Blizzard staff say mandatory return to office will hurt devs and drive many to quit: "I've never been as embarrassed by leadership"

gamesradar.com:

Activision Blizzard has confirmed plans to bring employees back to the office for a minimum of three days a week beginning later this year, and following an apparently heated Q&A with president Mike Ybarra, Blizzard employees have spoken out against the policy and the harm they believe it would cause. 

Game Developer (opens in new tab) spoke to several sources familiar with a recent internal Q&A led by Ybarra, in which the president reportedly downplayed a cut made to staff bonuses despite strong quarterly profits for the company, defended the employee stack-ranking system which contributed to the controversial firing of a WoW Classic lead just last month, and pushed the new RTO policy in a way some staff interpreted as an ultimatum suggesting they should simply leave if they don't want to go back to the office. 

Many, many Blizzard employees have since taken to social media criticizing the mandatory return to office, which is a genuine surprise as such matters are usually handled almost entirely internally. Senior writer and narrative designer Justin Groot described (opens in new tab) it as a "wildly unpopular policy" which could drive many employees to leave the company. 

"So many people have left during my time on the team that I can't even sign the Kudoboards any more," he said, referring to digital group cards sometimes sent to departing colleagues. "I hate the very sight of an email with 'Kudobard' in the title field."

"It's frustrating that leadership doesn't understand what a challenge it's been to pick up the pieces," he said in another tweet. "And now it seems like we're going to have another round of departures."

Dylan Snyder, senior game designer on the Overwatch 2 team, bluntly wrote (opens in new tab):