Despite healthy sales, publishers such as Epic Games and Activision Blizzard are making hundreds of employees redundant – which may radically reshape the industry
This. I’ll be the last one to defend any of these megacorps but folks calling it greed are being reductive. These are publicly traded companies which means their loyalty is to their shareholders and their #1 goal is to make them more money than they made them last quarter. So it’s more than greed, it’s their job within this capitalist system. They have to do that every quarter for as long as they exist. The only ways to do it are to increase revenue or decrease costs. If they can’t make enough money they have to fire people. That’s the world we’ve built.
But it’s not only about making more profit than last quarter, but also the amount the profits increased by has to be higher than the amount they increased by the quarter before last. That’s how you end up with companies seeing record profits and still laying people off. They made more than last quarter, but only 2% more. The quarter before they made 3% more so now people have to go. It’s insane.
This. I’ll be the last one to defend any of these megacorps but folks calling it greed are being reductive. These are publicly traded companies which means their loyalty is to their shareholders and their #1 goal is to make them more money than they made them last quarter. So it’s more than greed, it’s their job within this capitalist system. They have to do that every quarter for as long as they exist. The only ways to do it are to increase revenue or decrease costs. If they can’t make enough money they have to fire people. That’s the world we’ve built.
But it’s not only about making more profit than last quarter, but also the amount the profits increased by has to be higher than the amount they increased by the quarter before last. That’s how you end up with companies seeing record profits and still laying people off. They made more than last quarter, but only 2% more. The quarter before they made 3% more so now people have to go. It’s insane.