Erm....PWE laying off staff from it's mmorpg teams and substudios....?

lyaise

Reports are circulating about downsizing & layoffs within PWE.
Here is one link:
http://massivelyop.com/2017/02/03/rumor-perfect-world-is-undergoing-layoffs-damage-extent-unknown/

Maybe a community manager can give an accurate picture of this, together with any impact on their games - including this one.

arabatur

LaughingTrendy, the senior CM left PWE yesterday. Read into that what you will.

wylonus

was Trendy used to be "Starry-eye Elf" on older forum pages?

samaka

The very article you linked says that PWE stated they will release a statement later today... so I guess we just have to wait and see what's going on!

instynctive

And the statement:

“This week, Perfect World Entertainment did experience a reduction in staff of under 30 employees. Perfect World employs thousands of people from all over the world and decisions like this are always difficult. However, we are incredibly grateful for the contributions of those individuals impacted and will do our best to help each of them through this transition. This reduction in workforce will not impact any of the games published by Perfect World Entertainment.”

samaka

Well, that was short and simple.

I wonder what lead to the termination of these employees?

loboguild

The layoff of LaughingTrendy is particularly puzzling. She gets promoted (sort of) to a higher role within the PWE team and replaced as CM (they hired a @nitocris83 counterpart for STO) only to be shut down a few months later?

Hopefully this doesn't mean @nitocris83 has to do additional stuff for PWE. I was so happy that the game finally got its own full-time CM...

vandignesca

loboguild said:

The layoff of LaughingTrendy is particularly puzzling. She gets promoted (sort of) to a higher role within the PWE team and replaced as CM (they hired a @nitocris83 counterpart for STO) only to be shut down a few months later?

Hopefully this doesn't mean @nitocris83 has to do additional stuff for PWE. I was so happy that the game finally got its own full-time CM...

Unfortunately, a trend I've noticed increasingly over the last 4 years is that more and more companies are downsizing pr/community management teams, and either abandoning those efforts, or leaving it up to the developers. Some games I've played from very well-off companies (and games that were making money) have laid off community managers, and gone in favor of direct-to-player developer communication or unpaid volunteer moderation. In some cases it hasn't signaled trouble at all for the game (in one game, developement increased and an expansion was released after an entire community team was laid off-5 employess-and the expansion was launched with no community management team. The devs answered any questions on the forums). I think with social media still strong, and word of mouth ever present (especially with the growth of Twitch), companies have decided less throughput from them is needed to manage and communicate a product than before. So, these layoffs are seen as clean and efficient cost-cutting. That's just the world we live in today. Best wishes for those affected.

Unknown

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hudman21

Is it possible that the reduction in staff may mean, placing that saved money back into the game hoping to build it back up?

Unknown

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demonmonger

So much for the we have 12million users bit... 12 million users and only 25 paying to play...

If the company producers listened to us about what we desired in game and what we would be inclined to purchase instead of key nerfing, skill tweaking, money grabbing us to death... I am sure their pockets would be overflowing with zen.

Less and less people are trusting the company and the products made by the company and those associated with it.

@mimicking#6533

dread4moor

Regrets for the layoffs.
A very scary time to be suddenly unemployed and uninsured (in Murica , anyway).
Sincere wishes for quick re-employment.
@magenubbie
"Any company worth their salt fixes bugs first before adding new content."
That is the truest truism in Trueville.
And so many of us said this over and over to no avail.
We have a hole in our cruis ship and it is sinking. Passengers are scared. The Captain's Solution:
Build a new shiny VIP passenger deck.
Sounds ridiculous, right?
But how is building Mod11 on the broken foundation of a broken game any different?
I loved this game, but each week I log on (and spend real $) less and less.

iandarksword

Where's @kolatmaster with the Michael Jackson popcorn meme?

armadeonx

I've been suspecting money problems / pressure from PWE to increase profits. The lockbox keys, DF bells, quest completion packs, Tarm bar store etc etc.

The funny thing is if they made things cheaper people would buy more but there's no way in hell would I ever pay $10 for 1k Zen worth of product. My personal opinion is they overcharge by around 200% of the actual product value.

vida44

loboguild said:

Hopefully this doesn't mean @nitocris83 has to do additional stuff for PWE. I was so happy that the game finally got its own full-time CM...

I'm not happy. Our CM is not interacting much on the forum. Even less then Strum to be more accurate. The news doesn't have anymore "Discus on the official forum" part. The News about Maintenance sometimes fails to say if it's a server reset or a patch. I'm not sure if our CM is aware that a site has a devtracker where we can easily see her posts on the forum.

superent666

I agree to what´s been said about the zen-shop. Apart from VIP there´s not much in there that makes me want to spend money. And while I would have desperately wanted to buy campaign completions back then for 2 alts the price just made me laugh.
The latest fixation on selling legendary keys is also quite a sad affair. Without it they wouldn´t have had to spend so much dev time on fishing and HE...lengthy boring affairs made to induce a lot of players to cave in and just buy keys for mSVA.
I mean fishing....while looking nice and well executed...it still is basically like this game for toddlers where some animal will snort while the button with a picture blinks prompting the kid to slap a meaty fist on it. And while the toddler might do that for hours having a blast ...clearly the regular adult is supposed to be annoyed after a while and search for an exit-option....:P
So much dev time freed up and to be used in better ways with a different strategy for creating revenue....

tripsofthrymr

Layoffs suck. They're hard on those let go and hard on those that pick up the additional work.

