theguardian.com

JohnFoe, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?

Might sound like a bit of a conspiracy theorist here, but if all of the big tech companies lay off people at the same time, why could they not hire their recently laid off competitors for a fraction of the cost?

Obviously it drives down the cost of the salaries and lowers the average hiring rate. Huge wins for all these massive companies.

And to prove that they all did this “together” when they all did it a few weeks apart will be rather difficult too.

Maybe that’s just me thinking from both corporations and employees side at the same time, though…

brlemworld,

That’s illegal.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Why would it? I usually get a pay raise when I get a new job.

What’s actually going on is they’re massaging the numbers a bit to get investors to invest more. Salaries aren’t the concern here, it’s just a game of staying on the investing trends to get the most investor capital they can. Employees are just caught in the crossfire.

JohnFoe,

Have you done this from a position of not having a job in tech though? Having thousands of other employees also vie-ing for that same position with equivalent experience or better?

If you have obligations any job is better than no job from a position of no job, no pay.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Yup. I lost my job at the start of COVID in tech and found a new one with a better salary. I had a house, wife and kids, and I was the sole bread winner. It took several months, but I had cash reserves and found a good position at a good company (I was a bit picky).

I wasn’t part of a huge layoff, but a lot of people were looking for jobs at the same time due to shifting markets. My old company was downsizing due to market shifts, and the new company was expanding due to unrelated, company-specific reasons.

shalafi,

As another poster said, those of us in tech generally get a significant pay bump, significant. Hell, that goes for most people with skills and experience.

I’ve preached before on here, move on, keep moving on.

sharkfucker420, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?
@sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml avatar

Line need go up more

Agent641,

Where u get MBA?

sharkfucker420,
@sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml avatar

You don’t need an MBA to know that the goal of a large business is to deliver profit to its investors and that this can be accomplished by cutting costs.

Evotech, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?

Same reason as every other tech company

yamanii, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?
@yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

The line went up but not as high as expected so now Riot games owner of the most popular videogame League of Legends need to fire 500 people.

p03locke, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?
@p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Mergers.

RightHandOfIkaros, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?

Plenty of profit to go around. The issue is shareholders expect infinite growth, which is impossible.

Capitalism (when it works best) basically requires occasional market crashes that can “reset” the wealth distribution. But for obvious reasons, nobody wants that.

So every year, shareholders get richer and expect bigger growth next year, but eventually the profits will plateau. And one can only guess what happens then.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

When the profits plateau, you look for the next thing the market wants. Sometimes those bets are right, and sometimes they're wrong. In the meantime, people were paid salaries out of investors' pockets while they worked on providing the next potential answer. That's what happened here.

Zugyuk, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?

Greed

TheFriar, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?

…because capitalism.

Alexstarfire, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?

Pursuit of bigger numbers.

PrincessEli, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?

Funny how all the retarded NPCs cry about greed, over the fact that they think every random idiot is entitled to a paycheck for all of eternity regardless of whether or not anyone actually wants to employ them.

BolexForSoup,
@BolexForSoup@kbin.social avatar

all the r—- NPC’s

  1. Who straight faced says NPC’s?
  2. It isn’t 1999 don’t use that word.
BeigeAgenda,
@BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca avatar

Some people love universal basic income, other people love to see people starve.

DessertStorms, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?
@DessertStorms@kbin.social avatar

Greed.

Deceptichum, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?
@Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works avatar
JohnnyCanuck, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?
@JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca avatar

They do this every year and nobody cares.

BolexForSoup,
@BolexForSoup@kbin.social avatar

Not at this rate and not nearly as many studios close per year.

Mango,

Hey don’t call me nobody! I have a whole body.

echo64, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?

There’s some off-base comments here that ignore why the industry is being hit particularly hard. Note that when it comes to companies like Microsoft, you’re right it’s pure greed. They don’t need to shed those jobs, but that will make shareholders money, so bye-bye livelihood. Fuck Microsoft in particular on this round of layoffs, money for a 65 billion purchase but nothing else, pricks.

But for most of the job losses, it really comes down to high interest rates. High interest rates disincentivizes investing. And the past decade or so has been highly investment based.

A lot of the traditional big publishers like EA and Activision went entirely in-house, so any studio outside of those big ones needed to find funding somewhere. They turned to investment companies.

This works whilst investing is cheap, but when it’s hard to come by, suddenly you have to make payroll and can’t. This is why Embracer has failed, for example.

FenrirIII,
@FenrirIII@lemmy.world avatar

Why were people laid off by Microsoft? Were they redundant after the acquisition? Were they part of departments that were cut? Like 90% of acquisitions lead to layoffs.

stopthatgirl7,
@stopthatgirl7@kbin.social avatar

But Microsoft told the FTC they specifically were not gonna do that after the merger, which is why the FTC is angry at them. https://www.polygon.com/24065269/ftc-microsoft-activision-deal-layoffs-appeal

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

Very true, and Microsoft in particular could have just shouldered the cost of those employees and likely found more work for a lot of them. Some of what I've heard from Jeff Grubb in the past week or two is that ABK expanded by 3000 employees in the past two years while interest rates were cheap, so it was unlikely they did so sustainably; and hundreds of those who were laid off were basically the entirety of Microsoft's physical distribution department, which we'll probably hear in this upcoming business update no longer exists for Xbox going forward.

originalucifer, to games in Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

pure corporate greed.

i think its the stock market. it creates this false reality where things need to keep climbing.

if you have a company where everyone gets paid, and the customer is very satisfied and you have no profit you are somehow a complete failure. because we all just cant be.

the stock market is humanities downfall... human greed distilled, authorized and removed from all responsibility.

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