Microsoft, the most profitable company in the world, weeks after closing a $69 billion acquisition of Activison, fires 10% of their gaming work force

[WelfareBuysMyWeed 5388]

Literally hours after closing at a market cap of $3 trillion dollars, they announce 1900 people from their video game division are getting axed. For the record, prior to the merger, this would have been EIGHTY FUCKING PERCENT of their workforce.

Holy shit what a fucking awful company

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-25/microsoft-cuts-1-900-jobs-in-gaming-including-at-activision?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTcwNjE5Mzc4OSwiZXhwIjoxNzA2Nzk4NTg5LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTN1E3RThEV0xVNjgwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJCMUVBQkI5NjQ2QUM0REZFQTJBRkI4MjI1MzgyQTJFQSJ9.D-yREnrO0InVaDyJi4PKjnD_2dfBkUEsr-D6-5ulwnQ

[Captainant 27619]

That shareholder value ain't gonna increase itself, dawg. 

Companies have social cover to lay people off to cut costs. Plus, there was a bit of a glut of over-hiring when money was free during COVID - because nobody in business believes in looking more than a couple quarters into the future to consider the consequences of their actions.

 

I wonder if this signals a shift in MS gaming strategy though - they've been dying to have their own games developed for xbox, and Phil Spencer's big bets have pretty much all flopped. This could be the start of cutting bait for them

[WelfareBuysMyWeed 5388]

2 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Plus, there was a bit of a glut of over-hiring when money was free during COVID

yeah that doesn't fly when they just hired 13,000 new employees a few weeks ago, in one of the most scrutinized mergers in history. This was precisely why people were against the merger, so much that Microsoft for a solid year kept putting out statements that they wouldn't do this. Quite literally the reason the FTC allowed the merger is because microsoft pinky promised such a large layoff wouldn't be coming *again*. Reminder: Last january they fired *10,000 people*.

[Captainant 27619]

1 minute ago, WelfareBuysMyWeed said:

yeah that doesn't fly when they just hired 13,000 new employees a few weeks ago, in one of the most scrutinized mergers in history. This was precisely why people were against the merger, so much that Microsoft for a solid year kept putting out statements that they wouldn't do this. Quite literally the reason the FTC allowed the merger is because microsoft pinky promised such a large layoff wouldn't be coming *again*. Reminder: Last january they fired *10,000 people*.

IMO there's an element of "well everyone else is laying folks off right now, let's cull the herd" happening. If companies are making record profits and doing well enough to close massive acquisitions, they should not immediately be in the position of NEEDING to fire tens of thousands of people. 

But then again, that's the system we've built for ourselves. Hooray.

[WelfareBuysMyWeed 5388]

14 minutes ago, Captainant said:

IMO there's an element of "well everyone else is laying folks off right now, let's cull the herd" happening. If companies are making record profits and doing well enough to close massive acquisitions, they should not immediately be in the position of NEEDING to fire tens of thousands of people. 

But then again, that's the system we've built for ourselves. Hooray.

Boy it sure feels like the Microsoft Anti-trust suit of the 90's was a million years ago now.

Just got word that a bunch of my friends just got affected by this. I knew of their layoff before they did, because of course Microsoft announced this to the press before telling the actual people affected by this.

[thunderlounge 7813]

Microsoft pulled some dirty shit?

 

[Celery Man 20929]

Without knowing anything at all, I’d say if one company that does a thing acquired another company that also does that thing, 10% would be lower than my estimate of how many people would be redundant in the new combined organization.

[WelfareBuysMyWeed 5388]

5 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

Without knowing anything at all, I’d say if one company that does a thing acquired another company that also does that thing, 10% would be lower than my estimate of how many people would be redundant in the new combined organization.

Except these layoffs aren't solely coming from Activision. Studios not part of the merger at all, essentially entirely separate companies under the same umbrella mega corp are being hit as well, like Zenimax and King. This is not because of redundancies.

