Layoffs Begin At Daybreak Games

jjohn24680 writes There are several sources who are reporting layoffs at Daybreak Games (formerly Sony Online Entertainment) today. Notable layoffs include Linda "Brasse" Carlson (former Global Community Relations Lead) and Dave Georgeson (former Director of Development / Franchise Director for Everquest, EverQuest II, and EverQuest Next / Landmark). This post from Daybreak Games has some additional information as well.

Comments

Here go the MBA's

[bobbied]

MBA's + Bean Counting = Layoffs

Layoffs = accelerated attrition of your best talent

Loss of best talent = dying company = falling sales = unprofitable

Back to the beginning.

In this case, the death spiral will continue until a leader emerges that actually has a workable vision that fits within the resources left. Given the strained resources of the purchase and being "unprofitable" already, it's going to be interesting to see if they actually HAVE a plan for developing something that will work.

IMHO, it's a long shot... Now that the bean counters and MBA's are out chopping heads, things will get worse before they get better.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a software company owned by a private venture firm, much like Daybreak, so I'd like to pile on, since I've seen exactly what you're talking about. I'm also in the finance department, so I'd like to defend profitability.
As with most things, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. If this were a company with a long-term vision, and could continue to be successful, the money would be coming in through sales. The decision to sell usually happens when the current owner no longer believes in the direction of the company, and sells to the first sucker who they can dupe into taking it off their hands. So, with basically no knowledge of this particular deal, the future for SOE probably wasn't too bright in the first place. Bad times may have been coming either way.
With that said, venture firms can be pretty brutal. They tend to speak their own language, and value things that only make sense to their own little circle of peers. What they aren't, though, is stupid. This was a massive deal, and letting it rot away is just not going to be on the agenda for Columbus Nova. Rough times are indeed ahead, for at least the next 3-5 years, but if they can come out healthier on the other side, it will be a net gain for the company and its employees.
Current employees will want to update their CVs, but this may well keep this company in business long enough to employ more in the long-run.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[dave562]

Are you sure about that? They are cutting senior staff positions. A Director of community relations is probably a smart choice given that they are going through a massive transition. Do they really care what the old message to the community is? Can they even afford to care what the community thinks, or court their input at such a delicate time? While fan participation and buy in is important, it is doubtful that they are in a position to do anything meaningful with it right now, or in the near future. It would not surprise me if they fill the position again, probably internally, once they figure out what their new messaging is going to be.

The Director of Development is an odd one, but in a way it makes sense. If they had a solid development program, they would not be in dire financial straights in the first place. While they are losing a leadership position, it will be interesting to see if they fill the position internally, or go outside. An internal hire shows that they are committed to leveraging current talent to lead them in a new direction. An external hire shows that they have little faith in their current staff, and will very likely accelerate a talent exodus.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hate the "as with most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle" saying while we live in the age of Fox News.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[Mr. Freeman]

>As with most things, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle

That's a myth. It's almost always perpetuated by those making asinine claims. It's simple, you make an absurd claim and then when the reasonable people show up, you simply attack them for being "too extreme".

Re:Here go the MBA's

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hate the "as with most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle" saying while we live in the age of Fox News.

How about "The truth lies somewhere not on this channel" ?

Re:Here go the MBA's

[bobbied]

Well there AC, in my 20+ years in the business of software development, I've been let go for financial reasons twice, watched others get canned about a dozen times and had to hand out pink slips myself twice. I've seen how the show is run at a number of places and observed a number of things about layoffs which are common to all of them.

First, and most obvious, layoffs are extremely hard on the staff that remains. Productivity and happiness all take a huge dive for everybody. The workplace feels oppressive and EVERYBODY starts thinking about leaving.

Second, even if you lay off the bottom performers, you are going to loose about the same across the top. So if you take 10% off the bottom, unless you do something drastic, you loose 10% off the top. I worked for a company that *routinely* (about once a year) laid off the lowest 10% performers, and it was a horrible place.

