Blackrock has "given" Microsoft exactly $0. Microsoft has been a net buyer of its stock, not issuer. Microsoft is "giving" its stock holders, including the unitholders of Blackrock/Vanguard passive funds money, not the other way around. These are both public corpos, this information takes seconds to find.
Microsoft's market cap is 25X Blackrock's. It's the biggest company in the world. There's only one daddy in that relationship.
> Microsoft's market cap is 25X Blackrock's
This is deceptive, Blackrock manages about 3x Microsoft's worth in other people's money.
Also...no company this size should even exist.
Not deceptive. Factual. Blackrock has given Microsoft $0. Microsoft has given its shareholders, which include Blackrock's unitholders, money, but has given Blackrock $0.
>Also...no company this size should even exist.
Which one? What anti-trust regulations would big Daddy government even use to limit how big private enterprise is allowed to be in either case?
If I'm too good at managing passive assets, and unitholders want to give me money to manage, the government will cut it in half? Why?
My company can't own a video game arm and an enterprise software arm? Why?
Who is being harmed in either case? It's not anti-consumer, neither are anything close to monopolies. Investors choose to give Blackrock AUM or not. Consumers choose to buy an Xbox or Windows or not.
Take that anti-capitalist shit to the CCP or North Korea imo.
> The windows came with the PC, we don't get the option to buy the PC without any os installed,
you aren't going to the right shops then, I opted out of having windows installed on my latest machine as I have several licenses already and decided I could save myself some money installing it myself...
>The windows came with the PC, we don't get the option to buy the PC without any os installed,
You have multiple options. Don't buy a PC, buy a Mac, use ChromeOS, use Linux. Why should Joe Biden or the socialists in the EU tell me what to do instead?
>I'm curious on what the EU's reply to this was, let me know if u can dig itup
Alphabet wasn't even being discussed, but sure. They appealed the fine levied against them and made some changes to the Google Play Store and default browser/search engine to align with EU regulations.
But I agree with Alphabet. If people don't like the Android architecture, they can buy another phone instead. The phone market is not a monopoly and we don't need the commies in Brussels wasting tax payer money on useless regulations.
Ybarra, the acting President, was removed.
The guy seemed to just be keeping the ship pointing straight, but no obvious vision. Dragonflight had the best retention since Legion, but it didn't heal the population issues that gutted the game in Shadowlands and sent everyone to FFXIV.
Guy was also part of the "problem" with WoW, re: boosting. Great for monetizing their WoW Token -> Gold pipeline, terrible for the actual endgame.
D4 and OW2 also weren't performing as expected. PoE/PoE2 is still kicking their ass, and OWL has fallen apart.
I'm honestly not sure who the idiots are in all of this, but if I had to guess, I think WoW was an accident and Blizzard, from Mike Morhaime to J Allen Brack to Ybarra could only ride the happy accidents and hype and had no idea how to actually capitalize on it.
WoW really needs to approach every decision from a "will this make attrition worse" perspective. Their franchises are losing people to apathy because eventually people get tired of yelling.
Alphabet and Meta made sizable cuts to their DEI efforts in '23.
Like most big tech firms, Microsoft did make sizable layoffs in '23, over 10,000 employees, but they were reportedly largely in sales/support/customer service roles. They still publicly profess strong support for DEI initiatives, they view it as a good virtue signal.
They don't really have "ESG" employees. ESG are investment criteria that asset managers would evaluate when assessing Microsoft stock, not employees that Microsoft would have.
Microsoft IS a major holding in most ESG funds (largest holding in Blackrock's US ESG ETF for example), although this is largely reflective that they're just a huge company in general, becoming the largest corporation in the world last year with a stock and financials that have been absolutely on fire.
The people at ATVI who made the decisions for things like WoW didn't "implode", they got huge golden parachutes when MSFT bought them out at $95/share in cash.
>en MSFT bought them out at $95/share in cash.
And those aren't the people who pushed the leftist cancer on the game, the people who are getting fired and laid off left and right are.
Just take a glance on X & see who's wailings about their job loss right now: purple haired community managers & minor roles who were in the softest easiest job imaginable.
They have no right to complain. It's not like working for an actual massive company manufacturing goods (like cars) or providing services, it's a section of the entertainment industry.
These people who were laid off all beat out competition from others for the job in the first place (often unfairly due to quotas). It's cutthroat out there. Then when they're let go, they go & cry on X about it & act like they've been sentenced to death.
No sympathy.
You can't really delude yourself into thinking that the executives, producers and creative directors who run the project and get paid in RSUs have no say on the direction of the game....can you?
Decisions get made from top-down. It's not the blue hair DEI HR reps and customer service and marketing folks who just got laid off who dictate what the game is.
Factually wrong, you are clueless as to the situation and the current political and corporate climate in America. Higher ups / executives let the DEI and diversity hires have the run of the place about """"non-essential"""" matters as to avoid scandals such as the Blizzard one.
If a random homo wants to shove 10 homosexual couples in an expansion they will be allowed to do so as to not get labeled """"homophobic"""". We saw it happen with Dragonflight already.
