Asmongold has his own opinion on the current situation at Activision Blizzard. Many employees are quitting – and that will make WoW worse.
In the last few days and weeks there have been many opinions about Activision Blizzard and their new regulations. Even the biggest streamer on World of Warcraft, Asmongold, does not hold back his views and makes it clear what he thinks of this approach.
What does Asmongold say? Asmongold first responded to a popular meme depicting Activision Blizzard’s apparent “master plan.” You first create the best WoW expansion since “Legion”, then force all employees from their home office back to the office and then realize that many employees are quitting.
He points out that other companies have also forced a return to the office – such as Riot (League of Legends) or Square Enix (Final Fantasy). But one hardly hears from these companies that developers would leave en masse.
Asmongold shares the following thoughts:
It just looks better these days if you work for Riot or Square Enix and not Blizzard. And that’s what it creates – and this is well known, even by people who don’t know much about it – Blizzard just doesn’t pay well. You 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 that happening. And I think whenever something like that happens, it makes the quality of the content worse because [die Entwickler] are totally stressed. And whenever people are super stressed, they’re probably not making the best content. It’s literally that simple.
I hope things get better, but… oh man.
What is it about? A few days ago, statements by WoW developers on Twitter caused an uproar. Because apparently Activision Blizzard is losing more and more talented developers. This is due to the “return to the office” rule, which requires developers to be in the office at least 2 days out of 5 per week.
But that doesn’t seem to fit the reality of many developers’ lives – they’ve either been hired as “home office only”, live too far from the nearest Activision office, or simply can’t afford to live in Irvine.
Just a year ago, Blizzard hired almost 100 new employees to work on World of Warcraft and the content patches. However, it seems that many of the employees are now retiring because the obligation to return to the office is something that no longer fits into their everyday life or cannot be reconciled with salary or family.
Elsewhere, fans are happy – because a Warcraft TV series is becoming more and more likely.