Microsoft's gaming division just fired HUNDREDS of people. It's over.
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Microsoft's gaming division just fired HUNDREDS of people. It's over.
Microsoft's gaming division just fired HUNDREDS of people. It's over.
Thalidomide Vintage Ad Shirt $22.14 |
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they really got hit hard by the starfield fiasco huh
>terminally online twittard with le epic breaking news
have a nice day.
>t. antisemite
Yes
Even israelites learn to hate israelites here. Israel will be 110.
this but unironically, and only for the israeli semites, not the palestinian ones...
How could you tell?
Still like .1% of Microsoft's bottom line. Theyll just rehire a thousand more wagies when they have a clear idea what the frick they're supposed to be doing.
>when they have a clear idea what the frick they're supposed to be doing.
Yeah good luck with that
>Spend dozens of billions trying to make a monopoly on AAA game development
>Immediately gut your gaming division
Why?
Microsoft has unlimited money. They'll buy up shit just to keep them from being competitors. Most of the people laid off probably have to sign a noncompete clause as part of their severance. So like 2000 Blizzard employees are just going to have to go make Salesforce forms for the next 3 or 4 years.
But why not use the assets that you bought? If you hired a bunch of game devs, why not get them to dev games instead of letting them go?
>Starfield and Redfall
Oh. Yeah, I guess after a decade long unstoppable money hemorrhage they might have stopped seeing developing games as something profitable.
Because they probably don't need that many devs for the few games they make. They only put out a few games a year. They probably aren't changing that. They just want to keep their competitors from putting out more.
>But why not use the assets that you bought? If you hired a bunch of game devs, why not get them to dev games instead of letting them go?
because these 1,900 employees were probably in administrative positions or otherwise redundant in some capacity. also, these are the people that killed Blizzard as a brand. why would you want to keep them?
>because these 1,900 employees were probably in administrative positions or otherwise redundant in some capacity
Proofs?
>Most of the people laid off probably have to sign a noncompete clause as part of their severance.
How is that even legal? "If you wanna get paid then don't apply for these companies"
it's not illegal for companies to put the clause in but they aren't enforceable in court in the US
Here's a list of big companies without non-compete clauses:
They would never hold up in court to make an employee sign it as terms of employment then just fire them. I could see them getting away with "sign this clause in order to recieve your severance package".
>Salesforce
I LOVE getting paid a high salary while doing the bare minimum
if they have infinite money why are they penny pinching? Just to look good for investors to get more money?
Because you don't need the hr and diversity hires when ms already has that covered.
They didn't buy those companies to make more games, they bought them to prevent Nintendo and Sony from having games and possible exclusives.
So they will back up Palworld in case Nintendo tries anything? Oh wait, I forgot Phill is moronic so nvm
I liked how everyone defended MS on this acquisition then just admit it's just to frick everyone else over now
I defended the acquisition because I want the video games industry to crash
this.
accelerationism will either destroy or save each respective industry.
they dont need the employees, just the IP
turns out ESG isn't profitable.
we're seeing the quiet, background death of diversity hires.
i can almost 100% guarantee you that those 1,900 employees were mostly affirmative action hires that dont do anything other than sit at desks for photo-ops to make the company look good.
They bought ActiBlizz because they thought they could run the place better. Why on earth would they keep the current management?
Palworld proves that they were useless
>cancel the survival game too
oof
No, not THE survival game?!?
That could've become the next palworld bros. Alas.
Why cancel it? Why not overhaul it with collectible animal creatures?
those 1900 people encouraged that Starfield will be a big hit. Wish there was a list to see how many of them were diversity hires.
Hopefully it's all rainbow haired leftoids, trannies, race baiters, and wokies.
It'll be the exact opposite - longer term employees who are earning a big wage, and can be replaced by a Pajeet willing to work for half as much (or less). See all the white make engineers that Google have been firing recently, who'd been at the company for over a decade (closer to two in some cases).
Those poor poor filthy rich white men. Surely they can just pick themselves up by their bootstraps since they're rich and highly Intelligent
yes frick white ppl
we need more garbage like starfield with even more woke slop
It's devs that can be replaced by Indian teams like how Starfield went down.
The writing's on the wall for Western devs.
