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[Trolldefender99]

So, activision laid off 100s of employees for cost saving measures (despite them having an INCREASE in yearly revenue)

https://kotaku.com/activision-blizzard-begins-massive-layoffs-1832571288

Now Arenanet (makers of Guild Wars 1 and 2) laid off over 100 employees, some which are senior developers that got laid off

https://massivelyop.com/2019/02/25/guild-wars-2s-layoffs-has-begun-as-arenanet-devs-tweet-their-departures-and-fans-express-loveforarenanet/

Not looking like a good year for game companies, starting off bad in 2019. But even if they are making money (like activision), they are still mass firing people.

[nenjin]

Arenanet is, I think, a slightly different case. They've been doing games as a service for a while, and their products are old as balls comparatively speaking. Even WoW is experiencing a declining player base and earnings. GW and WoW are kind of the last of the major full service MMOs out there. (Man I remember when GW2 was billed as a "lite MMO.") So when I read Arenanet started letting people go, the only thing that surprised me was that it took this long.

The rest though is typical AAA publisher bullshit though. Have developers make you a game, so you can report earnings to investors, then fire said developers, so you can pad out those quarterly earnings by another mil or so (on top of the cool couple billion they earn in MTX in a year.) Remember, these are the people who think $500 million in a couple weeks is a disappointing return.

It's like they expect to shove out a half baked, bland content-ridden piece of shit to capitalize on market trends, and that players will just fire money immediately at them for MTX when their fucking games are barely playable for the first two weeks. "What? Players aren't buying $20 skins and/or loot crates because they can't connect to our servers or got bored before they even finished the campaign? What a disappointment."

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Anthem is the last nail in Bioware's coffin. With the current climate of things, I'm not sure all the Mass Effect 1, 2 and maybe 3 goodwill and a possible 'nother installment of Dragon Age can save them from the EA chopping block.

[MrWiggles]

Its disenginious to talk about the Activision Blizzard layoff without also adding they didnt meet their yearly projection and their stock price, like all video game produces and developers have taken a major loss. Except for Epic and after Apex, EA has recovered a bit. So even though Activision did in a way make a good deal of money, they lost money overall. There is also the fact tht Activision just lost Destiny. Blizzard just shut down its HOTS pro league. Its major franchises have been doing worse year to year. It doesnt have anything new lined up in the next few years.

[nenjin]

Yeah but profit expectations have been driven through the roof because of MTX. Literally billions of dollars a year, and valuation shooting up to the stars in just a few years because of it. It's an unsustainable level of growth, and the games have gotten quicker and shallower to try and keep up with that perceived demand.  And so players look at what's being offered and decide they don't want it. So these MTX vehicles undersell then under-deliver because no one is playing it and pumping their dollars in to MTX.

It had to come crashing down, and as usual, it's the workers who can't unionize who pay the ultimate price. Meanwhile executives get 8 figure hiring bonuses and stock options even when they're underperforming on the system they built.

Shit is broke.

[MrWiggles]

Activision mostly let go adminstrative and manager positions. Its doubling down on devolopers and hiring ore of them this year. And yea, Activision valuation was based on an infalated base and this is the year that it was correct. Activision was bigger then it should have been. Its shit that folks lost their jobs. But its not as simple, 'They made a lot of money and shitcan folks'. Its not the full story.

[MrRoboto75]

we live in a society quarterly profit margin

[MrWiggles]

https://kotaku.com/facing-financial-pressures-gog-quietly-lays-off-at-lea-1832879826

[Trolldefender99]

https://kotaku.com/facing-financial-pressures-gog-quietly-lays-off-at-lea-1832879826

Yeah I saw that one, and thought of posting it as well. But, its kinda not the same to me. I saw it on reddit and people were making a big deal of it, but then one comment pointed out...

"they said. “We have been rearranging certain teams since October 2018, effecting in closing around a dozen of positions last week. At the same time, since the process started we have welcomed nearly twice as many new team members, and currently hold 20 open positions.”"

So while people were fired which is terrible, they also hired more people than they actually fired. Sucks for people who were fired though. I'm not sure why they fired the people they did. But as of now, they didn't reveal if it was temporary positions, unneeded positions or what. Or if the people even knew about it that were let go. But if it was about money, its strange they'd hire MORE people than they actually let go.

(edit:

Then again, they might have hired cheaper employees to save on money costs, if GOG is indeed having issues. So that be the one thing if they hired a bunch of cheaper employees and fired the more expensive one

My take since apparently their Gwent card game isn't a success, it could have been those that were working on Gwent.