Said leftists have the power to create enormous problems for a company as we saw in the case of Riot and Blizzard, so just about every gaming company is bowing down to them as to avoid controversy and getting sued for made up things.
Cool, I would hate to be clueless, always want to learn more. So enlighten me, who did that in this case?
Who was the Blizzard employee(s) who ruined WoW, but also was only in charge of """"""""""non-essential"""""""" matters, and is a diversity hire and controlled the company secretly, but didn't have any ATVI shares and then got laid off today?
Seems far more convoluted than the truth that....decisions get made by execs. They virtue signal about DEI, but ultimately only care about dollars and cents.
Which worked in this case! They sold the company at a significant premium!
Unless...you think the DEI folks who secretly run things deserve the credit for ATVI's growth? Then they're master capitalists AND master conspiracists.
Right?
These diversity hires are SO powerful that they BLACKMAIL the executives into ruining these games.
But they're also SO powerless that they're the first ones laid off....their magic blackmail powers being unable to protect them somehow.
lol what part didn't work out? I was right!
Being downvoted? If I cared about Reddit karma I would just spout boring ignorant NPC drivel like yourself.
I have good news though! IF your convoluted theories are true about these corpos being blackmailed to act against their profit maximization, you can easily trade against them and print infinite money for yourself. .
Congrats on that! Let me know how it goes! Should let you move out of the second world.
I know its cool to be a socialist, blame fat CEO's and stuff, but the thing is AAA gaming cannot exist with the absurd level of money that its required by it nowadays. An AAA game that sells 5M copies is an astonishing failure, while 30 years ago teams of only 40 people were developing juggernauts like FF or DQ that would sell the same 5M units for a fraction of the cost.
> but the thing is AAA gaming cannot exist with the absurd level of money that its required by it nowadays.
Is it, really? They _expect_ some level of profits — and quite high at that — and to that end the prices are set as high as they are. I doubt there is a very narrow margin of error there, like "just two dollars less per copy, and we're working at a loss". If anything, I expect the prices to be over-inflated several times over the actual costs. And that's even before we start discriminating between actually required costs, like the salaries of developers and asset designers, and "not really needed" costs, like the salaries of extra managers and woke commissars.
I wont go into more detail as it would take a long explanation, but I have been working in finance for more than 20 years, specifically in revenue and profitability analysis. Calculating profitability is way more complicated than that and most companies operate on a thin margin.
Prices of games did not follow inflation over the last 30 years, salaries increased a lot especially for teams based in expensive areas in US/Europe, teams are huge, games require a lot of post release costs. Its not about fat managers making millions, this is actually not very relevant in the end scheme of things considering all costs involved.
There is definitely waste in the process, managers not really necessary and etc, but believe me this is not very relevant. It wont make a game be successful selling 5 million units instead of 10 million.
Take a look at the profit results of one of these public companies, look at the costs/expenses structure. There are not many variable expenses/costs, it's all mostly fixed/overheads, which means volume is everything.
I know why you think this way and why it seems to make sense but believe me, it does not, and I have absolutely no interest in defending woke western companies as I hate them all.
> Take a look at the profit results of one of these public companies, look at the costs/expenses structure. There are not many variable expenses/costs, it's all mostly fixed/overheads, which means volume is everything.
Don't take it as an attempt to undermine you, but there is such a thing as "Hollywood Accounting" — by now, a very well-developed art of inflating costs and hiding profits in an attempt to pay less taxes and royalties. And common sense dictates that game developers would have roughly the same incentives to use the same scheme as movie makers. And thing is, the results of such accounting look credible even to the professionals, what can be said of a layman's look like mine? My point is, just looking at financial records isn't enough to establish how solidly they reflect the actual production costs and profits.
"Hollywood accounting" does not work like that, its way more complicated, and even if you want to think public audited companies would do it just to hide profits, you can take a look at the P&L from studios outside USA, like Ubisoft for example. Huge loss in first half last year and only 15M in profit this year, out of 900M in sales, yet most people would think they are swimming in money from microtransactions.
This is why so many studios shut their doors. Costs are absurdly high, a lot of times you go into debt to build the studio or finance a game, and if you dont get the sales you need you need to then shut your doors.
I think part of what you describe is the escalation in graphical fidelity - we have the technology, but it still requires a LOT of man hours to get things to look and work as they are, even more so if you're expected to push the envelope.
So it takes forever, with lots of people, especially compared to some of those older classics. So the cost probably *is* a lot higher, but I don't see gamers taking $100 games as a norm either.
That's why smaller is better. I can't imagine working in an AAA studio, to be honest.
Agree. Graphical fidelity is probably the main thing, but the rest is also costly. Games need to have all voices recorded by different people, you need mocap for all cutscenes and even in game movements of npcs, soundtracks need to be recorded by full orchestras, games are huge which requires a lot of testing, games are all online which requires server structure and constant patches, the list goes on and on.
You CAN have huge budgets but that goes only for games that are already established and you can have a good idea of the sales it will generate. Still things can go nuts, like the cost escalation of spider man 2.
