Overwatch (Blizzard)
Activision-Blizzard is under the spotlight again. After their run of canceling nearly half their projects, the team has made two games in four years. A sub-developer of Activision, who makes the Call of Duty and Destiny games, has been under serious fire after laying off 800 employees, but now is looking to hire some of those spots back after just a few months.
They recently canceled another MMO game called Titan. It was never revealed as to why it was canceled until Blizzard has recently been under heat with their sudden lay-offs and attempts to rehire.
“We failed to control scope,”Blizzard founder Mike Morhaime said, according to Eurogamer. “It was very ambitious. It was a brand new universe, and it was going to be the next generation MMO that did all sorts of different things, it had different modes. We were sort of building two games in parallel, and it really struggled to come together.”
Blizzard is most likely known for their development of the famous MMO World of Warcraft, and continues to produce quality content for the critically-acclaimed MMO. They also produced the well-received Overwatch game. But what is going on inside the logistics of the team? Well, according to PC Games, eight percent of the company was fired after cutbacks.
According to CCN, the Hearthstone community manager spot was open for an application that started the major controversy for the development team.
Really Blizzard? You laid off your entire HS community team and left it in shambles. Other CMs you laid off are still looking for work (not me) and you post this? SHAMEFUL. SHAME ON YOU. https://t.co/BiJ9P9tjgd
— Christina Mikkonen (@ZerinaX) July 2, 2019
To make it even worse, Blizzard president J. Allen Brack released a letter to the employees saying, “staffing levels on some teams are out of proportion with our current release slate,” according to a CCN report. There was also a need “to scale down some areas of our organization.” CCN later reported that the CEO Bobby Kotick of Activision Blizzard recorded a net revenue of $7.50 billion in 2018. Layoffs were in January of 2019.
Allen Adham said according to Versed, “The truth is, behind the curtain, it’s a horror show. Most people outside of Blizzard don’t realize around half of our titles don’t see the light of day.”
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