RIP Arkane Austin.
I wonder where Todd is gonna land.
Microsoft has killed Blizzard.
Ybarra killed blizzard, cant' kill a corpse
Ybarra had barely anything to do with "killing" Blizzard. Blizzard died when Morhaime was still at the helm. Ybarra is just a head Bobby put for good PR after the whole stealing breast milk shitshow. And now that Bobby is not there anymore Ybarra is no longer needed.
>he did nothing he can' be responsible for shit going wrong ok he's a good boy you nazi chud
I genuenly wonder how your moronic ass got that out of my post. It is like blaming Paul Feig for Ghostbusters 2016, he was just a doormat, put there to do what his paymasters told him to do. Same with Ybarra, he literally did nothing while being at the helm of Blizzard, at worst you can blame him for Overwatch 2 fiasco, but shit like that is usually decided way in advance.
Why did they fire the only guy that actually plays their games? LMAO. Fire Ion and Morgan Day, not that guy.
enjoying the current state of wow is a bad thing
Ion has blackmail material on the Activision higher ups. It's the only way he kept his job while being the elade designer over the decimation of WoWs subs
And that's a good thing.
happe now, chud?
We Xboxbros are not worried, we have Palworld.
I hope they haven't been dumb enough to fire whoever decided to promote Palworld.
Didn't xbox make up less than 15% of palwords players according to the devs?
Yeah, 90% of players prefer to buy it than getting it free on Gamepass
This is why it isn't a true Xbox Gamepass™ title. I'd rather play games like Starfield®, but that's just me, though, an average gamer like you.
Todd Howard fired when?
hes still really good at marketing games so prob after skyrim 2
bidenomics hitting hard
Its just Microsoft going full evil megacorp as usual.
They dont care if they kill Activision as long as no one else can profit from their games. Its a very usual business tactic to buy companies just to shut them down
Makes sense for Microsoft but why is Embracer doing it too?
>Microsoft let their own do whatever they want for years
>They come up with garbage like Red Fall and Starfield
>People complain
>Start taking a more hands on approach
>People also complain
Basically everyone in Blizzard (maybe except the WoW team) deserves to be fired
>maybe except the WoW team
>defending the worst of the batch
>defending the worst of the batch
That's the Overwatch team
Overwatch? Wasn't that Tencent?
Guaranteed its blacks and troons
I love hearing about Microsoft failing on Ganker because I know that means they're doing amazing since everything Ganker says tends to be the opposite of reality.
Yeah it's funny seeing twitter seethe because they're firing people while being worth 3 trillion dollars. Apparently you should just bleed money into useless employees that don't earn you money because the other parts of the company earn money
>Activision gets gutted
>343 still going
Someone at 343 slept with Bill Gates, didn't they?
homie they already gutted 343 a while ago, they probably hit them again since infinite is now in maintenance mode.
Microsoft doesn't want to make games. They just want to own the platform you play them on.
Taking out the trash
Hope Phil follows next
>Matt Booty
it is literally over for concept artists lmao
For every 100+ employees there are 2 or 3 concept artists. they could fire every single concept artist at microsoft and still not break 300 layoffs
It's still a nothingburger. You're extremely naive if you don't think they're full of bloat. Actually a good sign for gaming. The gravy train is over. Maybe they should produce something worthwhile
They're going to make the same slop with less people
You're delusional
Then they will fold. Win win
No, they won't. Slop makes money.
what the frick are you even talking about. My point is that when 2000 people get laid off its not about AI slaughtering all the concept artist because maybe 15-30 people in that 2000 are from that field, they are almost as rare as composers. The contraction is happening because of economic turbulence and because western AAA is filled with useless people that are all underperforming.
They will be replaced by Indians
I'm sure the majority were useless DEI hires.
>1900
not enough
>1900 gone
Barely a dent. I want 20k gone, Palworld proved that these bloated orgs are useless.
Geeks and Gamers was making videos back in 2010?
Name one good game made by Microsoft in house this decade and then explain to me why people shouldn't be getting laid off.
Hi-Fi Rush? But I won’t argue with you about bloat in companies because I also agree
AAA companies have so much bloat, they overhire a ton of people who don't actually care about their games or the people that play them.