[George_Chickens]

we live in a society quarterly profit margin

Bottom profit margin

[MrRoboto75]

Its disenginious to talk about the Activision Blizzard layoff without also adding they didnt meet their yearly projection and their stock price, like all video game produces and developers have taken a major loss. Except for Epic and after Apex, EA has recovered a bit. So even though Activision did in a way make a good deal of money, they lost money overall. There is also the fact tht Activision just lost Destiny. Blizzard just shut down its HOTS pro league. Its major franchises have been doing worse year to year. It doesnt have anything new lined up in the next few years.

But A/B had record sales for 2018.  If they make more revenue than ever before and yet turn around and say they didn't exceed expectations, the expectations are what's wrong, not the company's performance.  Employees literally never done better but they get punished anyway.

I think that's ultimatly the real issue here, not just games but a lot of the economy these days.  Investors who know nothing of the industries they invest in constantly demand a cancerous level of unending growth.  So companies have to weasel out every corner they can cut.  Less quality, less labor, less morale.

Like, you could make the perfect video game and sell a copy to every living man on earth.  Then tomorrow get an email from your investors asking when Perfect 2 is gonna hit the market and sell two copies to every living man on earth, because to hell with realism my bank account is my high score.

[MrWiggles]

It had record sales, but it also lost more value in stock price. Revnue while important isnt the only thing that matters. Their lack of new games, the lagging proformance of their current franchises also matter.

[MrRoboto75]

It had record sales, but it also lost more value in stock price. Revnue while important isnt the only thing that matters. Their lack of new games, the lagging proformance of their current franchises also matter.

But stocks are more derived from 'expectations' salespeople than actual reality.  Their stock wouldn't be shit if they weren't forced to drum up hype for sales expectations no one could possibly meet.

Not to mention they just happened to have 15 mil lying around to donate to their latest executive.

[Reelya]

Not to mention they just happened to have 15 mil lying around to donate to their latest executive.

No they didn't. Stock options, mate. Any time anyone says this you can pretty much guarantee the bulk of that wasn't in fact in cash, but shares. Most of the thing was shares, and most of the rest was in bonuses, not base pay. They pay the guys they hire as CEOs so much because they're worth it. If they could get the same results from a guy on a $50000 wage, they would just do that. but of course they don't because even slightly mismanaging a company of that scale loses billions of dollars, so they hire the best people going for that, and that costs money - his total pay packet including shares comes to just 0.05% of the company's $30 billion value, so even if he gains the company on average 0.06% extra value, he is actually worth more than his paycheck.

It's as accurate to say they had that "lying around" and they could have "saved" the money by not paying him any bonuses as it was when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that because she scared Amazon away from New York (losing the city an estimated $27 billion in tax revenue) the city of New York "saved" $3 billion in tax credits that could then be spent on teachers and hospitals.

[Rolan7]

Why does it matter that it was in shares?  I know stock options are a bit more complicated than a bag of cash with a giant $$$ on it, but it's not free for the company.  They're still transferring all that value to him.  Maybe he's *worth* a $15 million bonus during layoffs, but that's a different argument.

And welcoming businesses like Amazon into your marketplace does have effects other than pure tax revenue.  Think Wal-Mart ruining local businesses.  In that cost-benefit analysis, the tax incentive Amazon expected is a perfectly relevant point.

[Reelya]

Why does it matter that it was in shares?  I know stock options are a bit more complicated than a bag of cash with a giant $$$ on it, but it's not free for the company.  They're still transferring all that value to him.  Maybe he's *worth* a $15 million bonus during layoffs, but that's a different argument.

And welcoming businesses like Amazon into your marketplace does have effects other than pure tax revenue.  Think Wal-Mart ruining local businesses.  In that cost-benefit analysis, the tax incentive Amazon expected is a perfectly relevant point.

it is a transfer of value - but from the other shareholders and not the company. Those are entirely different things.

Say I own a company that makes $1 million in profit per year. I hire you to help run it, and give you 50% of the shares. From now on, you get $500K of the profit, and I get $500K of the profit. The "company" wasn't out a single cent. And if the other shareholders are giving away part of their stake in the company, then you can bet it's going to be to someone who's going to grow the company by more than the value that they gave away.

They do this precisely so that they can hire a better CEO than the company could afford if they had to pay that in wages: which would reduce profits and therefore company value anyway. So, instead of paying him out of company profits, the shareholders pay the guy by giving up some of their ownership.