Think about these two things that I'm sure they don't mention to the MBA's while they are in school. An MBA is taught about profit and how to manage costs because that is what you can easily quantify. So, the MBA goes out and thinks that he needs to cut X dollars out of his labor cost to break even, so he tells his staff to prep a list of people to layoff that meets that cost savings goal. The low value employees are *usually* the targets, the underperforming and highest paid are too. Heaven help you if you fall into more than one of those categories.

MBA's do the dollars and cents stuff, and when layoffs are warranted due to dollars and cents it's a BAD situation. When it's driven by poor performance, especially poor enough performance that you just got sold off and to stem the bleeding the new owners start in with the hatchet, it's REALLY BAD.

So, like it or not, this worker bee knows what commonly happens and generally why the MBA's do what they do. I don't envy their position, nor do I want to be in their shoes, but I've seen enough young bucks with the ink still drying on their Master's diplomas to recognize the common mistakes they make over and over and the raft full of "experienced" MBA's who still haven't learned better.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[bobbied]

If the company they purchased didn't have anything of value going on, why would they buy them?

All I'm saying is that once you start the cycle of layoffs, you simply MUST have a viable recovery plan that assumes your best and brightest will voluntarily follow those you involuntarily escorted out the door, you are in trouble. And I'm not talking about a "Let's work smarter AND harder" pep talk at the next all hands meeting, I'm talking about actually doing something that will work to make the company money so everybody can stay employed.

It's rare that anybody can walk into an organization from the outside, accurately asses the strengths and weaknesses, and come up with even a viable short term plan in a few months that takes it from loosing money to break even. It's even more remote that this plan will be successful if it STARTS by laying off a lot of people who are well known because everybody will now be walking around thinking they have a target on them. Sort term, this goes badly..

Re:Here go the MBA's

[CanEHdian]

Correct. "to better position our newly [X] for future growth opportunities (..) we have had to make some tough choices including realignment of resources." has MBA written all over it. It does not automatically mean it doesn't make sense, but if your smart people start thinking "sinking ship" they will be gone.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[bobbied]

The smart ones have been thinking "sinking ship" for awhile by now... Now they see the bilge water flowing up in the boat as the crew is throwing the cargo over the side...

Re:Here go the MBA's

[bobbied]

I don't question the short term plan, but the long term one. I can understand that there are times when the finances simply CANNOT be ignored and you have to do the layoff of some, to save the whole. I worked a company for 10 years that cycled from about 1,500 employees down to 500 and back to 1,800 only to get my pink slip on their second dip to below 500. I listened to the earnings conference calls, I knew *why* it had to be done from the dollars and cents, profit/loss and all that, but I can tell you it's BAD for the company. Sort of like Chemotherapy is BAD for your health, but you may have no choice.

You MUST have a plan to deal with the negative effects on moral and productivity BEFORE you start cutting staff or your little cost cutting measure will turn into a full scale brain drain and bring your company to ruin.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[Areyoukiddingme]

Current employees will want to update their CVs, but this may well keep this company in business long enough to employ more in the long-run.

Unlikely. MBAs persist in the foolish belief that programmers are fungible, short term. The former SOE has 100% software products. The MBA is going to lay off everybody who knows anything about those products, hire a bunch of Chinese engineers, and wonder why the next 4 projects fail.

Or possibly they've just decided that EverQuest should be a trading card game. Fronted by a cartoon.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hate the "as with most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle" saying while we live in the age of Brian Williams, Al Sharpton, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Matthews.

FTFY

Re:Here go the MBA's

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for a company that *routinely* (about once a year) laid off the lowest 10% performers, and it was a horrible place.

Was it a soft company in Redmond?

