[Saka]

Yesterday bad news for fans of World of Warcraft was revealed. Due to some business decisions made by upper management, employees have been leaving Blizzard in droves.

Here's the short tweet thread that's the source.

Seems like part of the reason is the privilege to work from home being taken away. Blizzard headquarters are located in Irvine, which has incredibly high living costs and the wages at Blizzard, compared to similar jobs, are not great. It is common for employees to have 2+ hours of commute and who wants to put up with that when there are better options out there?

The times of pandemic sure changed sometimes. Many companies found out that letting people work from home can actually bring savings and increase efficiency. However, some companies appear to hate that micromanaging is harder with people working remotely.

It was revealed by the tweet that a lot of people who left were directly responsible for creating Dragonflight, one of the best expansions the game had. And now, due to shortage of people, plans are changed on fly and the planned content may no longer be delivered.

Sad tidings.

[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka Thank you for sharing! Though having worked in the gaming industry, I am sad to say this is nothing new, and plans are being changed on the fly all the time for all sorts of reasons.

But my guess would be that it is not so much micromanagement that these companies hate, but the decrease in security. It is easy to leak the game, and protecting the data is one of the top priorities for developers at every stage. It is much easier for them to do that from the office with an internal IT system and firewall and virus protection rather than on an individual basis.

That being said, working from home really does have numerous advantages and it would pay off for companies to look for and invest in solutions that would make it possible even for such cybersecurity-sensitive positions as game developers rather than force people to accept the terms they put before them and force them to quit.

I guess the silver lining here may be that talent rarely goes unneeded. Some years ago when TellTales closed shop for the first time, they had this "talent fair" before closing where different developers came in to snatch the talent they wanted, so most of the employees had new contract offers elsewhere before TellTale closed down. I hope those developers will land on their feet. And Blizzard will just have to make do without talent.

[Saka]

@DoctorEldritch I know about plans changing all the time, even alpha versions of games can be quite different from final ones.

Warlords of Draenor was one expansion where they cut a lot of planned and promised content. Many veteran players are still upset about it, because we've seen the assets in presentations during Blizzcon before they were cut. Some stuff was also present in the beta version.

The more alarming part is that it is a big bulk of people leaving and they don't seem to have a backup plan yet, so at best there will be delays before next content can be made. Last time that happened, after the sexual abuse allegations and such, the content in the current expansion was cut, the story butchered and some low effort rehashed content released instead.

Of course, if players didn't get anything, then the situation would've been even worse for the game, but it was clear that re-scaling old dungeons and raids was a desperate step to buy few months of time when they haven't done such a thing before (and at the launch there were bugs and issues that proper testing would've eliminated).

[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka I agree with you that this all looks like a problem that could have easily been avoided with a bit of compromise. Then again, many problems can be... Sad thing, now no one is happy: Blizzard is losing credibility and rep, developers are losing jobs, and gamers are losing content. I wonder what @Liue and @MoriMoonpaw think about this, they play WoW a lot.

[Saka]

@DoctorEldritch Apparently there's more stuff coming out.

In the replies the author stated " it's got to be intended as soft layoffs that don't rate severance. that's the only explanation that makes sense. they think that the money they save on severance is greater than the money they would get from the marginal gain of having a game that hadn't lost those people. "

[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka Man, it's just getting...the expression is "better and better", but it does not really fit... This thing keeps escalating. I am getting a Ford Pinto Memo vibe now...

[Saka]

@DoctorEldritch It does show that there's a bigger problem when it's multiple people speaking out for sure.

On WoW subreddit someone linked the prices of properties in Irvine. Considering people want to live with their families, that's at least two bedrooms... and sure, people can rent, but when the buying cost is how much then I am not sure if I want to check the rent.

https://www.zillow.com/irvine-ca/

I've read stories of people living with several roommates in quite low standards just to survive, because their wage at Blizzard or similar corporation did not allow better living.

[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka It really is quite sad, but with this, we're venturing into a more complex problem of the world economy, habitat shortages, and estate market, which are all right cans of worms on their own, so it's not just the gaming industry problem from this perspective.

I mean, who is more at fault that Blizzard game devs can't afford decent living conditions in Irvine - Blizzard for not compensating workers enough, Irvine real estate companies for bubbling up property prices and not investing in building more good quality affordable accommodation, or Irvine city council for not passing through regulations that would prevent this sort of thing happening in the first place. Probably the combination of all 3, and even more factors, too.

Same thing with London these days: very expensive to live in, and the quality of accommodations you get for a pretty penny is far from pretty.

[Saka]

@DoctorEldritch I agree, it's likely combination of all the three.

Big cities are always more expensive to live in, typically you do see wages there being a bit better, but for some places it's not enough to compensate the difference in costs of living.

Even in Finland, I live in theoretically third largest city (which got a lot of snarky comments from me that it is more like a hellhole than a city) and I cut the rent in half by moving away from it. Now it is half an hour of a drive to the city centre, but it mostly works and it's sure a lot easier to make the ends meet.

By allowing remote work the companies the company would let the employees live in more affordable places, if the office day is only once in a while then the commute is stomach-able.

"Turned down a job there in 2019, $75k a year salary for the area the office is in is disgusting. Had left a previous job that has an office nearby for the same exact reason. These OC tech companies don’t pay anywhere near the COL for the area. Irvine is as expensive as SF, easily.
Since they don’t pay enough, you’re forced to move to cities further away, if you’re not familiar with Southern California traffic (same with NorCal, really) let’s just say its hell on earth. Even something 20-30 miles away can be OVER an hour commute one direction. So sad."

The above quote is from the WoW subreddit, it adds a bit to the picture about the situation.