• RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Blizzard President Mike Ybarra out as well.

    Ybarra gone is great news. Its sad that 9% of the 22k employees at Activision-Blizzard-King have their roles eliminated because they overlap, but smaller teams tend to be easier to focus during development.

    Ideally, anyone in leadership that was put there under Kotick should be investigated and eliminated if needed as well, since nothing Kotick did is trustworthy. And hopefully many of the 1900 employees laid off are.

  • paultimate14@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Where are all the platitudes about how this merger would be good for the videogame industry now?

    Regulators all over the world really bungled this by allowing it to happen. Only gonna get worse from here.

    • BasketKees@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I am not in a position to judge if this merger will be good for the industry, but this round of layoffs says nothing about that either.

      On an individual level it is terrible for the people involved. But on the business level this is a perfectly normal and healthy thing to do and says absolutely nothing about the state of the games industry.

    • a lil bee 🐝@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      These layoffs really aren’t a sign of anything and wouldn’t be something regulators would care about in the first place. Layoffs happen after just about every company merger or acquisition. There will be redundancies, structure changes, budget changes. Some people get their positions shuffled, others just don’t have a good fit in the new scheme. Nothing to do with the health of the business or the competition impact on the industry. It definitely sucks for those impacted, and I hope they land on their feet soon.

      • paultimate14@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        That absolutely impacts the competition in the industry. Competition isn’t just about protecting consumers. Consolidation hurts the competition among employers, vendors/partners, lenders/creditors, pretty much every single possible relationship a business can have.

        And yes, layoffs happen with pretty much every merger and acquisition. That’s a huge part of why those are bad, and why most developed countries have regulatory agencies responsible for preventing that, most of which have suffered from regulatory capture.

        How much did Microsoft pay you to post here?

        • a lil bee 🐝@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Oh cmon, it’s pretty silly to throw the “paid shill” thing out just because I don’t think these particular layoffs are a regulatory issue. If expected layoffs were a regulatory issue, mergers would almost never occur. Maybe that’s your preference, and that’s fine. But that’s not the current stance of most regulatory agencies.

          • paultimate14@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            It’s a regulatory issue that the servers are occurring lol.

            In the US we have laws against this, that have been either ignored by the FTC or overruled by corrupt judges for decades

            • a lil bee 🐝@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Can you please cite any law that could be interpreted to consider a layoff of ~1000 employees as anti competitive? I’m just not seeing it. Not a shill, not a hidden astroturfer, and I’ve even been impacted by post-acquisition layoffs twice in my career. I just don’t think this is a legal issue or a valid reason to kill the acquisition.

              • paultimate14@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                Assuming you’re in the US, you should have learned about the Sherman Antitrust Act in school, so that would be a good place for you to start looking if you’re interested.

                Section 1:

                    Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal.
                
                Section 2:
                
                    Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor [. . . ]
                

                Nowhere does it mention that “competition” is only related to consumer prices. It’s covers all transactional relationships. There have been further anti-trust laws passed in the US, but this is basically where it all started.

                The FTC and DOJ have also partnered in recent years on other labor-related monopoly issues. For example, the FTC is expected to vote this year on banning non-compete clauses from employment agreements.

                • a lil bee 🐝@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  I know what the Sherman Antitrust Act is. I’m asking you to cite anything at all, a section of the law, an application in a case, anything, where this law or any other could be interpreted as prohibiting these layoffs. I’m sorry, but if the argument is that ~1000 layoffs is somehow impacting competition in the industry, that’s just not convincing to me. And again, you want to argue that other impacts of this acquisition impact competition, that’s entirely reasonable, but if you’re hinging all of this on the idea that a couple thousand layoffs violate the basic text of the Sherman Antitrust Act, I do not believe your interpretation of that act is correct.

    • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      At least Bobby is still gone. That ghoul would also be laying people off right now with the way the industry has been flinging hatchets.

  • MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    I worked at ABK for a while and I honestly can’t think of that many people in my department that could be let go without major repercussions.