this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024

573 points (98.5% liked)

Technology

59605 readers

3397 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

573

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

submitted 10 months ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/technology@lemmy.world

113 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 213 points 10 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.

[–] bassomitron@lemmy.world 64 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 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.

[–] Zipitydew@sh.itjust.works 43 points 10 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.

[–] Tetsuo@jlai.lu 40 points 10 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.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 13 points 10 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.

[–] Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Blizzard Products were polished turds.

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

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] deweydecibel@lemmy.world 16 points 10 months ago (3 children)

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

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] sheogorath@lemmy.world 14 points 10 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.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

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

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] brightandshinyobject@lemmy.world 120 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 29 points 10 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.

[–] Ultragramps@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 10 months ago

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

[–] Arcane_Trixster@lemm.ee 99 points 10 months ago (10 children)

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

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 80 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Can*

Doesn’t

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee 42 points 10 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)

[–] Zipitydew@sh.itjust.works 37 points 10 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.

load more comments (9 replies)

load more comments (7 replies)

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 94 points 10 months ago (5 children)

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

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 45 points 10 months ago (4 children)

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

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] makunamatata@discuss.tchncs.de 25 points 10 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.

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 13 points 10 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.

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 10 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!

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 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?

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] Shirasho@lemmings.world 56 points 10 months ago (5 children)

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

[–] june@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Curious for a source on that

[–] Defaced@lemmy.world 11 points 10 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.

load more comments (6 replies)

[–] Xepher@lemm.ee 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

In Tech?

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] FeetinMashedPotatoes@lemmy.world 51 points 10 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.

[–] _Atlas_@lemmy.world 33 points 10 months ago

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

[–] Holzkohlen@feddit.de 29 points 10 months ago (11 children)

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

load more comments (11 replies)

[–] Mango@lemmy.world 30 points 10 months ago

Probably not the guys with sexual assault charges though.

[–] randon31415@lemmy.world 29 points 10 months ago (4 children)

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

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca 29 points 10 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 🏅💩

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 22 points 10 months ago (2 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.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] ech@lemm.ee 20 points 10 months ago

Not what that word means

[–] Arkaelus@lemmy.world 25 points 10 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...

[–] the_q@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Yeah those coders and artists had it coming!

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] BigMacHole@lemm.ee 13 points 10 months ago

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

load more comments