Yesterday’s big news was the 600 ex-Blizzard employees. The official explanation by Mike Morhaime stressed that these were primarily not members of the game development teams, and business/financial analysis in articles like this one from the Orange County Business Journal listed declining WoW sub figures and company revenues after a 2011 went by without any new game releases. That gave the impression that it was mostly WoW CS people and other office workers who weren’t especially “needed” anymore.

However, as Gamespot pointed out, the original ATVI investor press release stated that 60 people “were actively involved in game development.” That might not sound like a lot, given that Blizzard (formerly) had about 4700 employees globally, but when you consider that only about 1700 of those worked in Irvine, where all their game development is done, and that only a few hundred of those Irvine employees are actively involved in game development, and that Blizzard specifically said that no one working on WoW was included… 60 is a lot!

You have to figure that at least a third, and probably more like half of the game dev people in Irvine are working on WoW, once you include the cinematics and sound and other departments that work on all of Blizzard’s titles. So how do you take 60 people out of the D3, SC2, Titan, and DoTA teams without that making a big difference?

I don’t know… that math sounds pretty tricky to me. You’re free to ask it on the Battle.net forums, but don’t expect an answer, and if you create a thread to ask the question it will be promptly closed and/or deleted. All such threads are getting that treatment, with an identical reply tacked on before the lock.

Michael Morhaime got $16.5 Million in compensation in 2010. Discuss.



We understand your desire to discuss this topic, but a thread already exists. We’d appreciate you adding your thoughts to it, instead of creating a new thread. You can find that thread here We understand your desire to discuss this topic, but a thread already exists. We’d appreciate you adding your thoughts to it, instead of creating a new thread. You can find that thread here

A few of the threads to earn this closing act are trolly or just dumb, but some others make valid points. Click through for a selection of them, all courtesy of our time (and sanity) saving Blue Tracker.