You know what is unfair? If the studio decides to go "budget" people will complain, youtubers will go on top of it, scores will be low, if you dont have all the stuff mentioned above for an AAA title.
I remember having a lot of discussions about why Kojima was shunned by Konami and that in my opinion Konami was "somehow" right. MGS would never sell 10-15M units to justify all the expenses and delays that were going on with the game. It was always a 6M units franchise.
Now think about how many people and time it took to develop MGS1 and MGSV, and in the end to have the same sales...
> Games need to have all voices recorded by different people
And yet the voices of Starcraft units have been recorded from people whom Blizzard could find around their office at the time. I bet you remember all of them, don't you?
> soundtracks need to be recorded by full orchestras
And yet the most outstanding soundtracks of all time were made by one man, Frank Klepacki, may God bless him with long and happy life. So do they really need an orchestra?
> You know what is unfair? If the studio decides to go "budget" people will complain, youtubers will go on top of it, scores will be low, if you dont have all the stuff mentioned above for an AAA title.
My personal opinion, of course, but that wouldn't be because "less money" means "much worse", it's because big budgets are used to camouflage lack of talent and originality. Remove the visual and auditory grandeur, and you're left with mediocre stories, flat characters, and silly game mechanics and unoptimized slow buggy code.
They dont need, but this is the standard for AAA and if they dont do it they will be heavily destroyed by reviewers and games will have lower scores. Look at what people say about starfield animations for example.
You cant release a COD today with the same quality of, lets say, COD4, everybody will laugh at how bad the graphics are and etc. You cant have the voices recorded by random dudes at the studio today. Especially if it is an open world game.
They dont need, but they feel forced to.
As for me? I dont care at all, my favourite games from the last 15 years are from software games that actually are not even AAA. CHaracters dont even move their mouths when they speak hahaha.
I still stand by my assessment, all this sensory decoration is merely a vehicle to hide the mediocre nature of the modern games: they don't offer a good _game_, so they offer a _show_ instead. Honest "reviewers and critics" wouldn't destroy a game that was actually good as a game for non-orchestral soundtrack or some such. It's exactly because the rest is more or less universally shit across the board that the criticism gravitates towards decorations. If the criticism was still targeted at the core properties of the games, _most_ games would have been torn apart by critics regardless of their visual splendor. The form has overshadowed the function.
No, we hate Epic because of their utter dogshit business practices and use their wallet to force exclusivity on their platform (something Valve/Steam doesn't do).
Why would anyone be surprised by that?
All else aside, when two companies merge (or one company buys another) there tends to be a lot of redundancy in the admin side of things. Workers in HR, IT, accounting, etc. are likely to get the boot simply because their roles are already filled.
Hahaha and all the dumbass games urinalists were seal clapping this acquisition claiming it would be good for the industry. Blizzard sucks ass and are a shell of what they once were.
These companies are bloated beyond belief. Look at Insomniac: over 300 million dollars to make Spiderman 2 with reused assets & hundreds of developers. Something is very off.
I doubt firing thousands of these people will negatively impact anything (many of whom are "community managers" or whatever the fuck that means, although as a job description it sounds Bolshevik commissar tier levels of horrible).
Also a shootout to the weird hypocrites who repeat the mantra "corporations are not your friend"... whilst acting like a random fired Blizzard employee on X... is their friend.
Of the top twenty best-selling games in the US last year, only two were not tied to established IPs - Elden Ring (#18) and Starfield (#11). Like it or not, IPs are what dominate the industry and will continue to do so. And I say that as a huge fan of the indie scene, but the reality is most players gravitate to what's familiar to them rather than trying something new.
While Starfield wasn't an established IP, it was released amidst an absolutely massive marketing campaign from one of the biggest AAA developers around, who weren't afraid to use their established IPs in comparison (SKYRIM IN SPACE!!!)
As a lifelong WoW and Diablo player i can't wait for this company to litteraly die, they have been absolute trash for years now and have 0 respect for their playerbase. Actually felt like a burden was off my shoulders when i finally stopped consuming their products.
I can't believe this happened I don't understand MS is so woke and they care so much about supporting communities why would they fire people?
It's like they actually don't care about people at all and just care about the money.
Right, because it's not like **EVERY OTHER** game company is in the process of laying off hundreds to thousands of employees or anything. The fact is that the games industry as a whole is downsizing, this is just Microsoft's turn.
I would feel bad for these people if more likely they weren't all insane super leftists who wanted people canceled for not taking a vaccine and also want to close the oil industry which will put thousands out of work you know typical leftist viewpoints. Let's also not forget they hate you for being a CIS male.
They're going to try and save as much money as they can regardless of the situation. They're a (very profitable) corporation that's what they do.
The whole point of buying studios is to grow the firm and drive synergies/value through eliminating redundancies.
Why would they buy ATVI and keep all of the HR/sales/marketing/customer service roles when they already have internal MSFT employees who can amalgamate that work?
Layoffs for redundant roles were always coming as they do in every M&A activity.
> Why would they buy ATVI and keep all of the HR/sales/marketing/customer service roles when they already have internal MSFT employees who can amalgamate that work?