 

Also, Game Development is not like general tech development. Redundancies are much less of a thing, because in game development, you will usually outsource to third party companies positions that could be redundant. Employees doing game development are talent. This would be like Disney buying Warner Bros then firing James Gunn because they already have directors.

 

And, really it should be said very clearly: Microsoft's gaming focus with Xbox, and Activision-Blizzard, do NOT overlap very much. Xbox is console and living room focused, Acti-Bliz is PC focused. This is like saying Halo does the same thing as World of Warcraft. No, entirely different audiences, on different platforms, not competing with one another. One of the arguments Microsoft made to the FTC about why they wanted Acti-bliz specifically is because their markets did not overlap widely and they were not redundant.

Edited January 25 by WelfareBuysMyWeed

[immamac 42832]

There was a shitload of middle management and general bullshit that needed to go not just from activision-blizzard but from all over in the gaming unit. It’s colossally inefficient with most people doing fuck all. 

[WelfareBuysMyWeed 5388]

Just now, immamac said:

There was a shitload of middle management and general bullshit that needed to go not just from activision-blizzard but from all over in the gaming unit. It’s colossally inefficient with most people doing fuck all. 

Oh, but those people aren't included in these layoffs. Those people got golden parachutes. Bobby Kotick should literally be in jail for the shit he pulled at Activision, and he's walking away from this with a *9 figure* severance package.

And I do game development, I've shipped 8 AAA titles and have been doing this shit for 25 years now. No, it's not colossally inefficient with most people doing fuck all. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

[Captainant 27619]

13 minutes ago, WelfareBuysMyWeed said:

And, really it should be said very clearly: Microsoft's gaming focus with Xbox, and Activision-Blizzard, do NOT overlap very much. Xbox is console and living room focused, Acti-Bliz is PC focused. This is like saying Halo does the same thing as World of Warcraft. No, entirely different audiences, on different platforms, not competing with one another. One of the arguments Microsoft made to the FTC about why they wanted Acti-bliz specifically is because their markets did not overlap widely and they were not redundant.

Call of Duty, an Activision property, is usually the #1 or #2 selling game on Xbox every year

[immamac 42832]

4 minutes ago, WelfareBuysMyWeed said:

Oh, but those people aren't included in these layoffs. Those people got golden parachutes. Bobby Kotick should literally be in jail for the shit he pulled at Activision, and he's walking away from this with a *9 figure* severance package.

And I do game development, I've shipped 8 AAA titles and have been doing this shit for 25 years now. No, it's not colossally inefficient with most people doing fuck all. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

At Microsoft it is. lol 

[WelfareBuysMyWeed 5388]

Just now, Captainant said:

Call of Duty, an Activision property, is usually the #1 or #2 selling game on Xbox every year

And microsoft also runs a PC gaming store installed on hundreds of millions of computers. My point still stands, Call of Duty is not Acti-Blizzards primary product. The number of players CoD pulls is nothing compared to their other properties. The fact is, Xbox, the home gaming console, has been a money pit for microsoft and being the "top selling xbox product" isn't a huge milestone considering how poorly Xbox sells compared to their competition.

 

Microsoft didn't buy Acti-bliz for CoD. They bought them for Battle.net, the biggest PC gaming entity.

[Captainant 27619]

3 minutes ago, WelfareBuysMyWeed said:

Microsoft didn't buy Acti-bliz for CoD. They bought them for Battle.net, the biggest PC gaming entity.

IMO, MS bought Acti-bliz for their IP and properties. MS, despite buying a glut of gaming studios, still can't seem to put out a decent game with staying power. Redfall was worse than bad. Starfield was polished, but pretty hollow after the first act.

But also, I don't think that Battle.net is the largest PC gaming entity - that would HAVE to be Valve with Steam right? Hell, even Activision was moving COD and Diablo 4 to Steam because they weren't getting enough users in bnet alone. 