Re:Here go the MBA's

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like a true bean counter.
Software and creativity are not something you can get to come out at the end of a spreadsheet as the end product of a neat, cut and dry formula.
The guy who holds the team together and inspires the community, the one about whom everyone scratches their head when the investment Big Wig points at him, and asks, "So, what does he do? Justify his salary."....yeah,, that guy, like....Dave Georgeson...
Yeah, that's the guy that will make or break the game, because he's the one who can actuall SEE the world everyone is trying to express in code.
And he's the guy who persuades potential players that the game is worth waiting for, because he has earned our trust and admiration.
Columbus Nova just lost their most valuable players, the ones who would do their advertising for them for free, by word of mouth.
They screwed the pooch, big time.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[gl4ss]

in such cases I always wonder why they bought the company in the first place and not the bunch of chinese engineers.

case in point with Microsoft buying Nokia - and as the next thing basically laying off everyone involved in physical product production, ui toolkit production and what was left of OS production and then throwing away the Nokia name and starting to sell the phones under Microsoft brand(essentially leaving nothing worthwhile of the previous company - and most patents were already spun off into the patents holding collaboration company so that's not it either - and pie in the sky r&d folks got the boot too). like, why the fuck bother with the takeover in the first place?

Re:Here go the MBA's

[Areyoukiddingme]

like, why the fuck bother with the takeover in the first place?

In the case of the ongoing collapse formerly known as SOE, they buy it for the trademarks and copyrights. Watch for bastardized bundles of patheticness bearing the EverQuest name showing up on mobile phones by this time next year.

In the case of Nokia, that was done for the purpose of utterly eliminating and destroying a Windows Phone competitor, in the certain knowledge that Windows can and does "succeed" when it has no surviving rivals. Because they've done it before.

It was Ballmer being Ballmer, doing the only thing he knows how to do. He is, was, and ever shall be a monopolist, and he only knows the plays of a monopolist. The fact that he can not treat Samsung and Apple the same way no doubt wrankled in his sodden breast, but he took some solace in extorting patent royalties for every Android-equipped device.

It's inexplicable to anyone as innocent as yourself, who thinks all that guff he was fed in school about playing fair, and level playing fields, and value for money, and benefiting the customer is actually real. It isn't. None of it is, as exhibited by the behavior of every large multinational corporation, which are universally dominated by sociopaths. Those phrases are for other people, to such minds.

It's easy to understand, as long as you can understand a certain special kind of insanity.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[Anonymous Coward]

Second, even if you lay off the bottom performers, you are going to loose about the same across the top. So if you take 10% off the bottom, unless you do something drastic, you loose 10% off the top. I worked for a company that *routinely* (about once a year) laid off the lowest 10% performers, and it was a horrible place.

Loose? Loose?? Tight!!

Re:Here go the MBA's

[DrXym]

I've been laid off in a company where headcount was dictated by stock market indices. Just recently I heard them advertising on the radio for as many people as they can get for the same positions they'd erased about 5 years back. At least they paid people to go quietly even though the process was extremely unfair (no account of performance, skills etc.)

Re:Here go the MBA's

[Lotana]

Layoffs = accelerated attrition of your best talent

Only assuming that the company does not have deadwood. In my experience: every single company over a certain size have people that are completely useless, only useful in very small area or got attitude/communication issues.

Layoffs are not always a bad thing. It all depends on how good management is recognizing a person's value to the core business. If they are terrible, it results in loss of knowledge, capability and destroyed morale. But if they know how to do layoffs right, it streamlines and revitalizes a company.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps their world is at an employment crisis. Too many employees, too little to work with. The employees are literally fighting to get pieces of any new projects. The acute loss of projects cause physiological changes which manifest among others as extreme aggressiveness, pointy ears and skin alterations. The remaining free, unattached projects have to fight for their existence. The only way forward is the cure of breaking out to the sun. To be a Daybreaker.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[bobbied]

Still, if you do layoffs and accurately target your low performers (which few companies seem to be able to get totally right) then the top employees who have the skills and can get jobs are going to start walking out the door too. Who wants to work at a place that's all gloom and doom anyway, especially if you have skills that will take you someplace else?