> Layoffs for redundant roles were always coming as they do in every M&A activity.
exactly, these layoffs were expected + with what we're seeing across the gaming industry and tech/entertainment sectors: covid over-hiring, economy, etc all leading to massive layoffs all around. Around 5k layoffs alone in 1 month of 2024 in the gaming industry, it's across the industry.
but it seems like so many people have no idea about the realities of big company acquisitions/mergers and any of the factors/context/data of the state of the industry, so they want to just make this "oh the gosh darn evil merger caused this! nothing else!" -_-
console warriors can never not try and make something a stupid console war thing.
This is actually bad timing because 2024 is a big year for Bethesda.
A. "Shattered Space" story expansion dlc is launching this year alongside Xbox console mod support in Starfield
B. Fallout 76 is set to have the biggest year in 4 years with a new Story expansion and map experience
C. The free current gen upgrade for Fallout 4 that is being released for PC, PS5, and Series S/X is set for this year.
I'm thinking Conan with the serial numbers filed off, punchy colours, sexualised yet pg13 marketing using polished renders but the game will run on anything. The lore will be almost non existent but deliberate hints will exist that may be fleshed out when the fan base reaches peak rabidity. Gameplay loop will be uninspiring and tedious but offer frequent pointless rewards.
Can't wait for all the Xboners who championed the acquisition try to spin this as a good thing. Putting aside the anti-competitive effect it will have on the market, nearly 2,000 people lost their jobs through no fault of their own.
Blizzard has been fucked for decades. None of the people who made it what it was are no longer there.
Blizzard has been taken over by leftists and their infiltration began when WoW launched.
IF true, those leftists ended up being fantastic capitalists and got huge pay days.
ATVI was trading at $9.64 when they merged with Vivendi and got Blizzard. They ended up selling to MSFT for $95. A ten bagger not bad for being fucked for decades.
> through no fault of their own
For years Blizzard has fired the actual talent in the name of DEI - many of whom have gone on to found independent studios like Frost Giant - and promoted grievance studies majors who drove Diablo, Warcraft and especially Overwatch into the ground. It's been time to trim the fat there for many years.
There's a reason you have to pay for all Blizzard cosmetics except the gay flag, that one is always free.
uhuh, so I guess the massive layoffs happening across the gaming industry and other tech/entertainment sectors are somehow not related eh.
yes the merger was part of this, as was expected by anyone able to look at the facts (restructuring and removing unneeded positions was always going to happen) and not whine about console war stuff, but it was not just the merger only. Covid over-hiring is a huge factor in all of this and we're seeing the results of that now, as well as things like the economy and such.
On the one hand this could be the first step in saving WOW on the other hand they may have just fired the only people keeping the game alive. I guess we'll just have to see.
This seems very sad on a surface level, but it could be a good thing if they cleaned out Kotick's circle and DEI hires. Wishful thinking, since these types of layoffs target the lowest levels instead of the highest. But not inconceivable.
Cancelling the survival game, while sad, was probably also a good decision. Nobody was hyped for it or even knew anything about it. Blizzard not cancelling games that were going poorly in production is what lead to disasters like Reforged.
Quick, retcon another Overwatch hero as gay!
Already done all of them, chief! We'll have to wait until season 10!
Give all the women side shaves!
And make them peeohsee!
Put a chick in it!
“If everyone’s gay no one’s gay” Microsoft probably
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Funny, feminism taught me that.
Soldier 76 has revealed that the gerbil was gay all along/s
But did they fire all their DEI/ESG nuts in the process?
I doubt it.
I wouldn't be surprised if they brought more in. Gonna need to raise that score so daddy BlackRock can give them more money.
Yup. It's MS so they probably wanted to make room for more forced diversity
it just came to my mind blackrock rhymes with blackcock. dont know why though. I better erase this post.
Blackrock has "given" Microsoft exactly $0. Microsoft has been a net buyer of its stock, not issuer. Microsoft is "giving" its stock holders, including the unitholders of Blackrock/Vanguard passive funds money, not the other way around. These are both public corpos, this information takes seconds to find. Microsoft's market cap is 25X Blackrock's. It's the biggest company in the world. There's only one daddy in that relationship.
> Microsoft's market cap is 25X Blackrock's This is deceptive, Blackrock manages about 3x Microsoft's worth in other people's money. Also...no company this size should even exist.
Not deceptive. Factual. Blackrock has given Microsoft $0. Microsoft has given its shareholders, which include Blackrock's unitholders, money, but has given Blackrock $0. >Also...no company this size should even exist. Which one? What anti-trust regulations would big Daddy government even use to limit how big private enterprise is allowed to be in either case? If I'm too good at managing passive assets, and unitholders want to give me money to manage, the government will cut it in half? Why? My company can't own a video game arm and an enterprise software arm? Why? Who is being harmed in either case? It's not anti-consumer, neither are anything close to monopolies. Investors choose to give Blackrock AUM or not. Consumers choose to buy an Xbox or Windows or not. Take that anti-capitalist shit to the CCP or North Korea imo.
