Blizzard Entertainment Is Losing Top Talent As Its Developers Rush To Abandon Ship
World of Warcraft in particular. One of the long-running MMORPG’s producers took to Twitter to air his grievances and point fingers at upper management for the loss of another talented employee.
“Blizzard is losing amazing talent because someone in power doesn’t listen to the game directors who make his products,” Glaxigrav tweeted. “We are creating crisis maps of what we can or cannot ship. THAT is the loss of capacity we’re facing. I literally have a schedule I strike out as people hand in notice.”
The news shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone though as Blizzard's annual report last year revealed that the company was experiencing a higher turnover rate and struggling with “labor shortages, increasing competition for talent, and increasing attrition.” The parade of legal scandals, sexual harassment complaints, and worker mistreatment exposés that racked the company over the past two years have also taken a huge toll on morale, not to mention the media attention they garnered.
President Mike Ybarra's morale-draining return-to-work proclamation during a company meeting and lead developer Brian Birmingham's firing for refusing to use a toxic employee evaluation system and calling out ABK for pressuring the WoW dev team to release expansions early have also contributed to the company's troubles. With all these problems, it's not surprising that Blizzard’s employees are clamoring for the exit.
Update: Blizzard has provided us this statement regarding this story:
"This is not a team practice for WoW. However, making decisions around priorities, iterating, and ensuring quality are everyday parts of game development."
Being loud about it because I've lost yet *another* person this week.
Blizzard is losing amazing talent because someone in power doesn't listen to the game directors who make his products. DE&I also means diversity of thought, especially when it's backed by data and financials.
— Adam 💙 #ABetterABK (@Glaxigrav) April 18, 2023
