Right now, the attention to Blizzard is the recent Microsoft bid to acquire Activision Blizzard. However, you might have missed out on other disheartening news surfacing this week. Thanks to IGN, we’re finding out that Blizzard is finding their employees are leaving the studio at an alarming rate. This might make some fans a bit concerned about what the future might hold for some of their favorite upcoming games or updates. In particular, it seems that the World of Warcraft development team is having problems creating an internal crisis map.
That’s at least what one game producer stated on Twitter recently. Adam Glaxigrav on Twitter is a producer for World of Warcraft and vented his frustrations over Blizzard. In Adam’s eyes, the studio is losing some incredibly talented individuals because those in power don’t listen to the game directors. So now there are plenty of staff members handing in their notices which has forced the development team to create crisis maps on what they can ship out.
While development teams are always reevaluating just what can be shipped or what should be scrapped, it’s looking like the developers working on World of Warcraft are actively removing planned content because they simply don’t have the resources to bring it out. When IGN reached out on the matter, the spokesperson from Blizzard reiterated the same sentiment that development studios are always looking at what areas take priority in development.
Meanwhile, one area that might have caused so many employees to leave the company is a forced return to office mandate. With the pandemic, several studios managed to transition their workers to be at home, which allowed remote work to continue on their game projects. Of course, now more companies are finding out that remote work allows projects to continue thriving while cutting down the commute for workers to reach offices.
Having employees return to an office such as Blizzard might have been the final straw for some, prompting a new exodus from the studio. Of course, that is purely speculative on my part and noted in a follow-up tweet of Adam but Allison Steele, which is a game designer for World of Warcraft. Only time will tell just how much this exodus will play a role in what content will start coming out for the popular MMORPG.
