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[IGN] Blizzard Producer Claims Studio Is Creating 'Crisis Maps' as More Employees Depart

Rowsdower

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From IGN:

www.ign.com

Blizzard Producer Claims Studio Is Creating 'Crisis Maps' as More Employees Depart - IGN

A producer at Blizzard has taken to Twitter to express frustration at a series of departures from the World of Warcraft studio, saying the team is making "crisis maps" of what they can and cannot ship due to so many employees leaving.
www.ign.com www.ign.com

A producer at Blizzard has taken to Twitter to express frustration at a series of departures from the World of Warcraft studio, saying the team is making "crisis maps" of what they can and cannot ship due to so many employees leaving.
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In a thread earlier this week, Adam "Glaxigrav" lamented that they had lost "*another* person this week," saying that Blizzard "is losing amazing talent because someone in power doesn't listen to the game directors who make his products."
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View: https://twitter.com/Glaxigrav/status/1648116634463404032


View: https://twitter.com/Glaxigrav/status/1648133464322080769

Glaxigrav isn't alone in their frustrations. Senior game designer on World of Warcraft Allison Steele chimed in too, attributing at least some of the recent attrition to Blizzard's forced return-to-office policy, which Glaxigrav notes elsewhere was still set for July as recently as April 6. The mandate was announced back in February, with Activision worker requirements starting this month. The plan is reportedly unpopular internally.
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View: https://twitter.com/SteeleGame/status/1648538392513183745

Looks like Blizzard is still having ongoing retention issues. Forced RTO (return to office) is making things worse; it's a terrible policy, and hopefully ABK (or MS) can scrap it.

Mods, feel free to close this thread if old/not allowed. Didn't see it in search.
 
Wrexis

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Nov 4, 2017
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This seems more planned attrition than anything else. Get rid of people so you don't have to lay them off and pay them.
 
Tbm24

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It's certainly interesting to see when you consider how the WoW team in particular got a big influx of new employees relatively recently.

hobblygobbly said:
Americans seem to love acronyms as much as us Germans

what is RTO?
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America was built on acronyms. Also it's spelled out right above the tweet, return-to-office.
 
Sleuth Semanticist

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Wrexis said:
This seems more planned attrition than anything else. Get rid of people so you don't have to lay them off and pay them.
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Enthusiasts also forgive and forget too easily. D4 will set records and inspire another generation of people to apply to Blizzard, accept shitty working conditions, and, in the longterm, the status quo will have barely budged.
 
Jarod McChicken

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In the past few years, I think we can count at least six or seven studios that were founded by "ex Blizzard devs" so yeah.
 
Masagiwa

Masagiwa

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Jan 27, 2018
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Yeah we kind of already know this based on how many veterans that left and how many that followed them
the domino effect
 
Gavalanche

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Well, they haven't changed anything on a fundamental level, of course they are still losing people.
 
hobblygobbly

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Strings said:
Return to office.
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Rowsdower said:
Return to office.
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Thanatos said:
The Mike Ybarra effect.



Return To Office i.e. no more work from home.
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Tbm24 said:
It's certainly interesting to see when you consider how the WoW team in particular got a big influx of new employees relatively recently.



America was built on acronyms. Also it's spelled out right above the tweet, return-to-office.
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Thanks. Didn't see that part between the tweets

Seems like a bad situation all round, if people can find better employment opportunities elsewhere then Blizzard needs to seriously change because Blizzard always seemed like the place to be for a very long time where a lot of people wanted to work, especially the 2000s and early/mid 2010s
 
etrain911

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Oct 27, 2017
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Forced RTO is absolutely murdering recruitment in tech. I am seeing this in my company as well. It really hamstrings your ability to find a global talent pool and because remote was the norm for so long, many don't want to go back. Add in Actiblizz being PR poison, the games industry generally being a really awful place to work, and the impending acquisition making corporate structure feel up in the air and it is probably a nightmare for any recruiters or folks in HR. I got lucky and am grandfathered into remote work. I live in a state where my salary provides me a high purchasing power. If they were to demand I move, I would start looking for a new job immediately. I went to one of their offices in a ridiculously expensive city this week and it is almost comical how little each dollar went vs. the value I would have for it back home.
 
asd202

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Ybarra is just a mouth piece. He does not make decisions on return to the office, the board of directors at Activision does. His job is to enforce it and "sell it" to the workers which admittedly is a hard sell and we are seeing the results.
 