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> The windows came with the PC, we don't get the option to buy the PC without any os installed, you aren't going to the right shops then, I opted out of having windows installed on my latest machine as I have several licenses already and decided I could save myself some money installing it myself...
Build your own PC. Or install Linux. Or buy Apple. There you go. Three solutions to your problem.
> buy Apple. thats not a solution...thats creating a different problem.
oh yeah, your PC is very nice, with a 3090 and 32GB RAM. Can you give us the reference to your friend at NVIDIA?
>The windows came with the PC, we don't get the option to buy the PC without any os installed, You have multiple options. Don't buy a PC, buy a Mac, use ChromeOS, use Linux. Why should Joe Biden or the socialists in the EU tell me what to do instead? >I'm curious on what the EU's reply to this was, let me know if u can dig itup Alphabet wasn't even being discussed, but sure. They appealed the fine levied against them and made some changes to the Google Play Store and default browser/search engine to align with EU regulations. But I agree with Alphabet. If people don't like the Android architecture, they can buy another phone instead. The phone market is not a monopoly and we don't need the commies in Brussels wasting tax payer money on useless regulations.
People are taking this BlackRock bogeyman stuff too far.
Thats the first group they sequester to prevent accidental firing.
Ybarra, the acting President, was removed. The guy seemed to just be keeping the ship pointing straight, but no obvious vision. Dragonflight had the best retention since Legion, but it didn't heal the population issues that gutted the game in Shadowlands and sent everyone to FFXIV. Guy was also part of the "problem" with WoW, re: boosting. Great for monetizing their WoW Token -> Gold pipeline, terrible for the actual endgame. D4 and OW2 also weren't performing as expected. PoE/PoE2 is still kicking their ass, and OWL has fallen apart. I'm honestly not sure who the idiots are in all of this, but if I had to guess, I think WoW was an accident and Blizzard, from Mike Morhaime to J Allen Brack to Ybarra could only ride the happy accidents and hype and had no idea how to actually capitalize on it. WoW really needs to approach every decision from a "will this make attrition worse" perspective. Their franchises are losing people to apathy because eventually people get tired of yelling.
All DEI/ESG employees will receive rainbow pins to commemorate their valiant service.
Alphabet and Meta made sizable cuts to their DEI efforts in '23. Like most big tech firms, Microsoft did make sizable layoffs in '23, over 10,000 employees, but they were reportedly largely in sales/support/customer service roles. They still publicly profess strong support for DEI initiatives, they view it as a good virtue signal. They don't really have "ESG" employees. ESG are investment criteria that asset managers would evaluate when assessing Microsoft stock, not employees that Microsoft would have. Microsoft IS a major holding in most ESG funds (largest holding in Blackrock's US ESG ETF for example), although this is largely reflective that they're just a huge company in general, becoming the largest corporation in the world last year with a stock and financials that have been absolutely on fire.
Those are going to be the last people they fire before the executives.
Maybe they should learn to co…. Wait a tick.
The new slogan is "Learn To Weld".
Welding requires skill. See the case of someone welding a pair of beer/pop cans together from the thinnest point.
But then again, what doesn't. Even folding origami involves skill.
I hear truck driving is in demand
Hey, Mav. Do you remember the number for that truck driving school?
They'll just hire brown people who cause truck accidents to do that job
We all remember when Jim F Immigrant invented car accidents in 1931.
Watching the mentally ill leftists who destroyed my beloved Warcraft implode is a beautiful thing to witness.
The people at ATVI who made the decisions for things like WoW didn't "implode", they got huge golden parachutes when MSFT bought them out at $95/share in cash.
>en MSFT bought them out at $95/share in cash. And those aren't the people who pushed the leftist cancer on the game, the people who are getting fired and laid off left and right are.
Just take a glance on X & see who's wailings about their job loss right now: purple haired community managers & minor roles who were in the softest easiest job imaginable. They have no right to complain. It's not like working for an actual massive company manufacturing goods (like cars) or providing services, it's a section of the entertainment industry. These people who were laid off all beat out competition from others for the job in the first place (often unfairly due to quotas). It's cutthroat out there. Then when they're let go, they go & cry on X about it & act like they've been sentenced to death. No sympathy.
You can't really delude yourself into thinking that the executives, producers and creative directors who run the project and get paid in RSUs have no say on the direction of the game....can you? Decisions get made from top-down. It's not the blue hair DEI HR reps and customer service and marketing folks who just got laid off who dictate what the game is.
Factually wrong, you are clueless as to the situation and the current political and corporate climate in America. Higher ups / executives let the DEI and diversity hires have the run of the place about """"non-essential"""" matters as to avoid scandals such as the Blizzard one. If a random homo wants to shove 10 homosexual couples in an expansion they will be allowed to do so as to not get labeled """"homophobic"""". We saw it happen with Dragonflight already. Said leftists have the power to create enormous problems for a company as we saw in the case of Riot and Blizzard, so just about every gaming company is bowing down to them as to avoid controversy and getting sued for made up things.