[Celery Man 20929]

Yeah, I’m not going to really argue with you because I know fuck all about this specifically but it looks like they canceled development of at least one project and I have to believe there are a lot of product, project, marketing, etc shit outside of strictly the “talent”. Also I’m trying not to argue but there aren’t 1900 James Gunns at activision. That sounds exactly like angry engineer talk, and you may have the right to be an angry engineer.

[immamac 42832]

3 minutes ago, Captainant said:

IMO, MS bought Acti-bliz for their IP and properties. MS, despite buying a glut of gaming studios, still can't seem to put out a decent game with staying power. Redfall was worse than bad. Starfield was polished, but pretty hollow after the first act.

But also, I don't think that Battle.net is the largest PC gaming entity - that would HAVE to be Valve with Steam right? Hell, even Activision was moving COD and Diablo 4 to Steam because they weren't getting enough users in bnet alone. 

World of Warcraft is a real thing people like to pretend doesn’t exist. 

[SimonBolivar 10957]

I thought that Act-Bliz main attraction for Microsoft is its mobile gaming for Microsoft or was that just an argument made in court? 

[WelfareBuysMyWeed 5388]

5 hours ago, Captainant said:

But also, I don't think that Battle.net is the largest PC gaming entity - that would HAVE to be Valve with Steam right?

First up, I worked for Valve for 7 years, so I know this stuff.

Second, no, Steam has lots of smaller games, but Battle.net has the whales. Even beyond Battle.net, there are other enormous services out there that eclipse steam. Steam, while in my opinion the greatest thing to happen to all gaming period, does not have World of Warcraft. Steam does not have League of Legends. Steam does not have Honor of Kings. Quite literally, all the biggest PC games are not on Steam.

Third, I have been hearing from friends all day long about who was toast and this is something that isn't being reported -- the vast, vast majority of the layoffs are coming from Treyarch, Sledgehammer, and Raven, along with a huge portion of their Xbox team responsible for physical distribution. In other words, their COD studios, which aligns with exactly what I said. They didn't buy Activision for COD, and it wasn't redundancies because Acti-blizz largely does not have physical distribution teams.

[WelfareBuysMyWeed 5388]

5 hours ago, Celery Man said:

Yeah, I’m not going to really argue with you because I know fuck all about this specifically but it looks like they canceled development of at least one project and I have to believe there are a lot of product, project, marketing, etc shit outside of strictly the “talent”. Also I’m trying not to argue but there aren’t 1900 James Gunns at activision. That sounds exactly like angry engineer talk, and you may have the right to be an angry engineer.

"this unannounced game I just heard of, made by people I don't know nor would have ever heard of, were not talent" is some head up your ass bullshit. I have friends on that team which were fired today. They absolutely are fucking talent.

 

edit: perhaps this was too inflamatory, I apologize. I'm just very upset because a lot of people I know were fired today, and the industry has been miserable so far with this stuff. We're in january, and the gaming industry has already hit 60% of the layoffs for the entirety of 2022, and 2022 was an abnormally bad year. Meaning this is very, very, verrrrry rough times, not just for those fired, but for everyone who works on games.

Edited January 25 by WelfareBuysMyWeed

[Captainant 27619]

3 minutes ago, WelfareBuysMyWeed said:

First up, I worked for Valve for 7 years, so I know this stuff.

Second, no, Steam has lots of smaller games, but Battle.net has the whales. Even beyond Battle.net, there are other enormous services out there that eclipse steam. Steam, while in my opinion the greatest thing to happen to all gaming period, does not have World of Warcraft. Steam does not have League of Legends. Steam does not have Honor of Kings. Quite literally, all the biggest PC games are not on Steam.

Third, I have been hearing from friends all day long about who was toast and this is something that isn't being reported -- the vast, vast majority of the layoffs are coming from Treyarch, Sledgehammer, and Raven, along with a huge portion of their Xbox team responsible for physical distribution. In other words, their COD studios, which aligns with exactly what I said. They didn't buy Activision for COD, and it wasn't redundancies because Acti-blizz largely does not have physical distribution teams.