They care about having a dildo up their ass and earning a paycheck
>they overhire a ton of people who don't actually care about their games or the people that play them.
lmao, and this is news to you, NEET?
>mike ybarra gone
nice, maybe his replacement will save wow by deleting M+
>3 trillion market cap
>record profits and revenue every year
>Game Pass makes 5 billion every year with tons of subs
>fire 1,900 employees
someone's lying
You think microsoft is a charity or something, government sponsored kindergarten maybe?
microsoft gets billions from governments
Good for them, the point is that they're not a daycare for adults.
well... to be fair, microsoft IS the gov't, at least the cybercrimes arm anyway
They can afford to make less. Just make less.
They could, but that’s not how it works
with all the diversity hires it might as well be
companies do this all the time
execs make record profits
fire a bunch of employees so they can make even more money, then coast for a few years with their free paychecks, then take their money and split when the company actually starts to go down in flames
For all we know those employees were either useless or redundant.
tech ceos are expecting a recession soon so theyre offloading the excessive bloat for shareholder appeasement. i told a lot of people here the woke stuff would start to get culled after interest rates rise because suddenly free money isnt so cheap anymore. shareholders demand more from companies now instead of throwing money at everything moving.
its not the woke stuff that is getting culled but the competent devs and they will be replaced by indians
despite starfield being a terrible game it sold incredibly well
this is just objectively false
all of these frickers are on twitter, find literally one developer who's been laid off
all of the freaks on twitter are on twitter, why would a normal dev be on twitter
do you genuinely believe normal people do not use twitter
Normal devs, if they use Twitter, have a personal account that isn't intrinsically linked to their public image. If they're intelligent at least. You generally only see the mentally ill on Twitter publishing their itemized lists of insanity. It's easy to see who these devs are because they eagerly sign their tweets with their real name and faces (but don't worry, "all tweets / opinions are my own!")
I work for a software company and I've never once seen a single upside to blurring my personal and professional life on social media. Anyone who does that deserves to be laid off.
>ng culled but the competent devs
read
pic related.
and tell me where the "competent dev" part comes in.
>it sold incredibly well
it sold at most five million copies, way below expectations, the numbers on Steam don't lie
Just because it's a 3 trillion dollar company, it doesn't mean that they tolerate wasteful spend. They didn't get to be a 3 trillion dollar company by wasting money on a bunch of grifter DEI hires, and cutting jobs is one of the fastest ways to cut down on costs. I'm glad Microsoft is getting rid of the grifters at Blizzard.
>it doesn't mean that they tolerate wasteful spend
i mean they allow xbox to exist
jobs aren't guaranteed. if they dont need you they will adjust the budget to be devoid of you. it's a business.
Get woke go broke
>a bunch of gays are out of jobs
whoa hey alright
>Blizzard losing hundreds of devs, their CEO and chief designer
Retail WoW is actually extremely successful guys, people love dragons and shit
>devs
it's probably mostly admin positions, people who do actual work usually don't get hit with these layoffs
that doesn't mean you're wrong about wow, of course
Source?
I wish all dumb Black folk who ask for a source on something that is clearly an opinion or guess would instantly die
I wish all dumb Black folk who speculate baselessly would read a book or something
>baseless
name one mass layoff that was mostly devs
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=dev+layoffs
>35% of devs are concerned about layoffs
wow looks like I was right, thanks anon
Black person, can you read?
>35% of devs .. saw layoffs in their company.
>most mass layoffs are non devs
>um no moron google it
>google result: 35% of devs expressed concerns about potential layoffs
what is the problem here
How does it feel to be so sure in your moronation.