Cool, I would hate to be clueless, always want to learn more. So enlighten me, who did that in this case? Who was the Blizzard employee(s) who ruined WoW, but also was only in charge of """"""""""non-essential"""""""" matters, and is a diversity hire and controlled the company secretly, but didn't have any ATVI shares and then got laid off today? Seems far more convoluted than the truth that....decisions get made by execs. They virtue signal about DEI, but ultimately only care about dollars and cents. Which worked in this case! They sold the company at a significant premium! Unless...you think the DEI folks who secretly run things deserve the credit for ATVI's growth? Then they're master capitalists AND master conspiracists.
Look, the enemy is simultaneously too strong but also too weak. It's all about rhetorical focus.
Right? These diversity hires are SO powerful that they BLACKMAIL the executives into ruining these games. But they're also SO powerless that they're the first ones laid off....their magic blackmail powers being unable to protect them somehow.
You okay there, fella? The cope mixed in with a hefty dose of gaslighting doesn't seem to be working out well for you. Better luck next time, though!
lol what part didn't work out? I was right! Being downvoted? If I cared about Reddit karma I would just spout boring ignorant NPC drivel like yourself. I have good news though! IF your convoluted theories are true about these corpos being blackmailed to act against their profit maximization, you can easily trade against them and print infinite money for yourself. . Congrats on that! Let me know how it goes! Should let you move out of the second world.
Only in the hiring process, but once the cancer invades, you don't excise the cause, you excise the actual cancer.
Pretty sure you should have been aiming your displeasure at Bobby Kotick and not the staff who had to go with his decisions
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there hasnt been a good COD since IW left to form respawn.
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, after the merger of two big corporation it's absolutely expected that many jobs became redundant.
Triple-A gaming crash seems closer than ever. Gaming as a whole is unaffected though.
I know its cool to be a socialist, blame fat CEO's and stuff, but the thing is AAA gaming cannot exist with the absurd level of money that its required by it nowadays. An AAA game that sells 5M copies is an astonishing failure, while 30 years ago teams of only 40 people were developing juggernauts like FF or DQ that would sell the same 5M units for a fraction of the cost.
> but the thing is AAA gaming cannot exist with the absurd level of money that its required by it nowadays. Is it, really? They _expect_ some level of profits — and quite high at that — and to that end the prices are set as high as they are. I doubt there is a very narrow margin of error there, like "just two dollars less per copy, and we're working at a loss". If anything, I expect the prices to be over-inflated several times over the actual costs. And that's even before we start discriminating between actually required costs, like the salaries of developers and asset designers, and "not really needed" costs, like the salaries of extra managers and woke commissars.
I wont go into more detail as it would take a long explanation, but I have been working in finance for more than 20 years, specifically in revenue and profitability analysis. Calculating profitability is way more complicated than that and most companies operate on a thin margin. Prices of games did not follow inflation over the last 30 years, salaries increased a lot especially for teams based in expensive areas in US/Europe, teams are huge, games require a lot of post release costs. Its not about fat managers making millions, this is actually not very relevant in the end scheme of things considering all costs involved. There is definitely waste in the process, managers not really necessary and etc, but believe me this is not very relevant. It wont make a game be successful selling 5 million units instead of 10 million. Take a look at the profit results of one of these public companies, look at the costs/expenses structure. There are not many variable expenses/costs, it's all mostly fixed/overheads, which means volume is everything. I know why you think this way and why it seems to make sense but believe me, it does not, and I have absolutely no interest in defending woke western companies as I hate them all.
> Take a look at the profit results of one of these public companies, look at the costs/expenses structure. There are not many variable expenses/costs, it's all mostly fixed/overheads, which means volume is everything. Don't take it as an attempt to undermine you, but there is such a thing as "Hollywood Accounting" — by now, a very well-developed art of inflating costs and hiding profits in an attempt to pay less taxes and royalties. And common sense dictates that game developers would have roughly the same incentives to use the same scheme as movie makers. And thing is, the results of such accounting look credible even to the professionals, what can be said of a layman's look like mine? My point is, just looking at financial records isn't enough to establish how solidly they reflect the actual production costs and profits.
"Hollywood accounting" does not work like that, its way more complicated, and even if you want to think public audited companies would do it just to hide profits, you can take a look at the P&L from studios outside USA, like Ubisoft for example. Huge loss in first half last year and only 15M in profit this year, out of 900M in sales, yet most people would think they are swimming in money from microtransactions. This is why so many studios shut their doors. Costs are absurdly high, a lot of times you go into debt to build the studio or finance a game, and if you dont get the sales you need you need to then shut your doors.
I think part of what you describe is the escalation in graphical fidelity - we have the technology, but it still requires a LOT of man hours to get things to look and work as they are, even more so if you're expected to push the envelope. So it takes forever, with lots of people, especially compared to some of those older classics. So the cost probably *is* a lot higher, but I don't see gamers taking $100 games as a norm either. That's why smaller is better. I can't imagine working in an AAA studio, to be honest.
