Industry and Video game layoff thread |OT| Any future layoff info please place in here.
- Thread starter Gamernyc78
- Start date
We all know that the employees aren't the ones who make the decision to sell. There are plenty of industries where the CEO will sell the employees under the river for a fat paycheck. ABK is one of them. The good thing is, usually the quality studios are led by creatives and not suits, because the creatives are the ones that make good games that sell - the exception being the live service factories who employ psychologists who study how to make people addicted to their product. Which is why Sony should stop trying to stumble their way down that path.
For real, that fuckin eksbotz dog mod, b-dubs admitting to help manipulate pro-eksbotz narrative in acquisition thread for his own personal gain (stocks in ABK), and now many trash members of eksbotz cult deployed to preach about their god phil and explaining why the employees deserved to be fired LMFAO
. Shit was insane . Oh and phil fanfiction what the fk 
.
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So basically they are fucking with the COD machine they paid a fuckton for.
Very smart leadership.
Why is it always potato people on the xbox side? Is the console radioactive that mutates them to spudmen?
He didn't, he moved his money to a mutual fund because he was worried about the transaction.No one posted this yet? Holy Shit:
[IGN] Microsoft Lays Off 1,900 Staff From Its Video Game Workforce
Seriously, I'm going to tell the whole truth right now. When the merger was announced I had just started a new job and finally, for probably the first time in my life, had some savings that weren't earmarked for living expenses. Maybe 4-5k at the very most. People always talk about investing...www.resetera.com
"Seriously, I'm going to tell the whole truth right now.
When the merger was announced I had just started a new job and finally, for probably the first time in my life, had some savings that weren't earmarked for living expenses. Maybe 4-5k at the very most. People always talk about investing, so I figured why not try it? So I took what little I had and put it in. When it looked like the EU would deny the merger I figured, "Welp, fine with me." and pulled the cash out and put it in a mutual fund because apparently that's what you do.
That was literally my big adventure in investing. I have no clue where all you guys got 40 grand from, I'd give my left nut for that kind of cash."
This dog profitting over employee jobs
I know MS's stock gained quite a bit in value, but this is despite xbox, nothing to do with the ABK transaction.
Late January/early February they publish quarterly reports. Some companies end their fiscal year there. Other ones end it in March, so they are taking the last important actions preparing there their strategy for the next FY.
Many of them had delays or cancellations of projects during the covid and these numbers are showing there, or had a sales bump during covid and the next year in 22 went back to normal numbers, so had a decline in sales that doesn't match their estimates. Other ones had issues adapting to remote work, or after the pandemic had issues going back to the office.
Other ones had important acquisitions in the last year or two and are now cutting some fat of redundancies and underperforming people.
There are also some investors and publishers who think that the economy doesn't look good for this and next year so they are investing less or in safer places and are reparing for the "winter". Many other tech investors saw gaming as a relatively safe and promising place to invest, but now saw AI startups as a new goldmine so moved investments there. So publishers get more conservative and having less resources and support from investors need to be more conservative.
There are many different reasons for different cases that explain why some of them are firing or cancelling some projects. This isn't new, the difference is that now everything leaks and reach because of social media in the news now. In the past some company fired a few dozen or hundred people or cancelled some game and nobody outside the company and a few close friends knew about it. Now there are a gazillion studios involved in every remotely big project so there's many people who can leak it.
People from MS, ABK, Embracer, Sony etc. will be perfectly fine. These things of firing, cancelling some game or shutting down a team are normal and frequent in the business. Almost all the people will move to other gaming teams and these companies later will continue hiring because they did cut resources in some areas or teams and will move them to other ones. They will be fine.
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I can understand why Xbots hates Jason to heart
Like Phil Spencer and the xbox management team completely did all they could to fool them.
I get the downsizing, I don't like it but I think that xbox put themselves in a corner money wise and they have to do drastic move (MS did not become a $3 Trillion, whatever the number is, corporation by being nice with their moneys).
