Microsoft is trying to acquire Activision Blizzard (UPDATE: CMA says NO!).

[mikeyl]

That’s a mad graph as wasn’t Pony taking unprecedented losses and PS3 related hubris during 2008-2015?

[layten]

Posted a profit since 2016, in which time they have shed over 15k staff. I'm not using it to excuse Microsoft, but to show it's an industry wide situation. 

[Stanley]

4 hours ago, layten said:

Posted a profit since 2016, in which time they have shed over 15k staff. I'm not using it to excuse Microsoft, but to show it's an industry wide situation. 

So an average of 2000 staff per year over 7 years, versus 10,000 in one single event without warning.

 

A week or so after they took out this full page advert in The Washington Post.

 

 

It’s not hard to see why their ethics are being called into question right now. 

 

 

[thesnwmn]

5 hours ago, layten said:

The entire industry is shedding jobs, heck some have been at it for over a decade despite spending billions in acquisitions during that time.

  Hide contents

 

 

5 hours ago, layten said:

Posted a profit since 2016, in which time they have shed over 15k staff. I'm not using it to excuse Microsoft, but to show it's an industry wide situation. 

 

This graph says nothing. They could have simply allowed standard attrition to do this and never made anyone redundant.

 

Of course so could MS with this year's sackings. Allow attrition over a slower period to whittle down their employee count. Problem is that this makes targeting your staffing level changes difficult. Maybe that's years in some areas of the business.

 

Obviously still not great that they chose this.

[thesnwmn]

13 minutes ago, Stanley said:

So an average of 2000 staff per year over 7 years, versus 10,000 in one single event without warning.

 

A week or so after they took out this full page advert in The Washington Post.

 

 

It’s not hard to see why their ethics are being called into question right now. 

 

It is utterly amazing to me that this has made anyone question their ethics. At least in literal terms.

 

They don't have any. They are a listed company. They have the law, or what they can get away with within the law.

 

And the court of public opinion. Which I guess you could interpret as their ethics being on trial. But I'm not sure that anyone gives a toss really in gaming. The players doesn't generally care about the plight of developers (see Ubisoft*, Blizzard, etc).

 

So all we've got is yet another probable cycle of face palms about their mismanagement of gaming projects when their next round of AAA games are late, not up to scratch, or both.

 

* Ubisoft are obviously seeing some issues with their games right now regarding sales or cancellations but unclear to me that this isn't just a case of poor delivery/execution, rather than gamers boycotting them.

[Haribokart]

46 minutes ago, Stanley said:

A week or so after they took out this full page advert in The Washington Post.

 

 

It’s not hard to see why their ethics are being called into question right now. 

B b b b but my GamePass! How else will I get access to such quality titles as High On Life and Halo Infinite if these human sacrifices are not made? When you look at it from that angle people like JPL are right, there is money to be made and while Microsoft are constantly pumping out dozens of brilliant AAA games every month (as they have been for years now) those lazy jobless scroungers can get fucked. Plenty of food banks to go round.

[Rex Grossman]

Console wars really bring out the best in everyone!

[Mr. Gerbik]

47 minutes ago, Rex Grossman said:

Console wars really bring out the best in everyone!

[JPL]

1 hour ago, Haribokart said:

B b b b but my GamePass! How else will I get access to such quality titles as High On Life and Halo Infinite if these human sacrifices are not made? When you look at it from that angle people like JPL are right, there is money to be made and while Microsoft are constantly pumping out dozens of brilliant AAA games every month (as they have been for years now) those lazy jobless scroungers can get fucked. Plenty of food banks to go round.

What angle are you talking about? I’ve been pretty vocal about Halo Infinite being a massive disappointment and I’ve not even played High On Life. I think you’re getting me mixed up with someone else! I’m getting tired of waiting for the games to come to be honest.

[Ry]

Halo Infinite was brilliant and had the best gameplay of the entire series. Damn fun game. 

 

[Clipper]

MS are a profit driven tech company that don't care about their employees or their customers. They operate like any other large corporation that is driven by profit (pretty much all of them in a capitalist society). They will pretend to care about both but they don't, they'll look sad as they make you redundant but they aren't sad.