>people who do work usually don't get hit with these layoffs
lol
lmao even
prove me wrong
every mass layoff is mostly admin positions
>prove me wrong
You're the one making the claim. And I actually work in the industry so I already know you're a moron
if I was a game developer I'd keep it a secret, you're the worst of the worst in your profession
indian web devs get more respect than you
Looool what was the name of that shit même dev teams the coalition or wtf..
just getting rid of the useless eaters
Unfortunately Starshit had good sales
Thank God Diablo went to shit while their major analysts thought it was a hit ignoring it's released every 10 fricking years
These dumbfricks dodged a big bullet
Don't criticize fable or they will fix it, let them fall
nooo think of the producers and qa testers nooooooo
cuts happen everywhere in the gaming industry not only at Microsoft, Riot just fired 500 people, Twitch 500 people, EA almost 1000 people, Epic 800, Bungie 800 etc, a lot of studios shut down last year
I can't tell if the economy is in the toilet or something else is going on
MS is doing pretty good stock wise. 2nd company ever to be worth 3 trillion
pandemic boom is finally catching up with everyone, that plus what we saw from the Insomniac leaks showed that these high-budget cinematic games are basically in a rat race to the bottom because they all cost fricking insane amounts of money to make and the budgets just keep going up while sales numbers either stay static, get worse, or just barely increase enough to go beyond "breaking even"
Cost control is the name of the game on wall street right now. Making vidya isn’t particularly profitable when you get that big because there isn’t a huge correlation between the amount of people that work on a game and how many people buy/play it. And every company is trying to do more with less at the moment, not to mention the more headlines you put out having to do with AI the better for your stock price. The way the street sees this, those are all positions that can now be hired to work on AI
Making games is more profitable than film and still cheaper. Most companies on the outside still want in. Microsoft gaming in general is failing due to quality control and mismanagement, if their games weren't flopping left and right they would have very little reason to fire people since the AI boom is pushing their stock.
They still have to fire people because they dont need a publishing arm when they already have existing people and they dont need marketing people when they already have them.
Depends on who they are firing, I doubt its restricted to surplus marketing and publishing staff.
“More profitable than film” isn’t a high bar to cross anon. And the real point is considering the scale and the relationship to game success. Small teams are capable of generating far better returns on investment that huge overbloated ones, when your gaming department grows the way Microsoft’s has its inevitably going to lead to pumping resources into unsuccessful ventures
Those morons are starting to rethink their strategy since more and more solo and small teams or indie devs make massive amounts of money.
>Those morons are starting to rethink their strategy since more and more solo and small teams or indie devs make massive amounts of money.
it has to be this, they're going to start pumping out AA and A games instead of AAA. it just makes sense to do it at this point. everyone wants 4k + 60+ FPS, which is easier on lower budget.
>Interest rate rises mean you can't just borrow infinite money for practically free
>Entire industry is laying people off because they over-hired during the boom period
>AAA development in general is a fricking nightmare, way too much risk and investment when a game could be a flop or a hit based on seemingly random factors (who tf predicted Baldurs Gate 3 would be GOTY when the neo-CRPG wave seemed to be dying down)
>Just bought a bunch of companies that probably have duplicated roles. You don't need marketing people from Actiblizz or Bethesda if the Xbox team already has spare capacity for example
Combine everything together and it's really not that weird. M$ can still be profitable and looking to fire people considering everything else that's going on.
ZOG needs more cannon fodder for wars. Say goodbye to being paid for playing video games.
>interest rates sky high
>debt more expensive than ever
>"I can't tell what's going on"
It's because you're moronic anon.
did they fire the big booba social media girl from Blizzard?
>focus on the 1% demographic of trannies, homos, and offended-by-everything feminist gamers.
>make every last thing have black people in it to make Larry Fink happy. No one can have shit unless there's an over-representation of black people.
>steal God knows how much money cancelling paid supscriptions every time someone gets his/her/whatever feelings hurt
>blame straight white men for absolutely everything
>why no sales?
and other imagined delusions
Companies don't do layoffs because profits are up, fool. You have a chart that can overlay their costs against the profits for each year? I didn't think so.
Gaming costs more to make and takes longer than ever before, and they routinely piss away the investment and the years spent on DEI compliance that tanks sales and makes it all for nothing.
so abk costed 4 years of revenue combined, and I'm guessing that's revenue and not proffit
Now post profits
Big changes are happening fellas
The GamerGate saga is finally coming to a close
The GG "saga" ended a long time ago, and everyone lost
Was it another Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
they wanted the IP, not the talent (that seems generous)
RIP in piss Ranjeets.