So, yes, layoffs can be helpful, but it's like chemotherapy, the lessor of two evils. You do chemo because the problems it causes you are less severe than the cancer you are trying to treat. Same think applies to layoffs, or at least it should.

I worked at a place once that routinely did layoffs about once a year. Their theory was that they would hire lots of people, too many people for the work they had, then go though and cull the heard every so often to weed out the under performing and keep the top performers. It was a horrible place to work, with everybody angling to cook the performance numbers so they looked good and stabbing others in the back to stay on the top of the pile. Office politics and culture was something to behold. I stayed at that place only long enough to keep it from being a blight on my resume and BAILED at almost exactly 2 years. That's what most of their staff did so they spent a lot of time training, only to watch their best and brightest jump ship about the time they really became useful. You cannot run an effective engineering company that way and they've since gone bankrupt.

So I don't think it's a good idea to do what you suggest over the long term. You don't use layoffs to cull your heard and dump your underperformers. The better approach is to do it with the performance review and have raises based on merit. But the REAL problem here is actually measuring performance in an objective way and keeping HR lawyers happy when you do so. If you don't strike the right balance and really know who's valuable and who's not so much you will harm the company by laying off the wrong people some time, or get your butt sued because you cannot prove you didn't discriminate or something.

But the best approach is to only hire good people and only as many as you can support with the work you have, managing your workload to keep it steady as possible so you don't have to cycle though hiring and firing all the time. But that takes management effort and planning along with a willingness to forego the instant profit in this quarter for the promise of better future results. Something I think MBA's tend to not think too much about because their bonus TODAY is tied to performance TODAY and most of them would rather bag $10 now over $100 next year.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[Anonymous Coward]

That list pretty clearly shows your bias.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[StikyPad]

That's a myth. It's almost always perpetuated by those making asinine claims. It's simple, you make an absurd claim and then when the reasonable people show up, you simply attack them for being "too extreme".

As with most things, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle

Re: Here go the MBA's

[Anonymous Coward]

well that, and his font.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[bobbied]

Actually no.. It was a now defunct Long distance carrier that got managed into the ground by a whole drawer full of dull knife executives that made millions....

Re: Here go the MBA's

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah: it shows his bias against liars and raicist pigs.

Re:Here go the MBA's

[Anonymous Coward]

>Think about these two things that I'm sure they don't mention to the MBA's while they are in school.

My third class on organizational behavior and performance management in this MBA track disagrees.

How to lose money

[viperidaenz]

Buy an under performing business unit and make no changes to it.

Perhaps they didn't feel like losing their money so they're cutting out the under performing staff?

Re: How to lose money

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad thing is, you can't just get rid of the underperformers. The top talent has a nose for trouble, and they will use their "ability to get hired anywhere" asap. They will probably be pushed to that decision as the lesser workers put 110% into gaming the performance metrics, doing actual work is a loser's game then. At the same time, you're chopping a lot of "social glue" workers, who suck at those metrics but keep the work environment positive and communicative.

Re: How to lose money

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, I worked for a small division of a large defence contractor that played out exactly like that.

The people with the serious talent got the hell out of there before the layoffs started. And of course nothing zaps productivity like the best talent leaving and the morale hit from layoffs. I was pretty early in my career at that time and pretty much knew I was fucked. I lucked out and one of the guys who got out before the first wave hit got me in where he was at, but I remember the atmosphere in the last few weeks there. I mean you try to keep doing your job because you don't want to burn bridges and integrity and all that, but it's not actually possible for people to give less fucks in that situation.

As to social glue workers, totally.

Re:How to lose money

[Anonymous Coward]

The fans see the writing on the wall and will bail.

