This is why I'm not at a gaming company. The choice seems to be:a) Continuous long hours for less pay, but I like the subject, or b) still long hours but get most evenings and weekends off, for enough to pay my part of the rent comfortably, but with a boring subject. I may get no name recognition from doing graphic design at a retailer for company-facing materials, but I do get free time and a little more adequately compensated.It would be nice if there was a third choice where there was good pay, no long hours, AND interesting work but I have yet to find anything like that on offer. Companies with prestige know they have several hundred or several thousand people just waiting to get into that position and it seems like every single one of them takes advantage of it to be exploitative to workers. (If you know of examples where that's not the case, I'd be happy to be proven wrong!). And it's harder to find people to do the boring work so you have to offer a higher salary just to get people in the door. So the trade-off seems inevitable.I can respect people who went the other way with that choice, but I can't help but wonder if it's worth the long hours and low pay and lack of free time. I hope they find work that feels to them worth whichever trade off they've made.
This may be true. But look at the cost of living in CA compared to most of the US. it's ridiculous! They might be paying a fair wage over all, but to live there you need a hell of a lot more $$$.
Removed/
Blizzard has, sadly, always had a history of underpaying its staff. It only got away with it mostly because employees essentially got a share of profits when a game shipped and if it did well (which old school blizz typically did). But now that they're corporate and with this article I can only assume this is no longer a thing, or at least not a thing applied to the majority of it's employees. Based on what I've heard a number of devs at Blizzard live like people do in college, just a bunch of people shoved into one house, just to make ends meet. And these are full grown, long employed adults, not students!
"In 2018 messages on internal Blizzard communication channels reviewed by Bloomberg News, employees talked about money-saving measures they’ve taken to remain with the company. One employee wrote that they had to skip meals to pay rent and that they used the company’s free coffee as an appetite suppressant. Another said they would only eat oatmeal and bail on team lunches because they couldn’t afford to buy food at the company cafeteria."Hey, they read the post I made a couple of months before leaving the company (after 9 years there). Oatmeal is great, but you don't want to have to eat it every day. Left Blizz in 11/2018 and went to another company doing the same type of job... for an instant 3x raise over what I had been making at Blizzard. I'm now making 4x what I was when I left and couldn't be happier, even if I miss a lot of the people I worked with there.
People complaining about blizz but still playing their games is funny ngl.
I hate Bobby Kotick and J Allen Brack. Honestly, I wish the worst for both of them. Oopsie. I have to be mature. We should be understanding and be tolerant of people's business decisions that screw over the people who actually do the work because at the end of things, capitalism is 100% justified and fair, and people actually do get paid adequately for possessing magical powers on the top.
Hopefully the initiatives to unionize game developers bear fruit.
This isn't a problem from Blizzard side rather its a social/industrial problem caused by a bloated mega city (and fkd up economical system of a country). Yet Wowhead has to post such clickbaits which will further engulf the already toxic community with low sense on real life problems. Not to mention more than half of the playerbase lives outside of USA and they don't have such problems. Obviously they are gonna overreact on this common and regular "american problem". Which will hurt the game further.
Guess all the people whose money that went into store mounts and other MTXs aren't going to the employees to "make the game better". Probably just another bonus for executives :/
And any sheets to see what exactly they got?Cause only word don't prove anything,i also want my salary to be 2 times higher,without proof i could take 1milion and you will agree with me?Haha give us sheets,otherwise i don't believe a word from what they said.
Unfortunately, this is not limited to Blizzard, or the gaming industry. It's a widespread practice in most large US companies. I got myself out of that game a while ago. I now work from home, for my boss in Germany, and my director in Sweden, in a company headquartered in France. Much different compensation.
Most of the OG team isn't even a part of blizzard anymore
Honestly? At this point I'm beginning to hope that Shadowlands fails, and all the underpaid employees move over to Riot.