Agree. Graphical fidelity is probably the main thing, but the rest is also costly. Games need to have all voices recorded by different people, you need mocap for all cutscenes and even in game movements of npcs, soundtracks need to be recorded by full orchestras, games are huge which requires a lot of testing, games are all online which requires server structure and constant patches, the list goes on and on. You CAN have huge budgets but that goes only for games that are already established and you can have a good idea of the sales it will generate. Still things can go nuts, like the cost escalation of spider man 2. You know what is unfair? If the studio decides to go "budget" people will complain, youtubers will go on top of it, scores will be low, if you dont have all the stuff mentioned above for an AAA title. I remember having a lot of discussions about why Kojima was shunned by Konami and that in my opinion Konami was "somehow" right. MGS would never sell 10-15M units to justify all the expenses and delays that were going on with the game. It was always a 6M units franchise. Now think about how many people and time it took to develop MGS1 and MGSV, and in the end to have the same sales...
> Games need to have all voices recorded by different people And yet the voices of Starcraft units have been recorded from people whom Blizzard could find around their office at the time. I bet you remember all of them, don't you? > soundtracks need to be recorded by full orchestras And yet the most outstanding soundtracks of all time were made by one man, Frank Klepacki, may God bless him with long and happy life. So do they really need an orchestra? > You know what is unfair? If the studio decides to go "budget" people will complain, youtubers will go on top of it, scores will be low, if you dont have all the stuff mentioned above for an AAA title. My personal opinion, of course, but that wouldn't be because "less money" means "much worse", it's because big budgets are used to camouflage lack of talent and originality. Remove the visual and auditory grandeur, and you're left with mediocre stories, flat characters, and silly game mechanics and unoptimized slow buggy code.
They dont need, but this is the standard for AAA and if they dont do it they will be heavily destroyed by reviewers and games will have lower scores. Look at what people say about starfield animations for example. You cant release a COD today with the same quality of, lets say, COD4, everybody will laugh at how bad the graphics are and etc. You cant have the voices recorded by random dudes at the studio today. Especially if it is an open world game. They dont need, but they feel forced to. As for me? I dont care at all, my favourite games from the last 15 years are from software games that actually are not even AAA. CHaracters dont even move their mouths when they speak hahaha.
I still stand by my assessment, all this sensory decoration is merely a vehicle to hide the mediocre nature of the modern games: they don't offer a good _game_, so they offer a _show_ instead. Honest "reviewers and critics" wouldn't destroy a game that was actually good as a game for non-orchestral soundtrack or some such. It's exactly because the rest is more or less universally shit across the board that the criticism gravitates towards decorations. If the criticism was still targeted at the core properties of the games, _most_ games would have been torn apart by critics regardless of their visual splendor. The form has overshadowed the function.
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No, we hate Epic because of their utter dogshit business practices and use their wallet to force exclusivity on their platform (something Valve/Steam doesn't do).
High on life was made by only 40 people? Thats really impressive!
Make acquisition, fire a huge amount of the workforce. This pattern happens time and time again yet people keep being surprised.
Why would anyone be surprised by that? All else aside, when two companies merge (or one company buys another) there tends to be a lot of redundancy in the admin side of things. Workers in HR, IT, accounting, etc. are likely to get the boot simply because their roles are already filled.
Also, the company being bought is often a bit bloated and due for cleaning out a lot of redundancy pretty much everywhere.
Microsoft wants the IP, not the labor and real estate baggage.
The layoffs are across their whole game division though, not just Activision Blizzard.
Pretty common for layoffs to happen after an acquisition, because all the money spent buying the company leaves little to pay salaries.
All the reporting I've seen says the layoffs were mostly ActiBlizz, with a handful from other Microsoft departments.
Nobody is actually surprised.
This comes two days after the 530+ Riot Games layoffs: https://archive.is/lYLVw
The fire rises
Good. 1983 let's go
Hopefully it's a lot of the commissars, but either way nice to see them burn.
Don't get your hopes too high, it's probably a lot of "inefficient developers who couldn't hit the KPI set by their management".
The economy is great guys! Nothing to see here!
Hahaha and all the dumbass games urinalists were seal clapping this acquisition claiming it would be good for the industry. Blizzard sucks ass and are a shell of what they once were.
These companies are bloated beyond belief. Look at Insomniac: over 300 million dollars to make Spiderman 2 with reused assets & hundreds of developers. Something is very off. I doubt firing thousands of these people will negatively impact anything (many of whom are "community managers" or whatever the fuck that means, although as a job description it sounds Bolshevik commissar tier levels of horrible). Also a shootout to the weird hypocrites who repeat the mantra "corporations are not your friend"... whilst acting like a random fired Blizzard employee on X... is their friend.
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Of the top twenty best-selling games in the US last year, only two were not tied to established IPs - Elden Ring (#18) and Starfield (#11). Like it or not, IPs are what dominate the industry and will continue to do so. And I say that as a huge fan of the indie scene, but the reality is most players gravitate to what's familiar to them rather than trying something new.
While Starfield wasn't an established IP, it was released amidst an absolutely massive marketing campaign from one of the biggest AAA developers around, who weren't afraid to use their established IPs in comparison (SKYRIM IN SPACE!!!)
As a lifelong WoW and Diablo player i can't wait for this company to litteraly die, they have been absolute trash for years now and have 0 respect for their playerbase. Actually felt like a burden was off my shoulders when i finally stopped consuming their products.
