Friday, March 2, 2012

Big company CEO gets hate for being a big company CEO

Maybe you've heard about Blizzard laying off 600 employees, most of which work in WoW's customer service, maybe you haven't. The problem with Blizzard is the same as Nintendo, namely that people delude themselves into thinking they're in it for the fans, not for the money. What makes this especially weird is that people STILL think this when Blizzard is owned by real-life Scrooge McDuck Bobby Kotick. However, Blizzard still operates independently from Activision... but I digress.

Blizzard seems to have a lot of so-called "fans" who don't have the slightest idea about how private companies work: when employees are no longer needed, you can't keep them. And when Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime announced those layoffs... well, the crap hit the fan pretty quick. Accusations of greed and whatnot were all over the place, with total idiots claiming this was done just so Morhaime could keep his $17M annual pay (real number), and buy a 24-karat gold toilet for his mansion.

Newsflash: Blizzard is a private corporation, its primary goal is profit. With WoW's base dwindling quickly, of course they won't need nearly as many people for customer service, especially since the way I understand it (I wouldn't know, I don't play WoW) they improved the CS process to treat demands or something. And now there are calls for boycotts. ARE YOU SERIOUS? If you boycotted every company that laid off redundant employees, you'd be naked, you wouldn't be eating anything and you wouldn't have a home. Blizzard does what every private company does, and somehow the reactions are completely different. Look, just because it's very, VERY profitable doesn't force them to make unneeded expenses. Apparently big corporations are nonprofit organizations now. Either they don't have the slightest clue how the world works, or they're hypocrites blinded by a false reputation Blizzard has.

Don't get me wrong, it sucks for those who got fired, but not only did they get good severance packages, but just having Blizzard's name on their resume will ensure that they don't wait forever before finding a new job. I'm just staggered at the general reaction not mirroring mine.

3 comments:

  1. The problem Blizzard has to deal with is that they've hit peak usage - everyone who wants to play World of Warcraft is playing World of Warcraft. It's not that the base is dwindling - it's that the influx is dwindling.

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    Replies
    1. No, they're past that point. They hit 12 million subscribers at one point, and they're just barely over 10 million now.

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  2. Huh, to be honest I kind of didn't know you even known about Blizzard Snowflake, I mean, I remember you talking about Diablo 3 in one of your vids but that was it.

    Anyways good point, that makes sense to me! I wasn't flipping out over it, but it certainly tickled me the wrong way and I like your opinion about it!

    Partly off topic -- Slowflake do you play other non-Nintendo games but just don't talk about them or something? I mean you were just talking about WoW, and then there is SWTOR, Guild Wars 2, etc. etc. etc.

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