 

It doesn't matter if they are profitable or not if sacking a person will get them an extra few cents profit they'll do it. Constant growth is the battle cry and if you can't do it by selling more you then you spend less.

 

As for the naive attitude of "well why would they get rid of jobs if they were needed" or "why get rid of people who do good jobs"?  Well ummm that is a take but they will make job cuts to improve profits, that is what is needed to them. To large corporations employees are an inconvenience that is needed to make profits.

 

 

(there are edge case/outliers but the above is true for the vast majority of companies)

 

EDIT - also, to remain on topic, it is stupidly reductive to refer to this acquisition as buying COD for $70 billion. If you think that is why they bought them then you are mistaken. The value to them is greater than a piffling 10k employees because they can see the potential profits from King et al when acquired.

 

[Kevvy Metal]

I'm in a JPL thread! 

We should change the thread title to "Is it me, or is there actually nothing wrong with mass redundancies?"

[JPL]

8 minutes ago, Kevvy Metal said:

I'm in a JPL thread! 

We should change the thread title to "Is it me, or is there actually nothing wrong with mass redundancies?"

And here's the other chuckle brother! 😂

[Stanley]

24 minutes ago, Clipper said:

MS are a profit driven tech company that don't care about their employees or their customers. They operate like any other large corporation that is driven by profit (pretty much all of them in a capitalist society). They will pretend to care about both but they don't, they'll look sad as they make you redundant but they aren't sad.

 

It doesn't matter if they are profitable or not if sacking a person will get them an extra few cents profit they'll do it. Constant growth is the battle cry and if you can't do it by selling more you then you spend less.

 

As for the naive attitude of "well why would they get rid of jobs if they were needed" or "why get rid of people who do good jobs"?  Well ummm that is a take but they will make job cuts to improve profits, that is what is needed to them. To large corporations employees are an inconvenience that is needed to make profits.

 

 

(there are edge case/outliers but the above is true for the vast majority of companies)

 

EDIT - also, to remain on topic, it is stupidly reductive to refer to this acquisition as buying COD for $70 billion. If you think that is why they bought them then you are mistaken. The value to them is greater than a piffling 10k employees because they can see the potential profits from King et al when acquired.

 

I don’t think there is anything naive about wanting to discuss the human impact these cuts have, lest we just all turn into corporate drones ourselves, and especially seeing as the faceless corporate entity has recently stuck its head above the parapet to mouth off because it didn’t get what it wants. 
 

Everyone should read this excellent article posted earlier in the thread.

17 hours ago, SozzlyJoe said:

To put the only decent spin on it, given their size they might easily be able to cut 10,000 people through voluntary redundancies or not backfilling and they are just announcing it to look hard to the stock market, as layoffs are in vogue atm

 

https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/

 

Talk of restricting it to particular divisions undermines this a little.

Which suggests it’s not profit driven, merely reactive, and very damaging. 
 

As for your last paragraph, that’s the whole point. Are we beyond having a discussion about human values anymore. Everyone knows the value of Activision to MS. 

[Clipper]

31 minutes ago, Stanley said:

I don’t think there is anything naive about wanting to discuss the human impact these cuts have, lest we just all turn into corporate drones ourselves, and especially seeing as the faceless corporate entity has recently stuck its head above the parapet to mouth off because it didn’t get what it wants. 
 

 

Feel free to discuss the human impact as it is horrifying. I was simply addressing people who think "well these jobs are obviously not needed" as that is a hopelessly naive view of a company operating in a capitalist society.

 

Companies don't give a shit , we should.

 

But I am running out of companies to buy games from.

[RubberJohnny]

I mean if we cut the bullshit, people are essentially making a big deal out of it because they're not a fan of the acquisition, and so they're trying to come up with reasons against it, there's an awful lot of posts really being dramatic about these layoffs by people who did not give the slightest shit when it was Amazon or Google or Facebook doing them, and then some really spurious attempts to link the layoffs with the acquisition, even though they're not at all related.

 

Also the fact it's being discussed in the acquisition thread, rather than it's own thread, or the Halo Infinite thread.

[mikeyl]

Its kinda related if they are cutting at their games studios? Shows that buying even more games studios ain't gonna necessarily give more games. Are they just IP collectors at this point?

