Regarding the Activision-Blizzard layoffs. Some harsh words

Community General Discussion
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In case you didn’t know Activision Blizzard is laying off 775 people from the company. These roles will mainly be in the community management, marketing, PR and Esports areas. Game development roles will not be affected. In fact Blizzard has been hiring more developers to the game.

So what is going on?

From a business perspective: It boils down to the fact that these people did not justify the paycheck they got.

That is a mean thing to say.

It’s also the truth. If you look at the way the gaming community is relating to Activision-Blizzard, then the community managers are doing a terrible job. Everyone is talking trash about Activision-Blizzard and have been doing so for a long time now.

But it’s not the community managers problem that the business team makes terrible decisions and game design fails to deliver!

Yes it is. These people are supposed to work as an intermediary between the community and people making decisions. Decisions are made based on available information. Bad decisions are made when bad information is available. The community managers are getting fired left and right. It is now very much their problem.

You have no empathy for the people who just lost their jobs!

There have been many recent reports that the communication departments have been overly political internally and they are not really getting work done. If you look at some of the tweets people have been sending out…

“This was my dream job, I was planning on retiring there.” - ex-employee

Your job is not a vacation on the beach. Your job is a place where you pull your weight and bring value to the team. You are not getting paid to chill and play petty politics. You are getting paid to bring results.

Ask yourself: Have the community managers been doing a good job recently?

On Recent Diablo announcement?
Are Blizzard games top Esports games? (compared to other big hitters)
With the leaks of poisonous internal politics?
WoW developers investing time in areas people don’t care about?
Heroes of the Storm being considered a “Dead game” by the community even though it was really just some developers being shifted around?

Hell, the worst thing is that people think Activision and Blizzard are internally at war with each other. Even if there is some truth to that, then the community should not be focused on that - that is the community managers job.

Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong.

Would you employ someone to take care of your kids, but when you got home little Timmy is missing an eye?

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You could have posted in the other better thread and yes your wrong on many points and ive flagged this post as spam which it is.

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If even one person managing the community reads this due to you reporting it - then this post has done it’s job.

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I think the issue is that a company such as blizzard can outsource its customer service department and save a great deal of money. This is already the case with most tech companies.

You see tech companies gutting customer service in favor of contracting a company that is usually in a non union state, to provide customer service. So while I do not want anyone to lose their job, this is just common practice.

And before anyone says that the salaries were probably low for customer service, keep in mind that a company has to pay for benefits that can make a person’s cost go up almost 2 to 3 times their monetary salary.

As for marketing and pr teams, obviously the money spent in these areas did not generate the publicity the company wanted or translate into additional sales or monetary gain. As for Esports, I can hardly think of anyone who considers the company an Esports powerhouse.

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Celadina, before you need to go and send me whale gifs in game I have some news for you! Happy news!

Guess what happened to this little void elf when I was slacking off work and playing wow this morning?

OP the CM who has been layed off was very good at player engagement fromnwhat I understand, he was regularly on the US forums joining in and also just watching and gathering feedback just as out own lovely Arythlea does. If he loved his job, so much the very person to be doing it because that makes him care. You really don’t want customer service staff who hate their job or couldn’t give a monkeys.

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Im so dying to know :grin:

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I concur, though I went for trolling. The thread is baiting pure and simple.

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Heritage armour! 110! Legion left behind! Lol

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Wooohooo gz to you on that it is very beautiful i just wish it had a skirt as i hardly ever wear pants :wink:

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Haven’t transmogged it yet, had to quit game and go do a school run lol but I got it. Now to do it all again on my lightforged :rofl:

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I’ve come to the understanding that if you do not agree with the post or it’s content, its either trolling or baiting?

Just because you feel triggered by something I wrote does not mean that was the intention of the post. The intention is to present the business perspective and what the situation really boils down to. Ones and Zeros on a spreadsheet - you either make the company move forward or you stagger it’s progress.

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Okay I’ll bite.

Most of what the CM’s can say publicly is limited. On many topics, they will not reply simply because they are not supposed to.

The CM’s are not the boss of the wow developers.

The CM’s did not move the developers… again, the CM’s are not the boss of the developers.

The CM’s are the link between the community and the company. They don’t make the decisions.

Done.

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My next is dark iron paladin so i wish you luck on LF i just wish they had dress/skirt versions aswell sigh as during the summer i like to get a lil breeze :wink:

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The thing is there is already 3 (or is it 4) threads on going about this.

Making another one is going to be seen as spam or trolling, especially when you make comment on the US CMs hurt over losing a job he loves.

Perhaps you should read the forum ToS and refer to the section about multiple threads on the same subject and then you will understand why people may have reported you. For the record I didn’t, as distasteful as I doubt your comment about someone being upset about losing their job.

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No, it’s not. This has to be one of the most fallacious pieces of reasoning I’ve seen in a while. Bad decisions caused by the poor quality of the information available are merely a subset of all possible causes for bad decisions. Bad decisions are just as likely to be caused by improper analysis of the underlying information, or by the divergence between the goals of the decisionmakers and the recipients of the decisions.

Looking at the decisions you attribute to community managers points to the latter.

Yes. But one by one:

Yes, that was a marketing failure, not a community manager failure.

Not #1 or #2, but definitely up there in the top 10. If your point is that the only esport possible must be the most popular, that’s the dumbest thing yet in this post. It’s as if one would be arguing that basketball shouldn’t be a thing because football is more popular.

What do community managers have to do with that? Holy…

That’s on… guess who? The WoW developers.

It’s being considered a Dead game by the community because they killed off the esports scene for it. A moba without an esports scene is a dead game. Killing off the esports scene was a managerial decision, nothing to do with community managers.

You are dead wrong. You seem to think that the community managers are some sort of spin doctors, and when they can’t sell snake oil they must be fired. It’s hard to imagine a way for you to be more wrong than this.

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Seriously?

So if you’ve got your dream job, you’re not working?

My definition of “dream job” is a job where you love what you are doing, and end up being more productive from doing it, because you love your job.

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CMs are supposed to drive the conversation, set expectations and make sure that a specific narrative is driven.

CMs are not the boss of developers, but they are responsible for providing developers with accurate information regarding the community feedback. Developers will make the best decision they can based on this information.

CMs are allowed to say what the Marketing and PR teams decide they are allowed to say. Those people got laid off as well. Because they did a bad job.

These layoffs are not just aimed at individuals. These layoffs are aimed to shock the system and jolt new action. PR and Marketing activities will continue and those people will eventually be replaced with new ones.

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How do you know they’re not? Have you got all the emails and collected data the CMs have sent on from the forum? :roll_eyes:

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No, the guy apparently didn’t get the memo that the industrial revolution era ended quite some time ago, and nowadays some people actually have jobs they enjoy and not all jobs are factory assembly line. Hence his comment. :slight_smile:

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There is nothing wrong with enjoying your job. However it is a different thing to enjoy slacking off at your job. If you enjoy doing a job, but you are not putting forward results, then you do not deserve the job - regardless if you enjoy it or not.

Regarding developers utilizing community feedback:
If this information is not being utilized for improvements to the game, then there can be different issues causing this.

  1. The information is presented badly.
  2. The information is not accurate.
  3. There is an internal culture of ignoring certain information.
  4. The information does not reach the right people at the right time.