Regarding the Activision-Blizzard layoffs. Some harsh words

Community General Discussion
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Or the devs aren’t listening…

Could it be, that they are so set on how they want the game/s to be that they ignore what the CMs send them? :open_mouth:

Edit: or even that some things take time to implement.

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22
  • The right people are incapable to use the information at their disposal properly, mostly pointing to incompetence on their side.
  • The right people are unwilling to use the information at their disposal properly, which can either be hubris or divergent goals.

Where is the proof the guy was slacking or anything else you alleged? There isn’t any to be found, so I’ll just ignore the completely unfounded supposition and continue to write off your assertion as silly.

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While you could be right that the Community manager were terrible at the job…It leaves open a glaring possibility that they were good at their jobs and the ones they reported too are not good at their jobs.

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You missed one important point as well the CEO did mention management changes are in the pipeline over the coming weeks ,months. Ion may be on his way out just a thought.

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  1. Any dev worth his paycheck can read badly presented information, pain in the rear to do so but still doable.
  2. The information isn’t accurate according to who?
  3. The most likely one, Blizzard have gained a rather bad habit of ignoring the community, and responses have been…lacklustre at best.
  4. that isn’t the cm’s problem, he reports it to someone that person sends it on to the developers, who look and analyse that information and decide if there is something they can do now or whether it requires more work and therefore is worked on for a future patch. It’s put into priority order and sent off to relevant teams.
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You are right, but the thing is that I don’t need proof. It appears from the outside that the business team decided that these people did not pull their weight. They had “proof”. It is entirely possible that the developers are also in need of new management. As it currently stands in the job market, then finding new developers is more difficult then finding new marketing or PR or CM people. Te developers simply have more room for making mistakes in that regard.

That is a 100% possible, but as it appears these layoffs were not targeted at individuals, but at a branch of the system. These “changes” in the workforce were likely meant to trigger a change.

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That was a failure to understand their audience, marketing aside I don’t think they even considered the people sat in front of them when they announced it.

I have no issue with Diablo mobile, It just did not deserve that much of the spot light.

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And yet I don’t call on the cm’s to say man you guys delivered azerite armour and it sucks…or hey cm’s any chance you can make retri less like watching paint dry…

What can the cm’s do? report that someone is disgruntled by certain design choices…which they probably stuck in a report somewhere that says xx number of forum users described retri as akin to the most boring thing on planet earth.

I have no issues with the CM’s but I do have issue with those in charge of the game and it’s direction.

Though props to the guys that did wing 2 of LFR Dazor…has nearly all the mechanics of normal…including the stabby one on trash before Rastakhan which is hilarious to watch people just dying wondering why they aren’t being dispelled.

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Actually you need proof. They perhaps didn’t, but for all we know they could be the incompetents finding scapegoats. That, and these people were layed off and not sacked. Either way, if you want to make an argument, in the context of a discussion you started, you most certainly need proof to back up your claims. Otherwise, your contribution is null, we all can already read the Blizzard comuniques.

That is precisely the marketing failure. Blizzcon is a massive exercise in marketing, where people actually pay Blizzard so Blizzard markets products to them. But this audience has a specificity: they are PC gamers. Whatever marketer decided to market a mobile phone game to an entirely PC gamer audience (historically opposed or at least dismissive of mobile games) was a moron. Either way, that’s a marketing failure, it has exactly ZERO to do with CMs.

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I’m not certain why you are playing devil’s advocate in this, but I’ll bite.

First and foremost, Activision-Blizzard’s PR handling has indeed been atrocious to say the least. If this were purely due to the ineptitude of the community managers however, one would imagine their manager would have had to make them step up their game, or find suitable replacements.

Failing that, it falls down to the manager’s manager… et cetera.

The fact that this coincides with the numerous layoffs at other departments also strongly implies that the decision was made not because the CM team’s efforts were lacking, but rather because they don’t deem community management important enough an aspect of business in relation to the corporation’s revenue.

Which is a decision not motivated by the perceived lack of value provided by the team itself - if this were the case, you may count on the fact they would have run benchmarks to compare their CM team to that of other companies. And, if their team was found lacking, they would have certainly replaced them, rather than done away with them.

I believe that you may be reading into this too much. Activision-Blizzard has had their best year in 2018 according to Satan himself. But this astounding performance was not enough. Thus they look to make their business more “lean”. They hope that through shaving off that which they deem to be unnecessary for the company’s sustainability and growth, they can make more money still.

It’s not that they think the CM team has been doing a bad job. They just really don’t care about community management. As evidenced by their inaction through the still ongoing PR disaster.

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If that was the case Lore should have gone not the other CM .
Lore insulted the player base
Lore doesnt play the game
Lore is just basically a waste of a payecheck he rather play other games .

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One of the saddest layoffs (imho) is the artist who designs the plushies for the gearstore. They’re popular and something that generates a lot of money and I fail to see how laying her off did anything to shock the system or jolt new action.

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I am pretty sure that Blizzards business department ran some math and deemed the CM team not to be financially beneficial enough maintain in it’s current state. That is the main reason why all these people got laid off.

In order to make sense you need to look deeper. Why wasn’t the team generating the expected results?

In this instance a small group of people in the company decided that this is the direction we are going to take with our community organization. That direction was now deemed unsustainable. In situations like this you need reorganize everything from the ground up - you can’t just lay off a few people and say “everybody, do things better now”.

The usual approach in situations like these is:

  1. Finding suitable roles for valuable people within the company.
  2. Laying off managers who will keep the existing (faulty) structure alive.
  3. Laying off people who will be directionless if without said managers.

Often enough if a company has a cultural problems. Then an attempt is made to first reorganize things. If that does not work, then they use the scorched earth method and lay everybody off.

I expect that Blizzard will still attempt to maintain a community, but a choose completely different approach when moving forward. This new approach will likely not involve roles that were just made redundant.

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( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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Hardly ever wears pants and desperately trying to get the love rocket :open_mouth:

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oh lord what have i started :stuck_out_tongue: thats because it gets so hot :smiley:

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:rofl: :whale:

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Heeeeeere we go :rofl:

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You just made the OP’s point.

What use are they. You may have had some interaction as an MVP but an actual CM very rarely posts here so to us it’s going to make very little difference. [Yes, I know there been no announced lay-offs in EU yet.]

Any mass defending of laying off CMs in these forms is rather hypocritical as they regularly get accused of not keeping us informed.

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The CMs cared, we as players gave very constructive fedback but the last few beta’s they just ignored it, I even saw them delete post and threads seperatly. A job that pays $ 9 or $ 11 a hour is out of dedication and for living the game/company. Rent in the city their HQ is in can go to $ 2k already…

Edit 2:

Not opposed I hate them, they aren’t games, some even have auto-play. AUTO-PLAY! COME ON! That’s like askign someone to excercise for you, you don’t get fitter or in terms of auto-play not even better at the game!

I watched Lore’s podcast, he went very bad in has manners and he was even using WoWpedia, then he was rude towards us and he is the CM they keep…

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