Please tell me it effects Toys for Bob
at least ukraine is winning trillions more into that country
Theres nothing more I despise are people who try to change a narrative when they get btfo, like this merger, for months people said "MS should! it'll be better for gaming" now when it's back fired it's "we never said that you're crazy" it's so fricking aggravating
Are these “people” in the room with us right now?
>like this merger, for months people said "MS should! it'll be better for gaming" now when it's back fired
But ABK getting fricked is exactly what I meant by "It'll be better for gaming".
99% of all internet traffic is bots, so I wouldn't gamble on that 1% chance
good. activision blizzard hasn't made a good game in like a decade or more
They're just trimming the fat. A lot of companies are trimming of the useless bloat this year
>be a kid
>really really want to make videogames
>see news articles like this every week for over a decade
>decide on a different job
>the only people making games in the west are annoying older millennials with trust funds, moronic taskmonkeys with no foresight, and nostalgic indie poorgays
you're a schizo zoomer kid with delusions of grandeur, an ideas man. I'd much rather the homosexual millenials make vidya than some irony poisoned generation that willingly injects poison in their bodies and grew up with ipads
Some of the greatest games of all time like, Lethal Company, Vampire Survivors, and Palworld have zoomer devs though
anon stop someone might think you're serious
>greatest games of all time
>palworld literally just came out
i dont want to blow your mind or anything, but video games existed before 2015, in fact, most of them were much better back then too because they hadn't all been pozzed to shit yet.
status on that " "Latina" " israeliteess TikToker/HR
whole lot of people talking about palworld for no reason
>Tim Schafer right now
Not a peep after Sony destroyed Bungie and fired 80 percent of the staff
How does Sony get away with it ?
were you hibernating? https://arch.b4k.co/v/thread/659764823/
What's the downside?
No more SJWs
these companies fully understand that they employee a large amount of useless eaters. when the economy gets tight, they know exactly who gets the axe first
they probably didn't fire enough, ActiBlizzard should be making WoW and CoD their golden egg laying geese not money sinks that need a gorillion employees to keep afloat
Microsoft are like 1/100 companies that are gearing up for incoming recession.
>Pay billions and billions for a game studio
>fire the people working in this studio immediately after
Explain this autism to me, wouldn't buying just the IPs be cheaper if this was all you were after, or just raiding it for the few top devs that you actually wanted? Also could just get the minority stake and control the IPs from the board of directors.
it's all about the triple E bro
they bought the studio that they audited to hell and back, then decided who they can get rid of without sacrificing the integrity of the core teams or gut the ones with actual talent
that and most of the 69 gorillion dollars was still spent on the IPs ActiBlizz owns
>wouldn't buying just the IPs be cheaper if this was all you were afte
most studios arent going to sell the IP alone. But they didnt fire all of the studio. just the excess bloat of stuff they decided they dont need. the baseline workers are usually still there.
They are also laying off ABK's customer support team in favor of outsourcing to India.
>ABK was one of the few games pubs with a high-quality internal customer support team
Sirs are stealing our jobs!
in what fricking universe is ABK's customer service team considered good
sirs anotharr victory comes our way!
>blizzard is finally dead in your lifetime
S
Why should I care. Not a single of those people are from my family. A bunch of those were probably RH roasties
I say every CEOs' and shareholders' pay should be cut to offset this.
Anon, the rules say that you must not be anti-semitic outside of /b/...
Haha nice.
You honestly think gaming is going to go to "normal"?
>"normal"?
there is no normal now. its changing too much now to establish a baseline. AI is changing everything. anyone in a white collar tech job isnt safe right now.
I'm not threatened by an autocomplete program that hallucinates
what is your job?
yeah it wont be all of them at once. it will be a shifting arena. arts are going to be diminished. ad departments too.
I'm an engineer, and not the pajeet-replaceable kind.
then you are fine. still doesnt make what i said not true.
yep what i figured. lot of arists and not the really good ones. the riot ones all posted their work and its really not that great.
At least this AI dude has brains, however the white collar workers could shift to working on AI data and still make money. IT work will be revelant still until a decade albeit
So the gaming division doubles in size after the merger and they lay of what, 10% of people? All doom and gloom yet the company is still worth 3 trillion which is in the top 3.
