The Blizzard CEO has unsettled and demoralized his employees. There is less money and employees who are rather laughed at.
At Blizzard, “the house is burning” – once again. Many employees are shocked by the latest statements from the CEO. A lot of money has been cut, and new regulations will likely lead to layoffs, leaving a whole group of employees feeling unappreciated.
The culprit is CEO Mike Ybarra, who was previously seen as a kind of “savior” by many. However, during an internal company “Q&A session,” statements piled up that together triggered a new scandal and ruined the motivation of many employees.
Many of the statements in this article come from the Game Developer magazine, which spoke with Blizzard employees. They then had Ybarra’s respective answers confirmed by a Blizzard spokesperson.
Blizzard cuts bonus payments by 42% – for everyone
The first piece of bad news was the announcement that the bonus payment, which compensates employees for the success of the company, will be reduced to 58% this year. This surprised many, especially since Blizzard had an extremely strong fourth quarter and several games and expansions were successfully released – including Overwatch 2 and World of Warcraft: Dragonflight.
The announcement caused a lot of frustration and anger. While this reduction applies to all employees – including the executives – Ybarra apparently showed little empathy and said:
If you think that the executives make a lot of money and you don’t, then you’re living in a myth.
While it is technically true that the bonus cut affects executives and employees, the consequences are drastically different.
Or to put it more bluntly: When an executive with a regular salary of $300,000 a year loses part of the bonus payment, it is significantly less dramatic for their living situation than if an employee making $45,000 a year loses the bonus, who was barely making ends meet.
Blizzard ends remote work and subtly suggests: “If you don’t like it, you can leave”
Just a few days ago, it became known that Blizzard is phasing out the current remote work regulations. Many were able to work fully from home in recent months and only had to return to the office on rare occasions.
After the suspension of these remote work rules, all employees are required to return to the office at least three days a week. This not only leads to increased commuting costs (which are becoming increasingly expensive due to inflation) and more time spent commuting, but also creates problems for a whole group of employees.
During the height of the Covid pandemic, Activision Blizzard hired many employees who worked completely as “remote workers” from home. This also allowed new employees to be hired who lived far away from Blizzard offices.
These employees are now also required to come into the office regularly, which means many would have to relocate just to have a Blizzard office nearby. Blizzard also mentioned that they plan to open some new offices.
A question to Ybarra then was how Blizzard intends to prevent this return to the presence requirement from causing the company to lose talented employees. Ybarra allegedly replied:
Ultimately, we want people to be happy, and if decisions do not align with your satisfaction and you are not happy, then you must do what makes you happy.
This was interpreted by many employees as: “If you don’t like it here, then go somewhere else.”
A spokesperson for Blizzard confirmed Ybarra’s comment to Game Developer, but added that they “want to listen to the team’s feedback” and that they do what is “best for the company and the players in the long run”.
Quality Control – Not a real job in which one seeks a career
The biggest concerns about all these changes were raised by the professions that currently earn the least. This includes mainly quality control („QA“) and customer support staff. These employees often have trouble making ends meet financially and are particularly affected by these cuts.
Regarding these two professions, Ybarra stated that “some of our areas are not long-term employments.” According to Blizzard, this is because they want “people to grow and take on expanded responsibilities and opportunities.”
The thought behind this seems to be that both quality control and customer support are not areas that Blizzard particularly values, and there is no assumption that employees here are pursuing a real, long-term career where they could enjoy similar benefits and bonuses as in game design or direct development.
Little wonder that these views dampened the morale of many employees. QA employees in particular have been pushing for more recognition and pay for years, advocating for their work to be seen as a career and not just a rung on the ladder to completely different careers.
Mike Ybarra’s reputation is crumbling
So far, Mike Ybarra has had a fairly good standing with Blizzard and the community. He was always seen as “one of us” – at heart a gamer who also plays World of Warcraft at a high level and protects the developers against the will of the people “from above”.
After the Q&A event, however, the image seems to have shifted dramatically, and many employees are increasingly suspicious that Ybarra is primarily concerned with what the numbers on the balance sheet show at the end of the year, while the circumstances of the developers receive a subordinate role.
On social media, many Blizzard employees and family members have expressed their discontent. Some of these tweets have been included in this article.