Damn I wouldn't have guessed. Thanks for the insight

[WelfareBuysMyWeed 5388]

4 hours ago, SimonBolivar said:

I thought that Act-Bliz main attraction for Microsoft is its mobile gaming for Microsoft or was that just an argument made in court? 

That's actually part of it too. Acti-Bliz owned King as an independently operated studio. Buying Acti-Bliz got them King, who makes Candy Crush.

[Celery Man 20929]

16 minutes ago, WelfareBuysMyWeed said:

"this unannounced game I just heard of, made by people I don't know nor would have ever heard of, were not talent" is some head up your ass bullshit. I have friends on that team which were fired today. They absolutely are fucking talent.

 

edit: perhaps this was too inflamatory, I apologize. I'm just very upset because a lot of people I know were fired today, and the industry has been miserable so far with this stuff. We're in january, and the gaming industry has already hit 60% of the layoffs for the entirety of 2022, and 2022 was an abnormally bad year. Meaning this is very, very, verrrrry rough times, not just for those fired, but for everyone who works on games.

No prob, I get it. And I don’t mean to say that they aren’t talented. I’ve been in some layoffs and I can hear that same tone - keep your resume crisp and good luck buddy, that shit sucks.

[WelfareBuysMyWeed 5388]

Just got word that basically the entire Austin customer support division is gone now. So I'd actually expect there are some posters here on this very board who were laid off today.

[Captainant 27619]

Apologies for the Twitter link, but it looks like physical retail groups also took losses

 

 

[WelfareBuysMyWeed 5388]

Sledgehammer had so many people fired today that they are closing their office in California, wow. Like, an entire studio shut down today, and that still doesn't encompass all the layoffs.

[UTGrad98 2271]

As a couple of others have said here, this seems pretty standard to me. There was a redundancy in positions that are already at scale with Microsoft. They don't need a second hr team, a second customer support team, plus a lot of middle and upper management. And secondly, there was too much glut. I heard they pulled the plug on a survivor game that had been in development for over 6 years, project odyssey. That game must have been a shit show for them to do that. Remember Titan? Its not the first time blizzard tried a new ip and massively fucked it up. Yea blizzard was run pretty inefficiently. And I have spent more time playing the diablo series and world of warcraft than probably any other games I have played. I followed blizzard closely. They are an inefficient mess

 

[immamac 42832]

1 hour ago, UTGrad98 said:

As a couple of others have said here, this seems pretty standard to me. There was a redundancy in positions that are already at scale with Microsoft. They don't need a second hr team, a second customer support team, plus a lot of middle and upper management. And secondly, there was too much glut. I heard they pulled the plug on a survivor game that had been in development for over 6 years, project odyssey. That game must have been a shit show for them to do that. Remember Titan? Its not the first time blizzard tried a new ip and massively fucked it up. Yea blizzard was run pretty inefficiently. And I have spent more time playing the diablo series and world of warcraft than probably any other games I have played. I followed blizzard closely. They are an inefficient mess

 

Just read who was in the list. Included Ybarra and others from the blizz exec team. Lots of middle management clean out and canceling projects that were probably cost overrun and behind schedule. 

[atomheartbevo 89618]

On 1/25/2024 at 10:20 AM, immamac said:

World of Warcraft is a real thing people like to pretend doesn’t exist. 

Why wouldn’t they when Blizzard likes to pretend it doesn’t exist at times?

[MonkeyDoughnut 10226]

That new development they cancelled Odyssey internally I read was almost 7 years in production with 100 people let go,  with an estimated 2026 at earliest release, more likely 2027-2028 and they somehow still hadn't settled on a game engine given what they wanted to do. 

[BERT 4358]

On 1/25/2024 at 10:20 AM, immamac said:

World of Warcraft is a real thing people like to pretend doesn’t exist. 

Still one of the best South Park episodes