this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
1799 points (97.9% liked)

Comic Strips

12619 readers
3302 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

Web of links

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Author: εunnie

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The Microsoft layoffs were a bit different because it was cutting redundant positions after the Actiblizzard merger.

Stuff like middle/upper management mostly I would bet, the company I worked for did a similar lay off after an acquisition not long ago.

[–] Guntrigger@feddit.ch 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Didn't they cancel a game that's been in development for over 5 years and lay off the whole team? That's not exactly redundant positions.

From what I know of recent video game company layoffs, it's mostly been the cancellation of an in-development game in order to get rid of all the employees working on it.

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I tried to search, only thing I found was an unnamed "survival game" blizzard announced in 2022.

It was 1900 people, Microsoft has over 200,000 employees for reference.

[–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

They already made those "redundancy" cuts last year. This last round of layoffs was a bunch of software devs and artists of all experience levels, and basically the entire esports divisions for both Overwatch and CoD.

Also keep in mind, this was a record year for Blizzard, profits wise.

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Do you have a source for that first part? The deal only went through in October of last year and i can only find info on the most recent slate of firings.

That does suck though for those laid off of course, I hope they can find work they enjoy.

[–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago

Unfortunately I can't find any good articles anymore, but I do remember seeing a lot of people posting about it on Twitter. I believe the earlier layoffs happened right around October of last year though.