Thread over. Someone trotted out the "this is Activision's fault, Bobby Kotick is the antichrist" pony.

McCurley's arguments are sound, and unless we are all shareholders in the firm, we've got exactly zero right to any oversight on how Blizzard manages their infrastructure. We can either trust that laying off 600 people was a last resort taken by administrators who must act with fiscal responsibility in a time of financial crisis, or we can say "corporations are evil and firing people is wrong" and choose to be ignorant of how businesses must operate in order to stay alive.

I for one will trust that Morhaime and the gang didn't do this lightly.

*Sigh*.

Is that the best you can do Mr. Crow? Do you deny that Activision, like EA, has done a number of things not only to developers under its wings but to consumers that enhanced their bottom line to the detriment of all else? Or is this you attempt of coming up with the gaming version of "Godwin"?

McCurley's arguments are based on...nothing more than a single person's statement and a pretty document filed with the SEC. You have to believe Activision's SEC filing and Morhaime's statements as 100% true. Ask the people of Enron, Solyndra, and most of the Wall Street broker and banker's filing if that's a good idea.

Without some way to verify Morhaime's statements, I'm going to base my opinions on the matter with verifiable facts (D3 release plus WoW subscription income) and the actions of Activision. My opinion has more basis in reality than almost any other one.

It really pisses me off when someone uses the "$15 a month X (current subscriber numbers)" line.

Not everyone pays the same amount. In the US alone you can pay $15, $14 or $12, depending on your subscription plan. In other countries, such as China, they don't pay by the month AT ALL. They pay on an hourly basis which equals up to the month fee in average.

People in the UK and the rest of Europe not under the Euro pay varying amounts. And I saw one guy Brazil on Massively say that his annual subscription cost him the equivalent of US $88 per YEAR.

No matter what the rest of your comment says, when you trot out the "$15 a month x (current subscriber number)" line you look uninformed.

Even though Blizzard is part of Activision-Blizzard, Blizzard is treated as a separate entity from Activision. In a sense Blizzard is a company within a company. Yes, they have to answer to Activision CEO, but they have their own infrastructure and have the power to make decisions independently. So, I don't think this is being forced by Activision-Blizzard.

Keep in mind that this happens all the time in the gaming industry. You work on a project and when you have completed that project, unless you've been reassigned to a new project, are usually let go. This goes on in all gaming companies (Square-Enix and Namco-Bandai come to mind).

Granted, no one knows for sure and everything said here in speculation on our part, but I thought I'd add my 2 copper to this conversation.

Shinanji

Ok Drakkenfyre. So you're unhappy I assumed that every account is $15/mo. Let's stick with $10. What's $10x10m subscribers? Is that or is that not a healthy amount of revenue?

If you want to accept Mr. Mohraime's statement as fact without any verification be my guess. And if you want to accept that Activision would not reduce headcount to maximize profits at the expense of customers and developers (Such as Blizzard) you're more than welcome to.

I will do neither. SEC filings are carefully tailored to meet legal requirements and to make the company look as good as possible to investors (Again I point to Enron, Solyndra, GM, and a raft of other failing and failed companies as examples). And Mr. Mohraine's statements are nothing more than spin.

Where's the breakdown on who's getting laid off? From where? How does that compare to total staff? What's the savings in comparison to payroll prior to the layoffs? Without information like this you're just guessing on the reasons for the layoffs and spinning it in a way to make it palatable for yourself. That's your choice.

I'm sticking with more grounded and verifiable information.

I believe that the correct average is closer to $8. I'm quite sure China and some other Asian markets pay much less than that per month on average, and places like Brazil and Russia have a much smaller subscription ($8 in Brazil, not sure the exact value in Russia).

I am unhappy because using the "X fee per month equals revenue" is like saying "Endgame content was cleared a week after it's released. Blizzard's content sucks."

When you make that statement, you are showing yourself to be uninformed. And when you use uninformed facts, the rest of your assumptions may or may not be correct.

As I said, a guy in Brazil said he pays $88 a YEAR. Add all the players from Brazil, that's a hell of alot less than $15 a month combined from all of them. Players in the US and some other regions can select 3 or 6-month subscriptions, which knock the price down to as low as $12 a month. Some regions like China DON'T PAY MONTHLY AT ALL. They pay on an hourly basis which averages up to the monthly cost if the player keeps playing. And considering a vast majority of the subscribers come from Asia, you better believe that makes a difference in profits. When the subscribers were at 12 million, only 2 million were actually from the US. The rest were foreign subscriptions.

And you don't count in operating costs. Those servers the game runs on aren't free. The bandwidth the servers use isn't free. The support staff for the servers aren't free. Then add in the cost for developing the game and producing the content you use.

Going "Oh, look, $15 a month per 10 million accounts equals a ton of money and all they do is waste it" makes you look like a moron.

And for the record, I don't like Activision either, and I am not saying this is all 100% the truth, and isn't spurred from lost accounts. But using that same, old tired line when trying to back up your statements shows that you are uninformed. It's like people ranting about PVP and how easy raids are. Do you expect to take their comments seriously about PVE? Or people who rant about how easy the game is when the TOP guilds in the world, who played on the PTR's for months beforehand, clear a raid the first week it's out. Do you expect to listen to those people? Do you think they are right just because 1% of the world's highest guilds have cleared something?