What I find particularly cruel is how they gave hope and manipulated everyone who was involved to chin up the support for the transaction, especially the employees who were asked to "party" with them outside in that picture, those who were told they'd get something out of it indirectly and all they got was the boot.
They did not have to go all transparent and tell them they'd get fired, but they did not have to lead them on either, this is outright lying.
That's like meeting a girl, telling her you want a family and a house and all that, telling her you have a good job... making her love you and giving her hope, make her pregnant... only to move away and change your name after you are sure she gave birth to the baby.
The software company I work for ended up cutting the jobs in India (the CEO is actually from there, so I was surprised in a way)... They were not that good, so it's understandable that they got cut even if they are cheaper.
But yeah, the forecast is not that good, that showed in the Christmas speech of the CEO, he did not talk for long... Maybe I should start looking elsewhere.
Would it be possible to have a tech industry lay-off megathread?
These lay offs are coming in thick and fast across the board and we haven't even hit February yet.
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Spencer proudly presents the new AB team :
Curious about Ybarra, was he dismissed from MS when he joined Blizzard in 2019?
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As the gaming industry deals with instability and what seems like weekly layoffs or at the very least monthly. I've decided to create a mega thread which will encompass all the layoff threads moving forward. Please any layoff info put in here. If it's something you feel warrants immediate discussion and for the time being you think it needs it's own thread that is fine but ultimately it will end up here.
It has been 105 days or nearly 4 months since Microsoft closed the ABK acquisition. They have still not put a single Activision-Blizzard-King game on Game Pass.
Phil Spencer's explanation, regarding why they have not put ABK games on Game Pass, is this:
This is in stark contrast to how they dealt with Zenimax Bethesda games on Game Pass after the acquisition. Here is how that timeline looked:
- Microsoft officially closed the Zenimax acquisition on March 9, 2021.
- By March 12, 2021, only 3 days later, 20 Zenimax Bethesda games had joined Game Pass.
- Phil Spencer also tweeted about it, celebrating the Game Pass drop.
Why isn't Xbox putting ABK games on Game Pass?
I don't think Phil's explanation was the truth.
- Is there really a big technical hurdle? (I can't think of any)
- Are they strapped for cash and trying to squeeze as much money as possible before fulfilling their promise?
- Are they really waiting for XBOX x ABK integration, as they claimed? (I think that's bullshit)
He says they couldn't start the work before October 13, 2023. But they were able to fire 1,000+ ABK employees and cancel their games? Did they start the downsizing plan even before the acquisition?
If that's the truth, did they prioritize the downsizing plan over working on putting ABK games on Game Pass? That doesn't seem likely either.
It seems like they are deliberately holding back ABK games.
When do you think ABK games will come to Game Pass? More importantly, what do you think is the reason they haven't added them already?
I think there are different possible reasons:
One is that some recent CoDs had a marketing deal with Sony that blocked to include them in rival game subs like GP during a certain period after their release. If it's the same period than Resident Evil series, it's almost a year and a half, having Sony preference to negotiate to put it in their service if they want. In that case the period would be longer.
Another is that MS no longer will manage the rights of ABK games for gamesubs that include cloud gaming, but instead Ubisoft: for the whole ABK back catalog plus their games to be released in the next 15 years. So Ubisoft should be negotiating now with the different subsbriptions.
The third is that they need some time to adapt and implement everything. They said that would start including stuff in GP this year.
The fourth is that they must be working in their MS mobile gaming store + Xcloud client, now that iOS will allow it at least for EU.
The fifth is that apparently they are reviewing their stategy with these hints of them doing more steps to become a full multiplatform publisher and leave behind their suicidal business plan. So maybe they are reviewing also their strategy with GP and maybe they stop putting there day one games, or at least to highly reduce their number, and also to don't include there all their new and old games but instead to have only a few of them rotating, in order to move their focus back to sell games.