Tbm24

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hobblygobbly said:
Thanks. Didn't see that part between the tweets

Seems like a bad situation all round, if people can find better employment opportunities elsewhere then Blizzard needs to seriously change because Blizzard always seemed like the place to be for a very long time where a lot of people wanted to work, especially the 2000s and early 2010s
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The unfortunate reality about that era is people were doing it and not being paid their fair share. Let folks leave, Blizzard needs to keep learning the hard way they aren't owed anything let alone peoples hard work without fair treatment and compensation.
 
bitcloudrzr

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Rowsdower said:
Looks like Blizzard is still having ongoing retention issues. Forced RTO (return to office) is making things worse; it's a terrible policy, and hopefully ABK (or MS) can scrap it.
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Microsoft has a 50% rto policy depending on position (some mandatory on site, some 100% remote), I am not sure if that is better or worse than Blizz.
 
gofreak

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"diversity of thought" ... that sort of rhetoric always gets a side eye from me. Hmm.
 
Minthara

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asd202 said:
Ybarra is just a mouth piece. He does not make decisions on return to the office, the board of directors at Activision does. His job is to enforce it and "sell it" to the workers.
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Ybarra has been a tool for going on 20 years now - stop trying to absolve him of blame. No board of directors forced him to say that QA was a dead end job, for instance, or any of the other absolute bullshit he's said in the past.
 
asd202

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Thanatos said:
Ybarra has been a tool for going on 20 years now - stop trying to absolve him of blame. No board of directors forced him to say that QA was a dead end job, for instance, or any of the other absolute bullshit he's said in the past.
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I mean you may not like him but in this case the return to the office was not his decision to make.
 
Issen

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Nov 12, 2017
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Forced RTO is fucking dogshit. You should be allowed to work from home for as much work as you can do from home. If you have a lot of work that needs to be done in person (and I mean it actually needs it, not management thinks it needs it), then that's gonna mean less remote.

But if you don't, it should mean more remote. And it should not be arbitrary or fixed percentages either. You go to the office on a need to go basis and nothing else (unless you actually want to go more).

It really isn't that difficult. The company should be paying for my work, not my presence. If my work requires the presence, fair enough. But they should still be paying for the work itself, and if they aren't then I seriously question their priorities.
 
Katbobo

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Thanatos said:
Ybarra has been a tool for going on 20 years now - stop trying to absolve him of blame. No board of directors forced him to say that QA was a dead end job, for instance, or any of the other absolute bullshit he's said in the past.
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I really hope Microsoft drops him if the deal goes through, but i'm not super hopeful since it seems like they intend to have ActivisionBlizz largely self-run similar to Bethesda, and they probably still like Mike since he was with Microsoft previously.
 
Moobabe

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AyaisMUsikWhore said:
This..... and its worrisome that so far, not many have picked up on that. It's very side-eye for me.
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He's very clearly talking about the working situation.

The data and financials he's referencing would suggest that Blizzard's games are doing just fine (in terms of CCU + revenue) even though people are working from home.

Ybarra/the board obviously think differently.
 

Deleted member 7148

Oct 25, 2017
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TIL Mike Ybarra works for Blizzard and not Microsoft anymore. I was sitting here like "Microsoft hasn't acquired anything yet, why is Mike being blamed?" lol
 
gofreak

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Moobabe said:
He's very clearly talking about the working situation.
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'DE&I' - diversity & inclusion - is a very weird thing to pull in or call out explicitly like he does here if he's talking about 'the working situation' in general. Calling that out and adding 'diversity of thought' - it's like a fox news style refrain to 'cancel culture'. So he could definitely be clearer.
 
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Instro

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Honestly surprised that they are managing to get Diablo out the door, and seemingly in a good state.
 
Eoin

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AyaisMUsikWhore said:
This..... and its worrisome that so far, not many have picked up on that. It's very side-eye for me.
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If you check his Twitter timeline, there don't seem to be any obvious red flags. Looks generically progressive for as far as I've checked it. The "diversity of thought" appears just to be clumsy phrasing.
 
GamerJM

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Imo "diversity of thought" can be a real concern, it just happens to be used by chuds insincerely a lot. Management causing people who disagree with design decisions to leave, or maybe who disagree with forced RTO to leave, is bad.
 
Sabin

Sabin

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Oct 25, 2017
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Fuck Ybarra. Just lets your employee work from were they want.

So glad that i don't have to deal with this bullshit and that SAP is very supportive when it comes to homeoffice.
 
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