This article originally ran under a different banner/website in February of 2019 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.
MY LOYAL FOLLOWERS!!! I had planned to stand before you all and discuss Apex Legends. Yes, it is true, I am no fan of battle royale games, but I figured I could give a unique perspective as someone who predominantly prefers single-player games. As I pondered how to stretch my grievances into a full review, I read some deeply troubling news. News that shook me to the core with sorrow. I concluded that the ramblings of an old hermit, who wants nothing to do with the latest battle royale, was not as important as this topic. I must talk about Blizzard’s latest round of layoffs.
On February 12, Activision Blizzard had its fourth-quarter earnings call with investors. During this call, CEO Bobby Kotick boosted that Activision-Blizzard had achieved record results for the 2018 year. Activision had made $7.26 billion from physical and digital sales in 2018 compared to $7.16 billion dollars in 2017, but that wasn’t enough for Kotick as he went on to say:
“While our financial results for 2018 were the best in our history, we didn’t realize our full potential. To help us reach our full potential, we have made a number of important leadership changes. These changes should enable us to achieve the many opportunities our industry affords us, especially with our powerful owned franchises, our strong commercial capabilities, our direct digital connections to hundreds of millions of players, and our extraordinarily talented employees.”
As many can tell, this roughly translates to if Bobby Kotick thinks his employees are expendable and is kicking them off the boat. Terror echoed throughout the Blizzard studio just as the news struck. While the writing was on the walls, that Activision was looking to cut down the employee count on Blizzard Entertainment, many never would predict this. News from Lonely Mountain descends to Blizzard to reveal 800 employees were being shown the door. Tweets from Kotaku writer, Jason Schreier, depicted a scene of Blizzard employees hugging and crying in the parking lot. It wasn’t just new employees, some employees with 10 to 15 years with Blizzard were caught in the layoffs. Twitter flooded with posts from ex-employees saying how working at Blizzard had been their dream job that had tragically come to a close. These employees gave everything they had, to help give Blizzard their best year, and they are tossed away like scraps off Activision Blizzard’s plate.
It is utterly disgusting that in the year where Blizzard had record-breaking profits, that Activision-Blizzard still felt the need to lay off employees. What is the point of posting an increase in sales, if it still means you need to lay off employees? It pretty much boils down to the growth wasn’t enough for the greedy shareholders who demand exponential growth from the company. Sure, Activision-Blizzard made more money this year, but it wasn’t as much money as the shareholders expected. It’s as if these Scrooge McDuck’s sat around determining that since Activision-Blizzard made five dollars last year, expecting ten dollars this year, and only received eight dollars. Naturally, that means Huey, Duey and Luey need to be laid off despite only making quarters each year. If these investors are not happy with the growth results, maybe they should look at cutting some of the fattiest bits: the ones at the top.
Some of the Activision executives are lavishly overpaid for their positions. Just a month ago, Activision Blizzard gave their new CFO, Dennis Durkin, $15 million dollars just for taking the position on top of his $5.8 million in compensation for 2018. Chairman of the Board, Brian Kelly, has a net worth of $1.18 billion. President, Collister Johnson, Chief Operating Officer, received $11.2 million in compensation for 2018. Finally, the biggest dragon of the lot, is none other than Bobby Kotick, himself, receiving $28.7 million in compensation for 2018. As of 2017, Bobby Kotick was the 29th highest paid executive in the world. Surely, taking a fraction of his compensation would allow those 800 employees to keep their jobs, but that’s the issue with the games industry. Companies like Activision Blizzard are not run by leaders, but dragons hoarding their gold, to the point where their own employees fear for their jobs. The sad part of it all is Bobby Kotick can afford to give up that money and not even feel the financial impact of it. Drops of water in the ocean. It will never happen though because Bobby Kotick is the real-life equivalent of Smaug the Dragon.
I know many will cry out that’s it too hard for Activision to take that money from Bobby Kotick and give it to their employees, but frankly, I find that’s an embarrassing excuse. Nintendo’s president and board of directors, Satoru Iwata, took a 20% to 30% pay cut when Nintendo had low Wii U sales. He also took a 50% cut again when Nintendo wasn’t able to sell their new 3DS. Rather than throw his most vulnerable employees to the wolves, Iwata took the hit because he is a true leader. You never heard stories of Nintendo having to lay off eight hundred workers and that’s due to the fact that true leaders put others before themselves. Bobby Kotick may claim that laying off those people was hard, but a true leader would never consider that an option. Then again, we established Bobby Kotick is not a leader, but a scaley beast obsessed with every gold coin they can see.
Much like the towns at the base of Lonely Mountain, these dragons have ravaged the games industry for too long. The last few years, we have seen so many headlines depicting layoffs and studio closures. Too many stories of developers working until 3 in the morning only to be greeted by pink slips in the morning. This is an unhealthy trend that has only resulted in games being lower in quality but higher in cost, developers being unhumanized to a frightening level, and only the dragons atop the mountain benefiting from it all. They frankly don’t care about the industry and will only milk it dry until they find the next cow to milk. If they can’t lead as Iwata once did, they should be shown the door. Leave our industry and never return. NO MORE LAYOFFS!!! NO MORE DRAGONS!!! FIRE BOBBY KOTICK OR THE END OF THE GAMING INDUSTRY WILL BE NIGH!!!
Note from the future: Activision-Blizzard laid off 190 employees while CEO Bobby Kotick received a $200 million dollar bonus. If Bobby’s top priority is the well being of his employees, it feels rather disingenuous to take a bonus that could have paid to keep these employees. #FireBobbyKotick