World of Warcraft workers have voted to unionize the popular video-game franchise, expanding organized labor’s new foothold at Microsoft Corp. by around 500 employees.
Don’t overestimate what unions do. MS is still perfectly in their right to close down the studio and fire all it’s staff, if they had a mind to.
It’s just a matter of doing it properly. Severance Pay, Pensions and such. Which I honestly don’t think Microsoft cares too much about.
I mean, if they can avoid paying it, they would. But they do actually have a legitimate business side. And severance pay for the entire Blizzard staff would likely still cost them less than what they had to pay Kotick to get rid of him.
They have plenty of leverage. WoW runs on centralized servers which cannot maintain themselves, and are likely still under constant forms of Cyberattack, waiting for a serious vulnerability.
I knew a dude who worked at Activision Blizzard and his description of his workplace sounded horrid. The weird part was his fawning bright eyed love for the office culture. He viewed it as a perfect dream workplace. I don’t even know it there’s a takeaway from all that. It just always struck me as notably odd
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who would have guessed that laying off an entire studio overnight would have repercussions, ey Microsoft?
Immediately went from papa microsoft who believes in the studio to “Make money or GTFO”
It turns out that job security is rather important! Who would have thunk that, Microsoft?
Don’t overestimate what unions do. MS is still perfectly in their right to close down the studio and fire all it’s staff, if they had a mind to.
It’s just a matter of doing it properly. Severance Pay, Pensions and such. Which I honestly don’t think Microsoft cares too much about.
I mean, if they can avoid paying it, they would. But they do actually have a legitimate business side. And severance pay for the entire Blizzard staff would likely still cost them less than what they had to pay Kotick to get rid of him.
Maybe now would be a good time to get back into wow
Let’s see how he union negotiations go.
The last expansion was genuinely good and theyre planning a new storyline on a span of 3 extensions!
That’s the second Microsoft Game studio to unionize isn’t it. How excellent!
A man chooses.
A slave obeys.
Fuck YES! Unions unions unions! Unionize the whole industry, let’s fucking goooooo
Do they have any leverage? How much money is wow still making off new content at this point?
WoW is still a lot of money iirc, the playerbase is still big
They have plenty of leverage. WoW runs on centralized servers which cannot maintain themselves, and are likely still under constant forms of Cyberattack, waiting for a serious vulnerability.
TIL World of Warcraft is still a thing.
And goddamnit, yes, their staff should unionize.
Wait, I’m missing something. What does World of Warcraft have in common with Microsoft?
Microsoft purchased Blizzard.
🤯
I must have been under a rock.
No wonder they were able to unionize so quickly. And I bet they had to, knowing Microsoft’s track record.
Being under the ActiBlizzard umbrella wasn’t exactly a walk in the park for a lot of employees either.
I knew a dude who worked at Activision Blizzard and his description of his workplace sounded horrid. The weird part was his fawning bright eyed love for the office culture. He viewed it as a perfect dream workplace. I don’t even know it there’s a takeaway from all that. It just always struck me as notably odd
Sounds like a strange form of Stockholm Syndrome.
And they paid $69 billion, which is the dumb joke amount Elon initially said he’d pay for Twitter, but these dorks actually did it
Of fucking course Bloomberg would describe Blizzard as “Microsoft’s ‘World of Warcraft’ Gaming staff.”
It’s not incorrect though. It is all Microsofts. The IPs, the staff… everything.
Anyone wanna start a sysadmin union? Anyone? Please? My neck is starting to hurt from all the hats they make me wear!