This is too true. I've played Planetside 2, one of the games developed by SOE, since launch. The negativity in the planetside 2 subreddit is surging, and it's really sad to see. The community is being flooded with posts mourning the loss of most of the development staff and people are canceling subscriptions left and right. I probably won't be spending anymore money on this game for a long time, either. I need a strong indication that things are going to turn around first. The game's operating costs have indeed been reduced by this, but they've also cut off revenue at the knees because of the massive backlash.

Re: How to lose money

[bobbied]

Sounds like the last place I worked.... Large contract abruptly ended with very little notice and the mass exodus of the best and brightest ensued even before the formal announcement of the contract getting pulled.

I got lucky in that I had already decided that it was time to jump ship because it was obvious the performance on the contract that kept 50% of the building employed was extremely sub par and my trying to keep the stuff around me on the ethical up and up was starting to ruffle feathers. I had a job offer about 3 months before they started mowing down their staff.

Word to the wise... When you start to see multiple higher ups bailing on the project, taking other assignments, leaving for companies you never heard of and retiring, at an ever increasing rate, it's past time to get your resume on the street.

"Layoffs..."

[Loopy]

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

How to lose money

[Tridus]

The public face of your most prominent franchise is under performing staff?

Yeah, good luck with that. The fans see the writing on the wall and will bail. The top talent sees half the staff suddenly gone, and will bail. Unless the plan is to cancel a bunch of games, they've just obliterated any value in this acquisition.

SOE employees .....

[Anonymous Coward]

You have fucked up enough games during your reign. Glad to see your cancer go away.

Finally, some sort of justice has been served ;)

Re:SOE employees .....

[fibonacci8]

Smedley didn't get canned, the cancer persists.

unfortunate name choice

[ihtoit]

considering Nottinghamshire Police's repeatedly-stalled and frankly corrupted-from-day-one investigation into current and historical systemic child abuse is named "Operation Daybreak". Which, by the way, has yet to produce a single prosecution after four years, twelve arrests, four police bailments, less than three hundred statements, 75 interviews under caution, and the PCC's refusal to disclose staffing or budget dedication to the ongoing operation. Instead what we have is in the case of at least two survivors, constant and unremitting persecution by the police when they name SERVING senior police officers as abusers. Melanie Shaw: jailed for a fire that didn't happen, found guilty by a directed jury (I was there, I heard the judge direct the jury and I heard the verdict delivered in a closed courtroom) and now missing presumed abducted by police (they will not confirm having even had contact with her, never mind the fact that they are already on record committing perjury to lock her away to stop her talking), and Michael Summers, whose complete account is reproduced here: http://news.truthjuice.co.uk/?... (warning: his capslock key is stuck).

Re:unfortunate name choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow...talk about "wag the dog."

Re:unfortunate name choice

[ihtoit]

how about you read the fucking account instead of hiding behind AC and spewing out yet another tired metaphor?

Higby should have been one of the first

[WuphonsReach]

I've never been impressed with how he kept trying to turn Planetside 2 into a clone of Battlefield / Call of Duty rather then play to its strengths and uniqueness.

Because of that mismanagement, the game is still in an unfinished state two years after release, and core game elements have been revamped multiple times.

That and the issue that the PS2 devs can't seem to push out a single patch without breaking multiple other things -- and then leave it in a broken state for weeks and months at a time.

Sadly, the people in charge of making those bad decisions probably weren't the ones let go today.

Re:SOE employees .....

[blackicye]

How someone with his track record is even still in the industry is mind boggling, almost as much as the fact that SOE not only survived till now, but someone wanted to buy them.

We live in strange times.

agreed with bobbied

[aepervius]

"worker bee" have brain too, and in many cases in small enough organization, have enough access to the financials and the decision process to see how bad and stupidly short sighted some MBA decision are. On the other hand MBA's in financials have most of the time neither the overview of the business process nor the understanding of the fine working, as a general rule. There might be exception, but they are rare. That you use the monicker "worker bee" as if we were brainless drone shows a lot more about your lack of understanding of a highly educated workforce (as it mostly is in IT) than it says about bobbied's statement.

