Blizzard has recently announced that they intend to layoff 600 employees, of which 90% will come from non-development related departments, which likely means from customer (In-game) support. This also comes right after Blizzard revealed that their numbers from World of Warcraft have continued to decline, dropping from 10.3 million subscribers from Q3 to 10.2 in Q4 2011 (Net lose of 700,000 subscriptions).
“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.”
It’s never good news to hear about people losing their jobs and hopefully everyone that is being let go gets back on their feet sooner than later. What I don’t understand is why. Sure layoffs are part of the business but at $15 per subscription x 10.2 = 153,000,000, where’s that money going? That’s not counting all the extra fluff they sell at the Blizzard store or server transfers, etc.
Source – http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/29/blizzard-laying-off-600-staff-globally
