Asmongold has his own opinion on the current situation at Activision Blizzard. Many employees are resigning – and this will make WoW worse.
In recent days and weeks, there have been many opinions surrounding Activision Blizzard and their new regulations. The largest streamer of World of Warcraft, Asmongold, does not hold back on his views and makes it clear what he thinks of this approach.
What does Asmongold say? Asmongold first reacted to a popular meme that depicts the apparent “master plan” of Activision Blizzard. They create the best WoW expansion since “Legion”, then force all employees back to the office from home office, and then realize that many employees are resigning.
He emphasizes that other companies have also enforced a return to the office – such as Riot (League of Legends) or Square Enix (Final Fantasy). However, one hardly hears about developers leaving these companies en masse.
Asmongold shares the following thoughts:
Nowadays it just looks better if you work for Riot or Square Enix and not for Blizzard. And this is created – and it’s well known, even by people who otherwise know little about it – Blizzard just pays poorly. They just don’t pay much. And guess what happens then? You get what you pay for. (…)
I don’t know. I find it really disappointing to see this happening. And I believe that whenever this happens, it makes the quality of the content worse because [the developers] are totally stressed. And whenever people are totally stressed, they probably don’t make the best content. It’s literally that simple.
I hope things get better, but … oh man.
What is this about? A few days ago, statements from WoW developers on Twitter caused an uproar. Apparently, Activision Blizzard is losing more and more talented developers. The reason for this is the “return to office” regulation, which requires developers to be in the office for at least 2 out of 5 days a week.
However, this apparently does not fit the life reality of many developers – they were either hired as “just home office”, live too far from the nearest Activision office, or simply cannot afford a life in Irvine.
Just a year ago, Blizzard hired nearly 100 new employees to work on World of Warcraft and the content patches. However, it seems that many of those employees are already leaving again because the requirement to return to the office is something that no longer fits into their daily lives or cannot be reconciled with salary or family.
Elsewhere, fans are excited – because a Warcraft TV series is becoming increasingly likely.
