This merger was a fucking mistake.
You’ve just summed up the last 40 years of antitrust.
What was that? Couldn’t hear you over the layoffs
I’m not cheering for the layoffs, of course, nor am I necessarily in favour of monopolies and the consolidation of the gaming industry (although, in this instance, I think it’s probably a positive thing for fans of Blizzard IPs). But layoffs during this kind of merger/buyout are expected. Microsoft has its own legal departments, payroll departments, marketing departments, etc, and while they might need expanding slightly as the company grows/absorbs new companies, they don’t need an entire second company’s worth of those departments.
These layoffs were about cutting redundancy rather than just chasing short-term profits. It sucks for the people who were laid off either way, but I think it’s good to be realistic about why they happened.
So you’re saying that if Microsoft hadn’t hoovered up another company due to being creatively bankrupt, almost two thousand people would still have a job?
