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[Kotaku] With Activision's Influence Growing, Blizzard Is Cutting Costs

dex3108

dex3108

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Oct 26, 2017
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New report from Jason

Blizzard has spent the year taking big measures to cut costs as it prepares for a lean 2019. Those measures, as conveyed by people who work or have worked for the iconic studio, include employee buyouts in which workers are offered money to leave, a broadening of the finance department, and the limitation of budgets for any team at the company that isn't directly making video games.

Much of Blizzard's cost-cutting has gone unreported until recently, but it's been a consistent theme throughout 2018 at the Irvine, California-based studio behind mega-hits like Overwatch and World of Warcraft. One Blizzard program, for example, is called Career Crossroads. It offers healthy severance packages to people who voluntarily take buyouts and choose to leave the company. At first, Career Crossroads was designed for veteran QA testers who had been at Blizzard for more than five years, but this year, it opened up to customer service and IT, according to one person familiar with the program. Blizzard has also lowered the number of years required to take a buyout, opening up Career Crossroads to even more employees, likely in hopes of increasing those numbers.
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For November's report, we talked to 11 current and former Blizzard employees. Since then, we've heard from even more current and former Blizzard staff about the company's cost-cutting measures and how they've materialized. The Career Crossroads program is one example. Another, according to three Blizzard staff who all left recently, is a power shift that has seen the finance department cultivate influence that it had never had in the past.

"Finance in general in Blizzard has been one of these invisible functions that's there, but doesn't have a say," said one veteran employee who left recently and asked not to be named because they were not authorized to talk to press. "Now they're suddenly in meetings."

Said a second, who also asked not to be named: "A lot of decisions now are being driven by business folks, marketing and finance folks. There's a real struggle now between developers and the business people… Strategic decisions are being driven by the finance group."
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https://kotaku.com/with-activisions-influence-growing-blizzard-is-cutting-1831263741
 
ditusjack

ditusjack

Member
Oct 26, 2017
620
Damn Blizzard, hang in there.
Also Eurogamer posted this today:
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...ern-as-over-100-accept-cash-to-exit-irish-hub
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Deleted member 36578

Dec 21, 2017
26,561
When they joined forces I worried about the future of Blizzard. I just don't look at them the same way as I used to when everything they did was pristine. Hopefully their future becomes bright again
 
Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Crisis Dino
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Oct 25, 2017
38,902
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Will be very interesting to see where Blizzard ends up in about 10 years. Especially when it comes to consumer interest.
 
Poppy

Poppy

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Oct 25, 2017
18,319
richmond, va
well, we always will have had the period from the mid 90s to about whenever right before starcraft 2 came out was

they had a great run
 
antitrop

antitrop

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Oct 25, 2017
12,747
Had to be something up, just when Overwatch was at the point in its life where it should have started getting more support, it started getting less.
 
seroun

seroun

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Oct 25, 2018
4,519
It's sad, but also Blizzard has had how many projects that didn't take off already? Titan, the Diablo 4 that was scrapped.. who knows what else. Management seems to have been a mess.
 
MillionIII

MillionIII

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Sep 11, 2018
6,816
This is just sad...It seems like all we hear from Activision is bad stuff, from destiny to cod and now this.
 
Demacabre

Demacabre

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Nov 20, 2017
2,058
Man, the fall of 2018 is playing out dramatically for the titan companies of the industry.

Hope those individuals find work and honestly, that's the best way to leave voluntarily.
 
Bunkles

Bunkles

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You can see the Activision influence plain as day now...



Bumped Heroes and made room to advertise Call of Duty and Destiny on an official Blizzard channel.
 
Alex

Alex

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Oct 27, 2017
514
Battle for Azeroth is a disaster and probably the worst iteration of a major MMO I've played, Overwatch is barely getting updates and is clearly on cruise control and the rest of their games are basically dead.

Nothing at all surprises me anymore in regards to the situation with Blizzard, they're probably done, at least for a lot of their prior fans. I can't imagine what kind of chopshop will have to emerge to pair Blizzard design with Activision ideals.
 
Neoxon

Neoxon

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Oct 25, 2017
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antitrop said:
Had to be something up, just when Overwatch was at the point in its life where it should have started getting more support, it started getting less.
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Alex said:
Overwatch is barely getting updates and is clearly on cruise control
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Supposedly that's actually because of other stuff that the Overwatch team is working on for the game.

seroun said:
It's sad, but also Blizzard has had how many projects that didn't take off already? Titan, the Diablo 4 that was scrapped.. who knows what else. Management seems to have been a mess.
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Was Diablo 4 actually scrapped? I thought its reveal was just pushed back.
 
monketron

monketron

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Oct 27, 2017
2,930
It's heartbreaking to watch your favourite developer who's given you so much joy, since your childhood, slowly fall apart before you.
 
