bethesda

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (11 children)

You think Microsoft is at fault for Starfield being mediocre? Okay

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago

Probably not the guys with sexual assault charges though.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (2 children)

1900 employees, that's something like 10 big games that won't be released, or we can look forward to more outages and bugs in the new releases, and slower fixing of those bugs.

Thanks Microsoft for your contribution to enshittification 🏅💩

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I mean, given the quality of product they'd been churning out, I don't know if I'm going to loose sleep knowing we won't get another Diablo Immortal or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III or Candy Crush Saga any time soon.

Like, if Larian or Nintendo was hemorrhaging talent, I'd be a bit more upset. But between these guys, EA, and Riot turning out flops... Idk, man. Maybe a shakeup that pulls people out of the Micro-transaction Factory isn't the worst thing for the industry as a whole.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

you seem to be blaming the workers for turning out flops but in general it's the managements lack of planning and micromanagement that's the general cause.

no one who's a developer, artist, designer wants to add micro transactions, that comes from top down because it's a revenue generator. they want to polish the games so they can be proud of the work, but are not given time.

executives are not the ones generally being let go and the ones that are will be cashing out from the acquisition. expect those IPs to get worse and have more enshittification because that's what makes money and that's all corpos care about.

you don't get a larian studios from laying off talent, you get it from good management and giving your talent time to deliver.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago

Not what that word means

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Just as long as one of the 1,900 is the CEO...

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

My initial reaction was to laugh my ass off at the extra drop of crap in the collective cup. Upon a second take however... considering what a horrifying den of depravity ActiBlizz became during the past years, this may turn out to be for the best in the long run...

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Yeah those coders and artists had it coming!

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

It's a good thing we didn't raise their Taxes or Wages! Otherwise they may have fired their workers!

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