I'm not surprised

[DrXym]

SOE only had one major hit with Everquest but when World of Warcraft came along they didn't follow up with anything to compete. The likes of Star Wars Galaxies was an unmitigated disaster and Everquest II barely made a dent. They've made quite a few other MMORPGs over the years, some of which had promise but never took off or were mismanaged. The biggest wasted opportunity was Free Realms which Sony (if they had an ounce of sense) would have pushed instead of Home on the PS3.

I'm kind of surprised they survived as long as they did really. Maybe new owners will put a bit of stick about and focus minds better on fewer products.

Re:I'm not surprised

[Keith111]

They didn't really have to create anything new to compete. EQ is/was better in many ways to WoW, though not saying that WoW is bad in any way, but your statement is like saying when Guild Wars 2 came out that Blizzard had to release something else to compete with it. EQ is from an era that was vastly different than most MMOs today on a rather fundamental level so they kept a fairly stable playerbase, but without something to get new blood it was eventually doomed, it just took 16 years.

Re:I'm not surprised

[DrXym]

WoW fixed a lot of things that were wrong with EQ and had slightly better (albeit still generic) lore to go with it. The grind in EQ was punishing - you might be sat healing for 90% of the time and a session might see you gain a few pixels on your EXP bar. A bad session might see you killed and performing a terrifying corpse drag to salvage your kit. You might be waiting 30 minutes for a boat to turn up and more than once I was thrown off the boat back onto the shore because of bugs. You couldn't alt+tab away from EQ in your multitasking OS during this downtime because the client wouldn't let you. Spawn camping was endemic. And the bugs... The Shadows of Luclin upgrade managed to crash servers and clients so often that I took the opportunity to snap out of the idea I was enjoying myself and cancelled my sub.

That isn't to say I stopped playing MMORPGs - I played Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes / Villains, A Tale in the Desert, even WoW (but only free trials), Star Wars Galaxies and many others. I rarely put as much time or effort into them as I did with EQ because I recognized they all used exactly the same mechanics under the hood to keep you playing - grind, more grind, slow travel, exp bars, stupid quests, upkeep, crafting - all stuff to slow you down and suck money out of the economy.

Probably the best MMO I've played is Lord of the Rings Online because it does has the lore to go with it. I bought it when it was launched and subscription based. I liked the game but I found the grind punishing and cancelled the sub. Then it went free to play and they lowered the grind to make it easier to progress and suddenly it's a far better game. Clearly they want people to advance to buy the inventory slots and other things that start to fill up by that point but it still works out far, far cheaper than WoW or similar.

Another overlooked MMO is Puzzle Pirates which is basically a bunch of mini games with a pirate theme but it's still pretty cool.

Re:I'm not surprised

[Keith111]

I played EQ from about 99-04, in a lot of ways I really liked the toughness of the game since I came in from MUDs that were even more brutal so it seemed like an easier game lol, though when I started playing again recently just to reminisce I realized just how difficult it is compared to modern mmos. I also liked that if you really screwed up you could potentially screw yourself out of a whole day just due to like you said, corpse retrieval or whatever. It was part of the charm imo.

EQ did fix some things though such as the corpse retrieval (gear doesn't drop in corpse anymore, just exp) and they put in mercenaries to let you solo most places. It's far more casual now than it used to be.

Give me back MXO

[danknight48]

With any luck, Daybreak games will go into administration.
Hopefully some rich guy buys it for £1 and kindly releases the Matrix Online Server sourcecode, so us old farts can hyperjump and bullet-time again.

unfortunate name choice

[Anonymous Coward]

I think if you would have kept just the first sentence and the link then you'd have a barely relevant point. But this whole post is .... just changing the subject. Let's get back on the issue: Layoffs at this company.

ROI?

[Anonymous Coward]

I backed for $100. Um... how does my investment look?