“Mythic laid off 80 people today, which is about 40% of the company and responsible for 90% of the content. According to a friend of mine who left before this happened, they’re putting Warhammer into ‘maintenance mode.’”
~ Athryn
Quote of the Day #2
November 9, 2009 by Syp
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Ugh, how many more times will this post get quoted and accepted as fact without actual proof.
The fact is if 40% of the company was doing 90% of the work, then it sounds like there was something wrong already. Just too bad that people has to loose their job.
Maintenance mode after one year. Not good.
@Jaye: The majority of the staff on an MMORPG are working on the server team, tech support, customer service, billing, etc. So yes, it is, on paper, principle that EA fired everyone but the folks needed to keep the servers up and collect the monthly fees so they can continue charging as long as people are willing to keep paying.
This same person is also posting on an account at QuarterToThree. I was trying to track down two sources for this bit of information and so far have been unable to.
@Green: When you put it that way it, then it sounds much more plausible. Still, I take the numbers with a grain of salt for now.
Ok, after doing a bit of digging, there is NO prove of Mythic being hit with layoffs. If someone has found a reliable source, please post. Gamasutra has three articles about layoffs at EA, Joystiq has one too.
The only mention about Mythic having layoffs comes from a tweet from this Athryn known as Katherine Pitta who also did this supposed forum post.
So far I am calling this bogus. Black Box and Tiburon are the only developers that are mentioned as being officially hit with layoffs.
Please, if anyone can link to a reliable source that confirms this, then please do.
Regardless of who does what amount of work. Cutting 40% of your workforce is not a good sign for the game.
Thats a real shame, I had hoped that they would have steadily improved the game like Age of Conan to a point where it started getting good press and all the problems at launch being ironed out.
WAR sounds like the RvR is great when it gets going, getting a joint account for this and Star Wars would have really appealed but not if it is just a shell of a game plodding along until the player base dwindles off to nothing.
@Jaye: Cuppycake (a non-anonymous developer for Metaplace) says she can confirm several individual Mythic layoffs personally, though she doesn’t have an exact number. My guess would be that the “90% of the content producers” figure might be a qualitative statement from a layoff victim rather than a quantitative one.
http://www.cuppycake.org/?p=989
Then again, your phone reps are relatively unskilled labor, probably paid by the hour. Your game developers are skilled employees who are presumably being paid some sort of a salary. If you have officially given up on the game and are looking to cut costs while riding it out til it dies, the devs are the people to fire first.
[...] windows this morning, and I felt some sadness. I was there at the start, and all that is left is a show of failure. I knew it was inevitable though, the stink of death had been there for weeks. My only hope is, [...]
I wonder how Mythic and WAR would be faring if they hadn’t been acquired by EA a couple years back. There’s a bit of dark humor looking back now to when Mark Jacobs and Jeff Hickman were assuring us that it would still be business as usual at Mythic after the acquisition. Seems like since the game was released, EA has done nothing but bleed Mythic dry.
It is qualitative, basically. Not to discredit the source, but aside from the investor press release that talks about the general layoff number, there are no confirmed numbers or percentages.
The person quoted, who some call an ex-Mythic staffer, is a former volunteer for Mythic that happens to know a few people who work for the studio. Arguably, I have access to the same number of people if not more personally, and I have not been told the layoffs extended to that degree or percentage.
There’s a notion of “maintenance mode”, and it can be reasonably inferred, but it’s not confirmed.
But like Cuppy, I can confirm they have happened at Mythic, on several individual levels. I can say that even though Mythic can’t comment specifically on the layoffs, they do need to come out with some kind of statement to quell a worried remaining playerbase, because the last couple patches have gone fairly well, and endless free trial is not “stink of death” despite what some might think.
@Walter D – I wonder if Blizzard will end up along the same path? Certainly hope not!
@Frank: You are so overly positive.
Ever heard of the dead cat bounce?
@GreenArmadillo — The Cuppy post you reference mentions one person at Mythic, then points to Gamasutra who is quoting the same Katherine Pitta/Athyrn (or somethig) person everyone is quoting.
I’m not saying the numbers are wrong, but I’d like to hear from more than one source that 80 people were whacked from Mythic before I’ll totally believe it.
It’s clear that several were definitely let go, but there’s a big difference between several and 80… I just think its important to look critically at sources during times like this if you want to get the clearest picture of what’s going on.
@Frank
I agree, an official comment from Mythic would be a good thing. All there is now is speculation and the perceived notion that WAR is in just trying to stay afloat for the time being.
@Ravious
Absolutely! Although in my case, my cats sort of bounce and roll (they’re a bit fat). But they end up being ok in the end.
Good bye WAR
What a shame…
@xXJayeDuBXx
Because everyone working at a MMO company works on content? Are you thick?