this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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[–] nyahlathotep@sh.itjust.works 22 points 10 months ago (2 children)

What was that? Couldn't hear you over the layoffs

[–] ampersandrew@kbin.social 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They said their profits (not just revenue) were up by more than the cost of those 1900 employees they just laid off.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world -2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I mean at least they're also removing managers at Blizzard and Activision with the layoffs. That it hits workers, too - sadly utterly expected 😑 - but at least MS isn't above letting useless and redundant managers go.

(edit) Ugh, sorry. I should have added an explicit /s, it's not as obvious as I thought it'd be. 😔

[–] SatouKazuma@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

...are you fucking trolling?

[–] loobkoob@kbin.social -3 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I'm not cheering for the layoffs, of course, nor am I necessarily in favour of monopolies and the consolidation of the gaming industry (although, in this instance, I think it's probably a positive thing for fans of Blizzard IPs). But layoffs during this kind of merger/buyout are expected. Microsoft has its own legal departments, payroll departments, marketing departments, etc, and while they might need expanding slightly as the company grows/absorbs new companies, they don't need an entire second company's worth of those departments.

These layoffs were about cutting redundancy rather than just chasing short-term profits. It sucks for the people who were laid off either way, but I think it's good to be realistic about why they happened.

[–] Gamoc@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago

So you're saying that if Microsoft hadn't hoovered up another company due to being creatively bankrupt, almost two thousand people would still have a job?

[–] peter 4 points 10 months ago

They also laid off part of Microsoft though

[–] lorty@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

What you say is true but if you followed the reports you'll know they fired the whole of the blizzard survival team, a good chunk of the Overwatch team and writers/story people from WoW. Very much not only the redundancies.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago

That's news? If I spend that many billions of more people to fire, I damn well expect that my monthly revenue goes up. They've got to have some dedicated whales paying for lootboxes, after all.

[–] SatouKazuma@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This merger was a fucking mistake.

[–] Toribor@corndog.social 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You've just summed up the last 40 years of antitrust.

[–] SatouKazuma@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Oh I know. This is just another anvil on the (incredibly) dead camel's back.

[–] ulkesh@beehaw.org 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

An increase of only 49%. Time to fire a couple thousand more people.

[–] Eggyhead@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago

Good thing they laid off all those people, too. /s