Just read on Blizzard's method of cutting costs from kotaku:
Blizzard has spent the year taking big measures to cut costs as it prepares for a lean 2019. Those measures, as conveyed by people who work or have worked for the iconic studio, include employee buyouts in which workers are offered money to leave, a broadening of the finance department, and the limitation of budgets for any team at the company that isn’t directly making video games.
Much of Blizzard’s cost-cutting has gone unreported until recently, but it’s been a consistent theme throughout 2018 at the Irvine, California-based studio behind mega-hits like Overwatch and World of Warcraft. One Blizzard program, for example, is called Career Crossroads. It offers healthy severance packages to people who voluntarily take buyouts and choose to leave the company. At first, Career Crossroads was designed for veteran customer service representatives who had been at Blizzard for more than five years, but this year, it opened up to QA and IT, according to one person familiar with the program. Blizzard has also lowered the number of years required to take a buyout, opening up Career Crossroads to even more employees, likely in hopes of increasing those numbers.
“Over the course of the last year, Blizzard has been trying very actively to find creative ways to cut costs that won’t draw negative press attention,” said a former employee.
When asked for comment, Blizzard declined to address other items in this report but did send over a statement about Career Crossroads:
We have had a completely voluntary and long-standing program in various locations around the world that gives eligible staff the option to make the most of incentives while proactively pursuing other career opportunities. No one is required or encouraged to participate in the program, but for those who do, we work hard to make it generous. We’ve been offering it for many years—initially to some of our customer service teams, and we expanded it for a short period of time to a few other departments recently, given that it has proven to be a good way to help people who have been thinking about a career change or going back to school to get a head start on that path if that’s what they want to do. While fewer than 10 people in the departments we recently expanded the program to have taken advantage of it, the general idea is that in addition to providing them with that opportunity, it also helps us give more advancement opportunities to other employees on the team when possible.
Blizzard has spent the year taking big measures to cut costs as it prepares for a lean 2019. Those measures, as conveyed by people who work or have worked for the iconic studio, include employee buyouts in which workers are offered money to leave, a broadening of the finance department, and the limitation of budgets for any team at the company that isn’t directly making video games.
Much of Blizzard’s cost-cutting has gone unreported until recently, but it’s been a consistent theme throughout 2018 at the Irvine, California-based studio behind mega-hits like Overwatch and World of Warcraft. One Blizzard program, for example, is called Career Crossroads. It offers healthy severance packages to people who voluntarily take buyouts and choose to leave the company. At first, Career Crossroads was designed for veteran customer service representatives who had been at Blizzard for more than five years, but this year, it opened up to QA and IT, according to one person familiar with the program. Blizzard has also lowered the number of years required to take a buyout, opening up Career Crossroads to even more employees, likely in hopes of increasing those numbers.
“Over the course of the last year, Blizzard has been trying very actively to find creative ways to cut costs that won’t draw negative press attention,” said a former employee.
When asked for comment, Blizzard declined to address other items in this report but did send over a statement about Career Crossroads:
We have had a completely voluntary and long-standing program in various locations around the world that gives eligible staff the option to make the most of incentives while proactively pursuing other career opportunities. No one is required or encouraged to participate in the program, but for those who do, we work hard to make it generous. We’ve been offering it for many years—initially to some of our customer service teams, and we expanded it for a short period of time to a few other departments recently, given that it has proven to be a good way to help people who have been thinking about a career change or going back to school to get a head start on that path if that’s what they want to do. While fewer than 10 people in the departments we recently expanded the program to have taken advantage of it, the general idea is that in addition to providing them with that opportunity, it also helps us give more advancement opportunities to other employees on the team when possible.
