I bet most if not all of the people who were laid off weren't actually good at their job because Microsoft wouldn't keep people that cost their company money. Can't wait to see how this affects WoW and Blizzard as a whole. My guess is that people will get their butts into gear and try to actually focus on their doing a good job instead of drinking breast milk.
I will repeat myself as I posted in the thread about Bobby leaving.... https://www.cuckhead.com/news/ceo-bobby-kotick-to-leave-activision-blizzard-on-dec-29-2023-336878?page=5#p5753663
Was there at least a Blizzard voucher?
more massive layoffs after posting record profits and return to share holders just in time to catch the uptick on hype for the new year so they can over higher into the boom to make more money, then cut the fat again on the downward trend next year like every single tech and gaming company. They all do layoffs at the same time. Its all a dance. This is the new way of "reorganizing and moving talent around" within an organization to get more shareholder money while also maximizing the money they can return to said shareholders. Its not cause they are "too big".
Microsoft always moved staff around and made redundancies, replacing inhouse with corporate level delivery, which lowers cost and homogenizes solutions, but increases delivery time and lowers overall quality. Such is life.As for Ybarra... we know too little, but the promises of player-centric experience in Dragonflight were a lie. I think they even fired the person in charge of quest development for the royal mess they made, but there was no expected returnees when DF launched (people had zero trust in promises) and now again we're seeing more promises made... which likely will just devolve and dilute over time.Point in case: I'd be happy to stop playing World of Loadcraft, but I don't think Blizzard will make the bold decision to make Warband banks large enough to let me have access to ALL my profession materials across all alt banks, by way of even letting me close an alt's reagent bank in favour of an extra tab for my Warband bank - and I'd honestly approve of that.Point in case: how come every zone doesn't have an NPC "Chronicler" which tracks all quest chains in the zone you've found and completed on main/alts, and allows your alt to "check off" a chain if you don't feel like re-questing? The solution with a mail-delivered item for the Emerald Dream, which really covered one chain only, felt like a last-minute hack more than a real solution.Point in case for Ybarra: Blizzard did NOTHING to address untrackability of reported abuse/misuse, to address harrasing ingame behavior except for most borderline cases... FFS we don't even have account-wide, manageable blacklists that'd work and let us at least ensure we don't run into the same abusive fun-sucker ever again... all the while, elitism is at the peak, to the point of absurd, because one addon was accepted as standard and nobody thought to try and rework score to include factors keys bricked/completion ratio. Heck, they could have even made new play modes, but no...And don't even get me started on reactive development. In Legion, key deletion got removed after mere weeks, citing "technical issues", when the truth was that devs simply didn't want a statistic that'd clearly indicate to the management and shareholders which bighead designed content that players hate so universally that they'd delete a key and run another (that was the only way back then to get a key after deleting one) rather than give it a try. I suppose current rerolls probably could be tracked, but I have uncanny feeling that this is reported without tracking specifics, just by raw number of rerolls... and it's heavily gated by requiring same-level key on-time completion, which many just won't waste time on.
Always thought Ybarra was placed specifically to help with the negotiations and then implementation of the acquisition. Bobby probably was searching for someone to buy ATVI at least a few months before the scandals went public, since he'd be aware they eventually WOULD go public. With Ybarra he had someone with contacts in Microsoft and thus sweeten the deal by showing they had someone who could help the post-acquisition process go more smoothly.Now that they are done with consolidation, they just don't need him anymore.
I work as contractor for MS in Xbox localisation department.My project managers there when asked about it said that that was necessary as Blizzard was way to swollen and people there burned out way too much money on stupid and not necessary stuff.So in general there's a chance on higher focus on content and lower on 10x expanded in game shops.
Blizzard really need saving themselves
You just know that the people who decided this was a good idea will still give themselves giant bonus
Good. Every change at Blizzard can only be good. Cant get any worse.
For as long as those fired are woke freaks who push political agenda in WoW I am fine with them being fired. Had enough of this just like I had enough of peacecraft. Now if only hazzkostas and danuser get booted, I would be happy as a clam