Community
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Everyone,
We announced today that we’re in the process of cutting a number of active positions, mostly non-development, throughout the company. I'm sure this announcement has sparked some questions from all of you, so I want take this opportunity to address those as best I can. Over the past several years, the company has grown rapidly and evolved to better serve you and the rest of our global community. Thanks to all of your support, we continue to serve by far the biggest subscription-based MMO community, as well as the most passionate eSports and online gaming communities, in the world. In order to keep making epic game content while serving players effectively, we have to be smart about how we manage our resources. This means we sometimes have to make difficult decisions about how to best maintain the health of the company. We’re in the process of making some of those hard decisions now. After evaluating our current organizational needs, we determined that while some areas of our business had been operating at the right levels and could benefit from further growth, other areas had become overstaffed. As a result, we need to scale down some of our departments and part with some of our colleagues and friends here at Blizzard. I know that you all understand how difficult this type of situation can be for anyone who might be affected, so I want to assure you that we'll be offering each impacted employee a severance package and other benefits. I also want to emphasize that we remain committed to shipping multiple games this year, and that our development teams in particular remain largely unaffected by today's announcement. We're continuing to develop, iterate, and polish Blizzard DOTA, Diablo III, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, as well as other, unannounced projects. We'll have exciting news to share in the coming weeks regarding Diablo III's release date, and will soon be holding a private media event to showcase the latest work on Mists of Pandaria. It goes without saying that we're working hard to get all of these games in your hands as soon as possible. You've all come to expect Blizzard to live up to our mission statement with every game, and deliver the most epic entertainment experiences ever. You can continue to expect that and nothing less from us as we move forward. -Mike Morhaime |
#1
29/02/2012
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It isn't easy making these decisions, and its nice that the company is open about it as I don't think there are many out there that are. :) The best of luck to all of you!
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-Booby Kotick
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Edited by Gontier on 29/02/12 19:42 (GMT)
What my furry friend said.. also thanks to all of the employees who've helped to improve the games. <3 |
CCP, makers of EVE Online, recently went through a similar process. I'm hoping that things will turn out as good for Blizzard as it has for CCP. It's frekkin sad that it has to happen, but long-term, it's for the best. |
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It's never nice to hear of people basically losing their jobs, especially ones that they probably loved and thoroughly enjoyed.
Good luck to anyone affected. |
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Sad to hear that some Blizzard employees have to go. But its great you inform the community of these major changes.
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Good luck for the future for anyone affected
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non-dev... Does that mean support? :O
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Edited by Bearlylegal on 29/02/12 18:08 (GMT)
Good luck to all Blizzard employees that lost their job's, it is never easy but +rep to blizzard for being so open.
on a personal note i have been made redundant three times from the company i work for "just when i think i'm out they pull me back in" :D so you never know what the future holds keep your heads up. EDIT: I urge everyone to keep their comments appropriate, unlike our fellow comrades from across the pond. |
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That's sad to hear, best of luck to the employees and the company.
Let's not dwell on this, and mooove on :D |
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My gratitude for the parting employees, thank you. And good luck.
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Great to be told about theese things, all the best for thoose affected make sure you work hard soo you are not one of the unlucky staff!
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Edited by Treeroy on 29/02/12 18:13 (GMT)
It can't be easy to decide to make that decision, but I'm glad that you guys are being so honest here, and open.
Best of luck to all those who have been affected by this; remember that every single employee at Blizzard has contributed in some way or another to making Blizzard products the most epic gaming experiences ever, and for that, I thank you. |
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Best of luck to the guys/gals soon to be unemployed. Hope you all can get through this.
On an unrelated note a loud "Kotick-quesc" laughter can be heard around the world. |
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Why do we need to know this?
What does this have to do with us? We wouldn't even have noticed any difference. |
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May we ask exactly where theese people used to work?
Community managers - If so, will official forum responds be far between (if any) in the future? Ingame GM's - If so, will the ingame service be harder to get and more importaintly slower? What I'm curious to know is WHERE we as paying customers will feel the change, with (still) 10m paying accounts just from World of Warcraft. Also, how is it going to work out when Diablo 3 comes out and you seemingly have dropped 600 of your "non development" employees? With Diablo 3 just around the corner wouldn't you expect your total customers to go up and therefore want to be prepared for it with (enough) staff to handle problems? |
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Ah that's why GM's were cranky and unfriendly lately. Sorry to hear that, I'm sure that "a severance package and other benefits" will be satisfying enough until something better comes up.
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