A lot of the air in the games industry is being sucked out by Fortnite. Indirectly this is the cause of these layouts. Fortnite directly completes against Overwatch and it is taking away time that gamers would otherwise spent on other A/B titles.
When there has just been a noticeable decrease in quality of Blizzard games since they have merged.
- Heroes tried to to cash in on the loot box craze and from what I have seen has been very negative
- Diablo has basically been ignored except for their mobile app (which went on to hurt Blizzard's reputation and just strengthen a competing game, Path of Exile)
On the Activision side, there were reports that a good portion of this could be tied to support staff for Destiny 2 no longer being needed.
Overwatch seems to actually be doing pretty well, and I would not be surprised if it was the only team not affected by layoffs.
Heroes hands out loot boxes like candy, I'd say you'll get three or four times as many as Overwatch. And then Heroes also adds a reroll mechanic, where for a trivial gold (currency from doing matches and in-game quests) amount, you can reroll the box up to three times. And as with Overwatch, of course, loot boxes are cosmetics only (except for the very rare hero unlock, which most people aren't getting via loot boxes anyways).
I've rarely been dissatisfied with a Heroes lootbox because I can reroll it until it's good, and I've always gotten so many Heroes lootboxes I've never even felt the drive to buy any. And then in addition to the ability to use your duplicate currency to forge the exact cosmetics you want, Heroes is going to re-add direct cash purchase for all skins, so you don't need to buy loot boxes to buy skins. I've bought a number of skins over the years, but never paid for a loot box.
Probably the "best" way to spend money on Heroes if you want to (though you have really no reason you have to), is you can get stim packs to increase your XP (no in-game benefit) and gold generation.
The reroll mechanic in Heroes is really really nice, I've never been really "disappointed" with a loot box open, and that's after playing it pretty regularly since beta.
Unless I am mistaken, they removed the ability to buy them outright (with cash, not with in game currency) outside of Loot Boxes.
They also took out, for the most part, the ability to straight up buy skins (rather than rolling lootboxes for them), but they are reintroducing that very soon (edit: tomorrow!), it was just announced: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/heroes/t/heroes-of-the-sto...
Yes they brought it along the lines of many other games (however that argument is how we got Battlefront 2's loot box disaster). But it is still a major change in how the game works post launch. Something that could very realistically piss off a lot of people.
The timing of this however.
- 2.0 launched about a year ago
- 3 or 4 months ago they announced a shift of resources away from Heroes
- Now they are adding in a feature back to the game
That isn't actually showing that Heroes necessarily did anything right when it came to adding loot boxes.
The loot box mechanics in Heroes are, indeed, the most pleasant way one can possibly receive loot boxes, hands down. If you are going to do loot boxes, you should do loot boxes the way Heroes does loot boxes.
But I do not want to buy loot boxes, the limited direct buy options actually limited how much I was spending on Heroes, as I want to buy items. And thankfully, they are going to reintroduce that option, while still maintaining the best loot box system ever made, which gives you delightful free loot boxes at extremely frequent intervals. So I can spend money to buy what I want, and still enjoy the free loot.
And perhaps that's the model loot boxes will hopefully someday be moved to, once the paid gambling aspect is illegal: Just give players free stuff in loot boxes, and let them buy the stuff they really want.
I do wonder about the software engineering practices at Blizzard. One release fixes a bug, the next release adds it back. Hearthstone very clearly has zero unit tests, because so much easily testable stuff is just broken. I think it's always been that way, though; the "Blizzard polish" is about art and sound, the code is very average in quality. (That may be the norm for the game industry, though.)
Having said that, I doubt Blizzard is quite ready to give up on Overwatch. They are probably going to make quite a bit of money off of Overwatch League. But the balance changes they implement for the pro players is off-putting to casuals, so I doubt many new players will be buying the game. (Mercy and D.va were always appealing to players new to FPSes because they can contribute immediately to their team with strategy rather than raw mechanics... but both heroes have suffered nerf after nerf after nerf because OWL viewers really want to see raw aim, not someone holding up a defense matrix to save their team from that aim. I see the game in 3 years being 6 Widowmakers vs. 6 Widowmakers, because that's what pro players really want.)
Hearthstone is in a pretty good place. I feel like they've stepped up their balancing a lot, and their competitor Artifact seems to have fallen flat on its face. I am guessing that their team won't see many cuts. They should hire some software engineers in test, though.
Blizzard meanwhile just maintains their flagship products but some are no longer growing like WoW (over a decade old but man it's time to let go) and Hearthstone (Magic Arena is making a huge push for the more competitive crowd, Gwent is struggling but is releasing new content, Artifact was a bust but valve has money to burn and no investors to please). Don't get me wrong, these games are the market leaders but they aren't growing anymore which is what investors worry about. Overwatch seems very promising but I think OWL is overvalued with franchise fees going from $20 million to $60 million in a year while CSGO; Dota 2 and League tournaments have a greater amount of viewership at a fraction of the cost.
Diablo Mobile is pretty much DOA from a fan perspective but mobile games can make a ton of money especially when targeting the asian market which they have a lot of experience in. And the WarCraft 3 remake is a crowd pleaser but I can't imagine it selling like hotcakes, but I could be wrong.
Again, If I were an investor I would jump ship and probably invest in another publisher.
Don't get me wrong, I get the realities at play here, but Blizzard was a better company (for consumers) before Activision and when Activision was acting more as a partner than a corporate overlord. Many of the stories coming out from ex employees are disheartening. The Diablo fiasco was disheartening, as was the swift cancellation of the competitive HoS league.
Blizzard always sold themselves as a "by gamers, for gamers" company, and they were for a long time. That doesn't appear to be the case any longer.
Activision / Blizzard obviously realizes that fortnite is doing well, and could ramp up development on some new future competitor, why would fortnite be a reason to cause layoffs? They could react in a slew of ways to combat the issue, layoffs simply put them in a position where they can't attack.
There are layoffs in the game industry because there are always layoffs in the game industry. Ramp up when starting a game, hiring through building it, firing after it's out and stable and at a cadence when you don't need all those silly game makers to just keep the ball rolling.
If you've been paying attention then you know there is far more than ramping up and back down at play right now in Blizzard.
"Don't you have phones?"
Blizzard has been struggling to connect with fans for longer than Fortnite co-op has been a thing. There are some prior employees who have been quite vocal about the situation: they simply don't know to continue printing money without upsetting their fans. The merger with Activision was a very strong signal: how does it make any sense that a beloved publisher that is known for innovative games team up with a publisher who pushes out the same games every year? The straw is a mobile game while everyone was waiting for the next PC (and potentially console) launch.
"The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes."
Then consider EA, everyone's pet hate (for good reason). Here's a company that has been testing gamers in terms of micro-transactions for years. With Apex, not only have they earned a lot of trust by following Epic's lead, they have put out a title that is genuinely fun and innovative [in the space]. They are listening to the market.
> A lot of the air in the games industry is being sucked out by Fortnite.
There are currently 317K viewers of Apex on Twitch and 108K Fortnite. This clearly isn't true. There's plenty of air to be had. I'm venturing off-topic here, but the problem with Overwatch is that it's team-based competitive; that attracts a certain type of player-base. If you don't play the ladder (in a year I had about 6 hours total in that toxic hell hole), good luck finding games without quitters.
If Blizzard put out a decent Diablo 4, or Starcraft 3, I can almost guarantee they'd find a lot of room to breathe, but a mobile ARPG/HnS was printing money in Asia, so we have that.