BREAKING: David Vonderhaar has left Activision and Treyarch. He announced the news on his LinkedIn hmm is the boat sinking? 😂
- Thread starter Gamernyc78
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Right about what?
18 years is a long time to be at 1 company, most likely a coincidence he is leaving and unrelated to the acquisition.
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Two left at same time, does not seem like a coincidence at all.
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Infinity ward hasn't been the infinity ward we knew greatness from for over a decade so it doesnt matter.
Yep seeing that Pat Dwyer left also, thats a huge loss for treyarch.
Yeah that’s what they said about Shinji Mikami leaving his own studio that he created….lol
the writing is on the wall, they got a whiff of the Xbox stench and jumped ship
Jim Ryan predicted that the Activision acquisition will bleed talent out of MS
That was expected and predicable.
A lot of talent will left the company due the aquisition.
It is not a MS issue... all aquisitions have more or less the same.
If you remember Sony with Bungie had to make a really good retention plan to not lose most talents.
Of course we don't know the retention plan of MS for this aquisition... maybe it is not good enough to hold these talents.
A lot of talent will left the company due the aquisition.
It is not a MS issue... all aquisitions have more or less the same.
If you remember Sony with Bungie had to make a really good retention plan to not lose most talents.
Of course we don't know the retention plan of MS for this aquisition... maybe it is not good enough to hold these talents.
Well, all we know is that Deviation fired a few guys and according to one of them a few dozen people more got fired too.
They didn't announce the cancellation of the game or the end of partnerthip with Sony, and have some open job positions.
Sounds to me as if the game didn't reach a big milestone because a part of the team made a big mess, causing the game to be delayed and needing some important changes. If this is the case, the ones in charge of the mess took responsability and got fired.
Sony is known for having high standards but also being very patient, supportive and giving creative freedom to their teams. It was founded 3 years ago, meaning the game was probably maybe a couple years in production.
To kill a project or leave their support when the devteam is such a Dream Team for shooters would require an insanely huge mess. Which considering the track record of Sony cancelling a small percent of projects compared to other publishers, and the great track record of most of the team members on delivering super successful shooters makes me think didn't cancel it or retired they support.
I assume that he planned to try to hire key CoD staff in the moment that the acquisition started to look as something that finally was going to be successfully completed. I assume he'd put them in some of their development studios or in a PS Studios or SIE position to overview the shooters and GaaS they are/will be working on.
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Always seems to happen when MS takes over a studio. I wonder what it is. MS is said to have a 'hands-off' approach, and they apparently have infinite funds at their disposal to blow on Xbox.
But a lot of top industry talent isn't interested in working for them....
In general, to acquire a company doesn't only costs of paying the acquisition: on top of that there are the retention bonuses and the salaries of all these extra thousands of workers.
So often the acquirer asks them to clean the fridge a bit firing a portion of the people they consider aren't important, to have a lower salary cost. Also, sometimes there are redundancies: meaning that some people in the acquired company isn't needed because the acquirer already has someone doing exactly that same job, so the less important of the two often gets fired too.
It is also common that some VIP people asks for a salary rise when acquired, or having a high retention bonus, or to get a small portion of the acquisition fee, because they consider have been very important for the success of the company and that i the acquired is going to earn a shit ton of money is in part thanks to these VIP. Sometimes the negotiations go wrong and that people get fired or leave.
On top of that, sometimes some VIP don't agree with selling the company to some specific acquirer because think it's a bad fit for the adquired. Or that person personally doesn't want to work for the acquirer, sometimes they strongly oppose to the acquisition in the process, which makes other VIP or the acquirer angry. So sometimes they leave or get fired because of that.
And well, there's also many people who simply after many years in a company decides to change and move somewhere else, or has to leave due to personal/family reasons not related to the acquisition or the company. But appears in the news because of the moment it happens, or because was a VIP in a top company.
The things are common, not specific to MS. But yes, some people doesn't want to work for MS.
Of course they’re bleeding talent. Time and time again we’ve seen that devs themselves don’t want to work for Microsoft.