[RubberJohnny]

7 minutes ago, mikeyl said:

Its kinda related if they are cutting at their games studios? Shows that buying even more games studios ain't gonna necessarily give more games. Are they just IP collectors at this point?

 

No, because they still have tens of thousands more employees than only 2 years ago.

 

Except at 343, who have just been a shitshow forever and apparently finally hit the point where they were beyond saving.

[Giddas]

13 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

I mean if we cut the bullshit, people are essentially making a big deal out of it because they're not a fan of the acquisition, and so they're trying to come up with reasons against it, there's an awful lot of posts really being dramatic about these layoffs by people who did not give the slightest shit when it was Amazon or Google or Facebook doing them, and then some really spurious attempts to link the layoffs with the acquisition, even though they're not at all related.

 

Also the fact it's being discussed in the acquisition thread, rather than it's own thread, or the Halo Infinite thread.

Personally I’m just enjoying the 180 from “don’t you want them to unionise” to “cutting 10K jobs is just business bro”

[mikeyl]

5 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

 

No, because they still have tens of thousands more employees than only 2 years ago.

 

Except at 343, who have just been a shitshow forever and apparently finally hit the point where they were beyond saving.

Ok. And at Bathedsa and the Coalition?

[rgraves]

 

[Stanley]

25 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

I mean if we cut the bullshit, people are essentially making a big deal out of it because they're not a fan of the acquisition, and so they're trying to come up with reasons against it, there's an awful lot of posts really being dramatic about these layoffs by people who did not give the slightest shit when it was Amazon or Google or Facebook doing them, and then some really spurious attempts to link the layoffs with the acquisition, even though they're not at all related.

 

Also the fact it's being discussed in the acquisition thread, rather than it's own thread, or the Halo Infinite thread.

You seem to have issues understanding why a company just reporting record profits and boasting about how great they are to work for and its $70bn acquisition might cause friction which spills over into discussion when they unexpectedly sack 10,000 staff. Just reflecting that back to you one more time in the hope it helps. 

[layten]

2 minutes ago, mikeyl said:

Bathedsa

Starfield must be all but complete now(laughingcryingemoji)? It doesn't seem to be too uncommon for studio's to shrink and grow during development.

[RubberJohnny]

17 minutes ago, Stanley said:

You seem to have issues understanding why a company just reporting record profits and boasting about how great they are to work for and its $70bn acquisition might cause friction which spills over into discussion when they unexpectedly sack 10,000 staff. Just reflecting that back to you one more time in the hope it helps. 

 

You can just talk about how you don't like the acquisition dude - I've given reasons in this thread why I think it's a bad choice and no one attacked me over it! There's no reason to go through this charade, it's practically the thread consensus. Just stand by your opinion! I do it all the time.

 

I can't think of anything less interesting than trying to engage someone on a topic we both know they actually don't give a shit about and are only pretending to care about in order to slide in their actual views, like the last three pages are just unreadable shit due to you doing this. Just stop being a wuss and say you don't like it, we all know that's your opinion anyway!

[stir fry]

Now google are laying off 6 percent of their workforce (12000), oof. Layoff season bloodbath, not a great time to be entering that job market

[JPL]

Whatever happened to the jobs for life utopia we were promised?

[Clipper]

Just now, JPL said:

Whatever happened to the jobs for life utopia we were promised?

 

Who promised that, and when?

 

[JPL]

2 minutes ago, Clipper said:

 

Who promised that, and when?

 

I know, right! 😂

 

[Mr. Gerbik]

4 minutes ago, JPL said:

Whatever happened to the jobs for life utopia we were promised?

That used to be Japan until it wasn't no more.

[Stanley]

22 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

 

You can just talk about how you don't like the acquisition dude - I've given reasons in this thread why I think it's a bad choice and no one attacked me over it! There's no reason to go through this charade, it's practically the thread consensus. Just stand by your opinion! I do it all the time.

 

I can't think of anything less interesting than trying to engage someone on a topic we both know they actually don't give a shit about and are only pretending to care about in order to slide in their actual views, like the last three pages are just unreadable shit due to you doing this. Just stop being a wuss and say you don't like it, we all know that's your opinion anyway!

Utterly bizarre response.