in general, if your layoffs keep people in suspense for more than... i dunno, a week? your layoffs are garbage and bordering on sociopathic. there are extremely few reasons that i'd consider valid...
in general, if your layoffs keep people in suspense for more than... i dunno, a week? your layoffs are garbage and bordering on sociopathic. there are extremely few reasons that i'd consider valid to make people basically sit in anxiety for a week or more about whether or not all the work they're currently doing is pointless because they'll be out of a job in short order, and this definitely isn't one of them.
As a sysadmin I'd be livid that the company left a horde of angry users with full access to everything at work for a whole damn week. From a security perspective that's borderline suicide. The...
As a sysadmin I'd be livid that the company left a horde of angry users with full access to everything at work for a whole damn week. From a security perspective that's borderline suicide. The people inside your network are the people who can do the most damage. They already have legit access. Office Space was a comedy, but that's how you get hacked, straight up.
Protocol is to turn off their access to everything before HR notifies them of their termination. This is damn sloppy... and yeah, it's dickish in the extreme for people's mental health as well.
This topic originally linked to this tweet. I've edited the link to point to an article now, since the layoffs have started and there's more detail available.
This topic originally linked to this tweet. I've edited the link to point to an article now, since the layoffs have started and there's more detail available.
It might be nice to embed the sort of 'story progression' into the submission/discussion framework. So 'related links' can be added by the op/modlike trusted users. Sort of like enshrining the...
It might be nice to embed the sort of 'story progression' into the submission/discussion framework. So 'related links' can be added by the op/modlike trusted users. Sort of like enshrining the megathread system some reddit subs homebrewed.
With the way tilde's 'activity' sort works that would also remove the need for 'previous link' stuff for ongoing stories. An update occurs, you post the updated link into the original link, which migrates the current discussion up with it.
Absolutely, yeah. I'd really like to have the ability to attach multiple links to the same topic and/or connect multiple topics together into an overarching "story". I think there's some really...
Absolutely, yeah. I'd really like to have the ability to attach multiple links to the same topic and/or connect multiple topics together into an overarching "story". I think there's some really interesting things we could do with those kind of capabilities.
I doubt it has anything to do with diablo. The bloomberg article linked elsewhere in the thread suggests its due to poor numbers in Overwatch and Hearthstone. I also think it has a lot to do with...
I doubt it has anything to do with diablo. The bloomberg article linked elsewhere in the thread suggests its due to poor numbers in Overwatch and Hearthstone.
I also think it has a lot to do with the focus on microtransactions over selling games which has pushed Activision to have a smaller staff.
It's a combination of factors. Destiny/Bungie bailed on their contract 2 years early, unexpectedly, and this has hurt Activision-Blizzard. Combined with poor performance in HotS, poor reception of...
It's a combination of factors. Destiny/Bungie bailed on their contract 2 years early, unexpectedly, and this has hurt Activision-Blizzard. Combined with poor performance in HotS, poor reception of Diablo Immortal and WoW's latest expansion, they've had some departments not performing as well as they'd like.
There's also some redundancy in their customer service/community relations departments, so those specifically were targeted as well. NA Publishing for Blizzard was apparently entirely gutted, is what we were told.
As for WoW specifically, the recent rumors of less than only 2 millions subscribers was a demonstrably false claim by an addon developer to drum up some attention. The game is probably still in some decline, but people have also been saying that since 2008. You can probably expect at least two more expansions before they give up on it.
Money and development power are going into some teams like WoW, Overwatch, and Diablo, but that doesn't really change the fact that cutting your entire community relations team when the community is already largely unhappy has left a really bad taste in many fan's mouths.
The overall mantra seems to be "Release more games, do less of everything else." I'm guessing they're just going to change their game development goals and design philosophy to de-emphasize...
Money and development power are going into some teams like WoW, Overwatch, and Diablo, but that doesn't really change the fact that cutting your entire community relations team when the community is already largely unhappy has left a really bad taste in many fan's mouths.
The overall mantra seems to be "Release more games, do less of everything else." I'm guessing they're just going to change their game development goals and design philosophy to de-emphasize community relations and management.
Blizzard's strategy previously was to release few, highly polished games with lots of staying power that they keep supported for a decade or more. It gets good sales initially, but it also has a long tail of expansions and additional content that keeps people coming back, engaged, and spending money for ages. Part of this strategy is putting resources towards promoting eSports and maintaining a vibrant community around an old game (like with Diablo) so people stay interested.
The mandate makes it seem like they want to move away from that strategy and go back towards just releasing big-budget AAA games on a regular (annual or more) cadence similar to how Ubisoft or Activision's own titles work.
Meanwhile, in EA-world, Bioware actually seems to be dedicating itself more firmly on long-term community engagement titles like Anthem (though I've heard rumors that after Anthem they're going to go back to self-contained single-player titles for a while).
As for eSports, I think it's a genre that just had a brief boom before falling back into being a niche. Fighting Games actually seem to have more staying power these days than MOBA or RTS titles. Probably because you don't need to obsess about arbitrary minutiae to actually follow what's going on. The landscape just seems to be changing to where that stuff isn't as trendy with the target demographic as more open-worldy, sandbox style games like Fortnite are.
The mobile version of Diablo (Diablo Immortal) hasn't released, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. The announcement was received poorly (which they should have expected), but nothing has...
The mobile version of Diablo (Diablo Immortal) hasn't released, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. The announcement was received poorly (which they should have expected), but nothing has "tanked".
pretty significant round of layoffs is likely here, which i believe will be the first big round in the industry since telltale went under (unless i'm mistaken) and just the latest in a wider...
pretty significant round of layoffs is likely here, which i believe will be the first big round in the industry since telltale went under (unless i'm mistaken) and just the latest in a wider technology-related set of layoffs that included websites like buzzfeed.