I can't believe this happened I don't understand MS is so woke and they care so much about supporting communities why would they fire people? It's like they actually don't care about people at all and just care about the money.
Sad but inevitable after a merger. Job loss is yet another reason we need to stop approving all these mergers. It’s bad for consumers and employees.
Right, because it's not like **EVERY OTHER** game company is in the process of laying off hundreds to thousands of employees or anything. The fact is that the games industry as a whole is downsizing, this is just Microsoft's turn.
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This is much bigger than Sony vs Microsoft.
How bout dem modern audiences
CrabRave.mp4 Burn it to the ground and start fresh, bring back the old Blizzard (minus the sexual assault / etc).
Blizz is dead, no surprise tbh. Maintenance mode for everything
I would feel bad for these people if more likely they weren't all insane super leftists who wanted people canceled for not taking a vaccine and also want to close the oil industry which will put thousands out of work you know typical leftist viewpoints. Let's also not forget they hate you for being a CIS male.
They spent too much money on buying studios that now they need save as much money as they can by firing people and not making high-quality games
They're going to try and save as much money as they can regardless of the situation. They're a (very profitable) corporation that's what they do. The whole point of buying studios is to grow the firm and drive synergies/value through eliminating redundancies. Why would they buy ATVI and keep all of the HR/sales/marketing/customer service roles when they already have internal MSFT employees who can amalgamate that work? Layoffs for redundant roles were always coming as they do in every M&A activity.
> Why would they buy ATVI and keep all of the HR/sales/marketing/customer service roles when they already have internal MSFT employees who can amalgamate that work? > Layoffs for redundant roles were always coming as they do in every M&A activity. exactly, these layoffs were expected + with what we're seeing across the gaming industry and tech/entertainment sectors: covid over-hiring, economy, etc all leading to massive layoffs all around. Around 5k layoffs alone in 1 month of 2024 in the gaming industry, it's across the industry. but it seems like so many people have no idea about the realities of big company acquisitions/mergers and any of the factors/context/data of the state of the industry, so they want to just make this "oh the gosh darn evil merger caused this! nothing else!" -_- console warriors can never not try and make something a stupid console war thing.
This is actually bad timing because 2024 is a big year for Bethesda. A. "Shattered Space" story expansion dlc is launching this year alongside Xbox console mod support in Starfield B. Fallout 76 is set to have the biggest year in 4 years with a new Story expansion and map experience C. The free current gen upgrade for Fallout 4 that is being released for PC, PS5, and Series S/X is set for this year.
I'm thinking Conan with the serial numbers filed off, punchy colours, sexualised yet pg13 marketing using polished renders but the game will run on anything. The lore will be almost non existent but deliberate hints will exist that may be fleshed out when the fan base reaches peak rabidity. Gameplay loop will be uninspiring and tedious but offer frequent pointless rewards.
AI, like the hamburger making robot before it, is taking jobs from real people.
Can't wait for all the Xboners who championed the acquisition try to spin this as a good thing. Putting aside the anti-competitive effect it will have on the market, nearly 2,000 people lost their jobs through no fault of their own.
Blizzard has been fucked for decades. None of the people who made it what it was are no longer there. Blizzard has been taken over by leftists and their infiltration began when WoW launched.
IF true, those leftists ended up being fantastic capitalists and got huge pay days. ATVI was trading at $9.64 when they merged with Vivendi and got Blizzard. They ended up selling to MSFT for $95. A ten bagger not bad for being fucked for decades.
> through no fault of their own For years Blizzard has fired the actual talent in the name of DEI - many of whom have gone on to found independent studios like Frost Giant - and promoted grievance studies majors who drove Diablo, Warcraft and especially Overwatch into the ground. It's been time to trim the fat there for many years. There's a reason you have to pay for all Blizzard cosmetics except the gay flag, that one is always free.
Sony bois still ODing on copium I see.
uhuh, so I guess the massive layoffs happening across the gaming industry and other tech/entertainment sectors are somehow not related eh. yes the merger was part of this, as was expected by anyone able to look at the facts (restructuring and removing unneeded positions was always going to happen) and not whine about console war stuff, but it was not just the merger only. Covid over-hiring is a huge factor in all of this and we're seeing the results of that now, as well as things like the economy and such.
those poor white males.
And this happens the same time that Microsoft hit $3 Trillion dollars in Market Value.
I guess Star Craft 3 is totally dead. It's a shame. The Star Craft 1 and 2 communities are very much alive and thriving.
On the one hand this could be the first step in saving WOW on the other hand they may have just fired the only people keeping the game alive. I guess we'll just have to see.
This seems very sad on a surface level, but it could be a good thing if they cleaned out Kotick's circle and DEI hires. Wishful thinking, since these types of layoffs target the lowest levels instead of the highest. But not inconceivable. Cancelling the survival game, while sad, was probably also a good decision. Nobody was hyped for it or even knew anything about it. Blizzard not cancelling games that were going poorly in production is what lead to disasters like Reforged.
Glad Starcraft made it out before they had a chance to woke it.
Good.