Companies And People being Terrible - Job Layoffs, Down Playing Employees

While this has been a magical year for game releases, it seems like this has been an absolutely terrible year to be an employee of any gaming or gaming adjacent company. A lot of mismanagement and/or corporate greed costing too many people their jobs.

Comments by Blizzard Entertainment president Mike Ybarra during a company-wide Q&A session took staffers by surprise today, and left many at the studio further enraged by how Activision Blizzard's recently-shared return-to-office mandate would be implemented for the studio behind World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2.


During the meeting, which was scheduled to discuss the results of an internal employee satisfaction survey, Ybarra and other studio executives took pre-screened questions about a number of topics that recently put the company's internal policies in the public eye.

These topics included questions about its supposed use of "Stack Ranking," the recently internally-shared news that all Blizzard employees would receive a lower percentage of profit-share bonuses for the year of 2022, and the recent announcement that all employees would be required to at least partially return to onsite offices in the coming months.

News that Blizzard employees would only be receiving 58 percent of their profit-sharing bonus came as a particular surprise to developers at the company, especially after an "especially strong" fourth quarter, and following a year where the company managed to ship a wide array of successful games and expansions.

Ybarra's reported responses to employee questions included comments so outrageous, that around 12PM Pacific, Blizzard employees and their friends/family took to Twitter to lambast company leadership.

In these comments, Ybarra allegedly made a bizarre comparison to his and other executives' pay packages to those of rank-and-file employees, appeared to downplay the value of QA and customer service roles at the studio, and defended the company's decision to slash annual profit-sharing bonuses.

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After reportedly defending the ranking system currently in place, Ybarra began making comments that would truly anger employees. These began with a statement that seemed to imply Blizzard Entertainment executives are equally impacted by the decision to slash the annual profit-sharing bonus.

According to several sources, Ybarra stated something to the effect of: "If you think that executives are making a lot of money and you aren't, you're living in a myth."

In the context of the discussion, Ybarra's statement was technically factual. Blizzard's decision to cut the profit-sharing bonus to 58 percent does apply equally to all employees, executives included.

In a broader context, sources agreed that Ybarra's statement—and particularly the implication that employees are "living in a myth"—doesn't make sense. Test analysts at Blizzard Entertainment's Irvine County headquarters make as low as $22 per hour (about $45,000 per year) according to job posting website Indeed. When cross-referenced with MIT's cost-of-living calculator, that barely meets the standard of a "living wage" in the high-cost region, where the cost of housing can run as high as 158 percent above the national average.

If a lower-paid worker at Blizzard Entertainment doesn't receive that bonus, they have less money to spend on gas, rent, or groceries—let alone luxuries or student loan repayments. Mike Ybarra, who earns a much higher salary and additional compensation as company president, does not face those same concerns.

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One source speaking to Game Developer said that an internal Slack channel where developers could discuss the Q&A "exploded" in response to this comment. (The Q&A took place over Zoom, where Blizzard management turned off the ability to chat during the call. Employees were apparently only able to respond to Ybarra's answers by using emoji responses).

Blizzard employees were concerned about the slashing of the annual profit bonus partly because of Activision Blizzard's announced plans to require all employees to resume working at in-person offices in at least a hybrid capacity.

Kvally said:

H O L Y....2000 people gone just like that.

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So, they had like 25k devs?

Kvally said:

Article says 1,900 of 22,000

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Im lazy in the rain.