They announced that they have good revenue, but not good profit. In video game terms: they've got a big army and a lot of provinces, but their upkeep costs are too high to sustain it all for too...
They announced that they have good revenue, but not good profit. In video game terms: they've got a big army and a lot of provinces, but their upkeep costs are too high to sustain it all for too many more turns. They gotta disband some units.
Bloomberg reported last week that layoffs were expected, and people have been on edge about it ever since: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-08/activision-is-said-to-plan-job-cuts-as-sales-of-key-games-stall
At this point I think people probably just want it to happen and be over with, that's a long time to be in suspense about who's losing their jobs.
in general, if your layoffs keep people in suspense for more than... i dunno, a week? your layoffs are garbage and bordering on sociopathic. there are extremely few reasons that i'd consider valid to make people basically sit in anxiety for a week or more about whether or not all the work they're currently doing is pointless because they'll be out of a job in short order, and this definitely isn't one of them.
As a sysadmin I'd be livid that the company left a horde of angry users with full access to everything at work for a whole damn week. From a security perspective that's borderline suicide. The people inside your network are the people who can do the most damage. They already have legit access. Office Space was a comedy, but that's how you get hacked, straight up.
Protocol is to turn off their access to everything before HR notifies them of their termination. This is damn sloppy... and yeah, it's dickish in the extreme for people's mental health as well.
I'm sure it's been wonderful for productivity 😂
Don't think this could be seen as "good" in any way by potential employees.
This topic originally linked to this tweet. I've edited the link to point to an article now, since the layoffs have started and there's more detail available.
It might be nice to embed the sort of 'story progression' into the submission/discussion framework. So 'related links' can be added by the op/modlike trusted users. Sort of like enshrining the megathread system some reddit subs homebrewed.
With the way tilde's 'activity' sort works that would also remove the need for 'previous link' stuff for ongoing stories. An update occurs, you post the updated link into the original link, which migrates the current discussion up with it.
Absolutely, yeah. I'd really like to have the ability to attach multiple links to the same topic and/or connect multiple topics together into an overarching "story". I think there's some really interesting things we could do with those kind of capabilities.
Is this because of Diablo mobile etc? I've heard that WoW is declining but didn't know if this was true or not.
I doubt it has anything to do with diablo. The bloomberg article linked elsewhere in the thread suggests its due to poor numbers in Overwatch and Hearthstone.
I also think it has a lot to do with the focus on microtransactions over selling games which has pushed Activision to have a smaller staff.
It's a combination of factors. Destiny/Bungie bailed on their contract 2 years early, unexpectedly, and this has hurt Activision-Blizzard. Combined with poor performance in HotS, poor reception of Diablo Immortal and WoW's latest expansion, they've had some departments not performing as well as they'd like.
There's also some redundancy in their customer service/community relations departments, so those specifically were targeted as well. NA Publishing for Blizzard was apparently entirely gutted, is what we were told.
As for WoW specifically, the recent rumors of less than only 2 millions subscribers was a demonstrably false claim by an addon developer to drum up some attention. The game is probably still in some decline, but people have also been saying that since 2008. You can probably expect at least two more expansions before they give up on it.
Money and development power are going into some teams like WoW, Overwatch, and Diablo, but that doesn't really change the fact that cutting your entire community relations team when the community is already largely unhappy has left a really bad taste in many fan's mouths.
The overall mantra seems to be "Release more games, do less of everything else." I'm guessing they're just going to change their game development goals and design philosophy to de-emphasize community relations and management.
Blizzard's strategy previously was to release few, highly polished games with lots of staying power that they keep supported for a decade or more. It gets good sales initially, but it also has a long tail of expansions and additional content that keeps people coming back, engaged, and spending money for ages. Part of this strategy is putting resources towards promoting eSports and maintaining a vibrant community around an old game (like with Diablo) so people stay interested.
The mandate makes it seem like they want to move away from that strategy and go back towards just releasing big-budget AAA games on a regular (annual or more) cadence similar to how Ubisoft or Activision's own titles work.
Meanwhile, in EA-world, Bioware actually seems to be dedicating itself more firmly on long-term community engagement titles like Anthem (though I've heard rumors that after Anthem they're going to go back to self-contained single-player titles for a while).
As for eSports, I think it's a genre that just had a brief boom before falling back into being a niche. Fighting Games actually seem to have more staying power these days than MOBA or RTS titles. Probably because you don't need to obsess about arbitrary minutiae to actually follow what's going on. The landscape just seems to be changing to where that stuff isn't as trendy with the target demographic as more open-worldy, sandbox style games like Fortnite are.
The mobile version of Diablo (Diablo Immortal) hasn't released, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. The announcement was received poorly (which they should have expected), but nothing has "tanked".
Reception of it tanked, but the game isn't even out yet. Most likely it'll be successful.
It's made by NetEase anyways, Activision would be largely untouched by it tanking.
pretty significant round of layoffs is likely here, which i believe will be the first big round in the industry since telltale went under (unless i'm mistaken) and just the latest in a wider technology-related set of layoffs that included websites like buzzfeed.
It's kinda funny how they just posted good earnings yet they're laying people off. Smells like overcompensation.
They announced that they have good revenue, but not good profit. In video game terms: they've got a big army and a lot of provinces, but their upkeep costs are too high to sustain it all for too many more turns. They gotta disband some units.