Rumor Control On Blizzard Defections

Gamespot's weekly rumour control column discusses the rumor from back in April on Grimwell detailing a mass defection from Blizzard to NCSoft. From the article: "However, seeing how internal NCsoft studio ArenaNet was founded by a group of former Blizzard-ians--the creators of Battle.net, no less--it would come as little surprise if more WOW developers had signed up with the rising publisher." Their final verdict: "Some Blizzard developers have joined NCsoft? Not bogus. But droves? That's not so certain." This week's rumor control also discusses the raise in prices for Xbox 360 Games and the possibility of a no-frills PSP pack.

Comments

What I heard

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that Blizzard supposedly has over 500 employees total, how much damage can losing 10 or even 20 people? Heck their normal annual turnover is probably higher than that.

But I've also have heard that recruiters have recently been calling developers on the Age of Empires III and C&C teams to offer them positions at Blizzard.

Straight from the developer's mouth:

[schild]

I asked the NCSoft people right after this happened (which by the way is more than a month old). Here's the quote:

"Yes, NCsoft has opened up an office in the Orange County area. Yes, some of the staff in that office came from Blizzard. However, that group is not involved with the development of Tabula Rasa, as has been rumored."

There's nothing to see here, move along. Well, nothing to see, other than Slashdot and Gamespot being way the fuck off in left field when shit goes down in the gaming industry that doesn't involve pimping vaporware.