>buy a company
>kill it
Yep that's how gigacorps do business. They will not stop until the entire industry is destroyed and the only game you can play is cloud based Halo 343
Everything about Xbox and Microsoft reeks of corporate stench. I don't see how people can be "fans" of this company, that would be like being a fan of banks or something.
It's worse than corporate, it might as well be a branch of the US government at this point.
If gaming is downsizing then I welcome the changing gears of focusing on smaller teams developing graphically worse games. However homosexuals can't go "REEEE WHY DO GAMING GRAPHICS LOOK LIKE THEY'RE FROM THE PS2/PS3/PS4" if we start heading into that direction again. Seems like Nintendo was smart at playing the long game with this.
>consumers can't just go REEE WHY AM I PAYING 70 BUCKS FOR PS2 TIER GAMES
Market dynamics decide that. PS2 tier games are essentially free now, you can't charge anything for them, not unless you have extreme goodwill with the playerbase. Hell free mobile games are now approaching PS3 tier, even that isn't good enough to ask money for anymore
the high quality ones like genshin are basically ps4 games
Graphics on the level of Genshin are already perfect. I don't need games with 3x higher requirements so shadows look a little better.
>genshin
>high quality
lmao, the estrogen must be fricking your brain up
these frickers don't play video games
they're just talking about the graphics
thats what they get for getting rid of windows 7 support
>asian gacha games with cute girls swimming in billions of $$$
>indie games making 100x their budget
>tiny Japanese and Chinese studios making smash hits on a budget of 10 bags of rice
>game costing 10k $ to make with AI assets gets 2 million players on Steam
Imagine my shock. Nobody wants western corpo garbage anymore.
Oh, no. Anyway....
>artist
>producer
>artist
as expected
these mass layoffs never hit the people doing the actual work
Damn, three people on twitter, that's surely a representative sample and not biased.
have a nice day, tourist.
Are the finally getting rid of the diversity hires?
>First tweet:"Sometimes that's just how things go"
is a mature and measured response.
>second tweet: I'm literally shaking rn ong senpai
Ill-advised but not a corporate deal-breaker for a new position elsewhere. Get ahold of yourself and start applying, you'll be fine.
>third tweet: I'm a mentally ill freak AHHHHHHHHH HELP ME I AM LITERALLY DYING
and nothing of value was lost.
Holy frick what a doofus. Only morons and the mentally ill think that they're somehow safe at their jobs. Even if your job seems like it's safe, you could be cut in a heartbeat for no reason. Always keep a savings buffer, ideally of at least 3 months (this means that you might need to actually be financially responsible instead of blowing all of your money on toys).
Fricking losers thinking this is the end of their existence is hilarious. If it is, it's on them. Plenty of people get laid off. I've been laid off in the past, and it was the motivation I needed to get a different role that ended up paying over double what I was making at my last dead-end position.
>I'm just shaking.
What kind of people are that?
Normal people don't "shake" when they face a traumatic experience.
Sounds more like some sort of mental ailment.
Exactly the type of people that are easily made redundant by AI at this point.
ohhhh kay....?
but how does thie affect *me*?
...personally?
it doesn't
even if you play blizzard games for some reason you aren't going to notice, it's just a bunch of redundant admin positions
quick somebody calk asmonbald
I need some analysis of this situation AYIEEEEE WHERE IS MY ECELEB FEED IM GONNA DIE WITHOUT NEW CONTENT UAAHgh*gGhh**ACK!
>Microsoft gaming division
What the did they even make
mfw im about to frick these peasants over
Funny how it's just the mentally unstable people who take to twitter and talk about their layoff. Anyone with a rational brain knows going on a public platform and subtly shit talking a company you just worked for is a great way to be alienated from a community.
Gaming companies starting to realize they don't need 23 women makikg 90k a year to run their social media teams?
I hope it was all the woke / lgbt / pride pedos that got shafted!
>M$ fires Blizzard employees that fricked up Blizzard since WoW first released
>(You are here)
>M$ hires all the former employees that previously formed Blizzard North
Is this Phil's endgame?
>Fired a bunch of non-binary things
good.
Why isn't Phil Spencer fired too? He's been terrible for xbox
Good
Friday's Trans-Rights parade in Orgimmar is canceled until further notice.