Baby Bovoch 90% Shrink "Unintended" After 3 Years

Benny is a grade A troll. He really is. I haven't wanted to ****ing e-punch someone on the interwebs this badly since around '97.

 

I solved the problem by ignoring him.

 

There is a lot of stuff I would like to say about this whole thing, but I haven't, and I won't.

Despite appearances, and some of the accusations leveled against me, I don't like to be negative for the sake of being negative, and that's what it would be at this point.

When it turns out I'm right about nothing changing, or things getting worse, it brings me no joy.

It doesn't take a psychic to know how things are going to go these days, just someone who's been conscious for the last 5 or so years.

 

I've got him on ignore as well. The problem is that I can't be assed to login and go through the terrible captcha process on the OF every time I pop in so I end up seeing his drivel.

 

That's a whole lot of people for 2 games with only 2 or 3 people each actively working on them.

 

Makes me wonder what it must be like to work there. I assume most employees are just there for the paycheck at this point.

Decided to read a glassdoor review and found one that gives a really bad look into what's going on. The title is 'Cruelty, ignorance and incompetence at the top'. If you read it this in game change becomes clearly understandable. What a nightmare it must be to work there. Here is what they posted, some crazy stuff:

Daybreak is run like a mafia. Employees are ordered to spy on others who are suspected of being disloyal. Management issued stern warnings that those who are reported for negativity, even when off campus, can be terminated. Work environment is hostile. Employees are pitted against each other. Teams are pitted against each other. HR cannot be trusted. They are used as a tool to manipulate and threaten staff. Management is demonstrably incompetent. Insists on changes to projects that are often unfeasible and sometimes impossible and always out of touch with the project. Upper management are bullies. Leads are undermined, retaliated against, and replaced if they do not follow marching orders. Zero accountability at the top. Decisions made by management result in the loss of millions of dollars. Yet management proudly shows off their new luxury cars and new houses, in the wake of layoffs and ever-dwindling profit sharing bonuses. Company brings in premium hires to run existing teams. These types invariably undermine the game's experts and sink team morale as they ram through uninformed decisions. Buildings are half-empty. Three large layoffs in the past 15 months. Staff fired for minor infractions. Good people have left or are leaving for more stability and less hostility. Daybreak is struggling to bring on and keep quality staff. Management asked employees to write positive reviews to offset the negative ones. Company is in the midst of a re-branding to shed their bad industry reputation, while keeping the same people and policies that led to this reputation. Owners are desperately trying to sell company while simultaneously running it into the ground.

 

Bubble Gnomes, and especially dip-sticks like Burrito have the remarkable ability to completely miss the point of any comment that conflicts with their agenda.

Doubtful anyone wants DBG to fail. What (I) want is for the mistreatment of customers to stop. I can tolerate continued dumb decisions, but not the shady sh*t.

IMO, 50% of the problem left for WoW. The remaining portion of the problem is still there, and if DBG and/or Jen Chan is unwilling to confront it (Kander, Caith) then they'll have no one to blame but themselves when title does close.

Of course, DBG may be expecting to shutter EQ2 at some point anyway.

 

EQ2 has 20+ or so at the moment apparantly, I'd imagine EQ1 has similar.

Then you have all the additional people, marketing, producers, community etc.

 

I counted around 40 people in that picture. I read somewhere (can't remember where) that EQ1 has a slightly bigger staff atm; something like 10% to 20% bigger.

Course, lot's peeps do double duty, and there are others who I'm sure serve roles for DBG as a whole.

Also pretty confident there's probably a half a dozen interns, admin folks, etc.

40 devs would be a lot, but 40 people really isn't.

 

You'd never know it by the quality and quantity of the content put out.

 

Which one is Kander and which is Caith?

 

My theory is EQ3 was in the works, and has since been postponed or put on hold. Holly has left because it's not due to happen, and some of the developers who were working on it, are the new people we are seeing crop up on EQ1/EQ2 team. (Better to have some job than no job?)

Pure 100% theory crafting.

 

>>>My theory<<< is Longdale bet the farm on bringing back an army of former customers, and when that fell flat on it's face, so did she.

DBG wasn't going to fund any new development and she'd already harvested the crap out of eq2.

That left EQ1, and even if it generated enough revenue to fund new development (which I doubt), I'll bet Tekka's substantial cookie budget she got a directive to implement a more aggressive revenue model for it.

All the revenue get's paid to DBG. DPG makes their funding request, and DBG says yes/no/how much. In banking we called it the golden rule: whomever has the gold, makes the rules.

IMO, EQ3 was never going to get the funding needed to make the project credible. At best, the effort was window dressing for potential buyers, and the worst, a pipe dream.

Longdale left because her plan failed and she saw nothing but bad events on the horizon, so she bailed ahead of them.

 

My theory was something like this:

Higher Up: I want you to make me X monies.
HLD: Ok, well, here's my pl...
Higher Up: IDGAF, Make me X monies.
HLD: Uh, Ok!

Some time later

Higher Up: STFD and STFU.
HLD: Yes Higher Up person.
Higher Up: You were told X monies.
HLD: Yes, well, I had a pla...
Higher Up: FU, X monies, y/n?
HLD: No.
Higher Up: Ur ded 2me, GTFO.

 

Yeah, pretty much. I've gone back in forth between her getting fired, or leaving before she got fired. Doesn't really matter. She's gone. All silly speculation anyway.

You and I surely agree on how it probably works though. SOE was bought by investors. They're not interested in developing EQ3.

They're interested extracting as much profit as they can, as quickly as they can. No way in hell they're stuffing $60-$100MM into EQ3.

Opportunity costs and all that.

 

Imo if she was fired, she'd be unlikely to have a job at Blizzard so quick. The fact her post mentioned new once in a life time oppurtunities too...


Imo she chose to leave and had it all lined up.

 

She got a job at Blizzard which is one heck of a lifeboat off of the sinking ship that is DBG. Once in a lifetime opportunity, just like she said.