Bunkles

Bunkles

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Said a second, who also asked not to be named: "A lot of decisions now are being driven by business folks, marketing and finance folks. There's a real struggle now between developers and the business people… Strategic decisions are being driven by the finance group."
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bluexy

bluexy

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Oct 25, 2017
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The thing is, the question more fans should be asking, is whether the post-acquisition and Mike Morhaime eras of Blizzard are really worth preserving in the first place. Obviously increasing influence over Blizzard development issues by Activision financial executives is worrying in its own way, but I'd argue that change -- perhaps even radical change -- is well deserved at Blizzard. The StarCraft, Warcraft, and Diablo franchises are in their worst place in over a decade. Overwatch and Hearthstone, as exciting as they'be been, are languishing in the roil of games-as-a-service content cycles. And frankly, there isn't a single thing that Blizzard has announced that is drawing new fans to Blizzard or investing them in Blizzard's future.

So, on one hand, fans are of course going to focus on "The Good Blizzard" from 1995-2005 and try to ignore its modern stagnancy. But really that stagnancy deserves to be acknowledged and accounted for. Maybe the next few years of Blizzard will be worse than ever, but I'd rather see an effort at change with inherent risk than no effort at all.
 
Scuffed

Scuffed

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Oct 28, 2017
11,177
I think the Immortal backlash then the Jason Schreier article with all the sources speaking about the increased influence let the cat out of the bag so they aren't even trying to hide the takeover anymore. Blizzard will never be the same.
 
monketron

monketron

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Oct 27, 2017
2,930
Neoxon said:
Supposedly that's actually because of other stuff that the Overwatch team is working on.


Was Diablo 4 actually scrapped? I thought its reveal was just pushed back.
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The Diablo 3 expansion was scrapped and Diablo 4 rebooted. Which is why we've gone so long without any serious Diablo news.
 
Anoregon

Anoregon

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Oct 25, 2017
14,203
Looking more and more like Morhaime leaving was a result of the finance-focused encroachment of Activision. Sad to see the ramping up of what will inevitably be an ignominious end for a once great company. I've spent more hours of my life playing Blizzard games than probably all other developers combined, but all things come to an end.
 

Gatti-man

Banned
Jan 31, 2018
2,359
Cost cutting will kill World of Warcraft. That game requires heavy investment. Activision is crazy messing with blizzard like this.
 
Barnak

Barnak

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Oct 25, 2017
5,087
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They should have shown something about Diablo 4 in this year Blizzcon... seems like 2019 will have nothing interesting coming from them. A few major patches for WoW BFA, the usual for OW(new lootbox material, maps and characters, hopefully the output won't decrease) and maybe an expansion for Hearthstone?

Edit : Right, forgot about WC3 Reforged. At least there's that.
 
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Maneil99

Maneil99

Banned
Nov 2, 2017
5,252
This is for the best. They waste so much time on dead builds of game. As someone that works in finance if you don't have finance reps in large meetings for a public product you're shipping idk what you expect.
 
Qwark

Qwark

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Oct 27, 2017
8,092
Blizzard is still profitable, right? Just not nearly as profitable as Activision wants them to be?
 
Ultraviolence

Ultraviolence

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Oct 25, 2017
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8byte said:
Unlikely related. OW events suck because the team is neck deep in the OWL, and whatever new "feature" that Jeff keeps teasing...but something tells me it's mostly OWL.
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Honestly? Part of me hopes that the OWL isn't doing as great as they hoped and that they focus on more non-competetitive aspects of the game next year even though it's probably doing good.
 
Border

Border

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Oct 25, 2017
14,859
Interfectum said:
You can see the Activision influence plain as day now...



Bumped Heroes and made room to advertise Call of Duty and Destiny on an official Blizzard channel.
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It's kinda hard for them to have a sale on a Free-to-Play game like Heroes of the Storm. Not sure why that would be a part of their advertisement, since they don't have any paid content to push.
 
Bunkles

Bunkles

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Border said:
It's kinda hard for them to have a sale on a Free-to-Play game like Heroes of the Storm. Not sure why that would be a part of their advertisement, since they don't have any paid content to push.
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You see Hearthstone up there, right?
 
cw_sasuke

cw_sasuke

Member
Oct 27, 2017
26,568
Overreaction as usual - Blizzard isnt diying but they have to adapt to the current climate.
You cant be part of the biggest publisher in Gaming and only deliver every 5 years - thats just how it is.
 
antitrop

antitrop

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Oct 25, 2017
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Neoxon said:
Supposedly that's actually because of other stuff that the Overwatch team is working on for the game.
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The Overwatch team isn't big enough. Even before Fortnite, it felt that way, but now with Epic's "all hands on deck" approach to supporting that game, the bar just keeps going up while they stay the same.
 
Trojita

Trojita

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Oct 25, 2017
5,721
The Blizzard you loved doesn't exist anymore. It's a micromanaged corpse masquerading as something you once adored.
 
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