Sometimes they are done because they must be, to keep the company alive. Sometimes they're done to increase profits (with the tacit assumption that those remaining will work harder). In the USA's current, fairly strong economy (google "how good is us economy"), a common reason for layoffs is to align the workforce with the company's evolving needs. When the economy is strong, companies tend to do well financially. When the economy is strong, workers won't accept a heap of extra work for the sake of corporate profits.

The true reason for the layoffs probably isn't known outside of a relatively small circle at PWE. Speculation without facts won't result in meaningful insights.

What can be meaningful is to watch the evolution of the game over time. I see a trend of general improvement (with plenty of unfortunate stumbles). The long-standing issue of underperforming (=meaningless) weapon enchants is being addressed. Class balance is being systematically improved (slower than many would like, but there's a system to it now). Another dungeon is returning (about time...). Loadouts (multiple character configurations, easily switched) have been announced and are somewhere in the Soon(tm) pipeline. Module 11 looks to be one of the best yet, with a randomized skirmish, an interesting story and less grind.

I'm sad to see people lose their jobs, but I'm reasonably optimistic about the future of Neverwinter.

lantern22

vida44 said:

loboguild said:

Hopefully this doesn't mean @nitocris83 has to do additional stuff for PWE. I was so happy that the game finally got its own full-time CM...

I'm not happy. Our CM is not interacting much on the forum. Even less then Strum to be more accurate. The news doesn't have anymore "Discus on the official forum" part. The News about Maintenance sometimes fails to say if it's a server reset or a patch. I'm not sure if our CM is aware that a site has a devtracker where we can easily see her posts on the forum.

Definitely no increase in activity. But to be honest I dont care about that a lot, just sayin

waywardwizard

"experience a reduction in staff" LOL

Gotta love corporate wording. Like something happened around them that had nothing to do with them.

dread4moor

@waywardwizard#4349 he meant to say "HR observed an inventory reduction event."

wylonus

get rid of market team and get other newer folks with fresh concepts and less greedy.

concept of mine, change the prices in Zen market and if players are happy, then they buy more and that is profit gained.

warpet

how much i know cryptic is not affected ,cryptic is still looking for more then few staff members

nitocris83

Hi everyone! I'm not going to go into too much detail because layoffs suck, real people are impacted, and it's worse when your job situation is made public (as someone who worked for Disney, I'm way too familiar with a job situation being plastered all over the media). The layoffs were just at PWE, the publisher. Cryptic was not impacted in terms of headcount, just in who we work with in regards to publishing projects.

I did want to address the comment that I interact less on the forums: You're right. When I first started here I didn't have the full scope of the needs (both community and Dev side) but after being here a few months I realized that I needed to take advantage of the biggest asset I had: I'm in the building with the Devs. I've been spending the majority of my time establishing relationships and communication paths to get better information out there for you, and bring in better information for the Devs. Basically, there's a lot more behind the scenes going on and I do think there has been an increase in response time to investigate issues and address them, more in-depth Dev blogs, revamping of social/community assets, and expansion of communication on different channels. My next professional goal is to find a way to increase my presence here without reverting the headway made internally.

thunderlore2

nitocris83 said:

Hi everyone! I'm not going to go into too much detail because layoffs suck, real people are impacted, and it's worse when your job situation is made public (as someone who worked for Disney, I'm way too familiar with a job situation being plastered all over the media). The layoffs were just at PWE, the publisher. Cryptic was not impacted in terms of headcount, just in who we work with in regards to publishing projects.

I did want to address the comment that I interact less on the forums: You're right. When I first started here I didn't have the full scope of the needs (both community and Dev side) but after being here a few months I realized that I needed to take advantage of the biggest asset I had: I'm in the building with the Devs. I've been spending the majority of my time establishing relationships and communication paths to get better information out there for you, and bring in better information for the Devs. Basically, there's a lot more behind the scenes going on and I do think there has been an increase in response time to investigate issues and address them, more in-depth Dev blogs, revamping of social/community assets, and expansion of communication on different channels. My next professional goal is to find a way to increase my presence here without reverting the headway made internally.

SImply right here is a good example, before it would literally take days for a dev/mod to even respond(if any) to this kind of thread which is not exactly pleasant, much less the main CM. A response like this is much more interactive and shows players that indeed a dedicated CM is over-watching neverwinter and is at least willing to listen and answer to concerns even if not outright solving them.

Best of luck to @nitocris83 , i hope you can juggle both the leeway made with the devs and the communication with the players side by side