Layoffs hit NCsoft's North American offices

@Lucidus The article said NCsoft laid off employees at *their* Seattle office. No mention of ArenaNet employees or the ArenaNet office in Bellevue, WA.

@eLdritchZ
Well I like to image some of that money that they're saving by out-sourcing to cheap Asian-Labour is going back into their games... and yachts...
Anyway it doesn't seem (from the article anyway) that they're firing the development teams, only the admins, so hopefully this won't impact too heavily on their ability to support and develop their titles.

@(Unverified)
Isn't South Korea a relatively wealthy country?

@eLdritchZ

More like those 32 million dollars that they need to pay to Richard Garriot won't pay themselves.

@BigAndShiny They're in the top 18% of per capita GDP countries, so it would be fairly accurate to describe them as a wealthy nation.

@Dunraven Where'd you hear about that?

@Naru now in 3D

Oh, you know. Some guy who knows a person who heard....

@Ehra actualy if you followed Craig Perko's blog who was a 3D designer with Arenanet until he moved on to Bioware he spoke a great length about it, the blog was taken down a few months backs.

I understand that SW2 fans think any negativity is some great conspiratorial brew-ha but that isn't the case this time......Arenanet is being pressured from NCsoft and it's causing a lot of internal issues...these layoffs are not going to help matters.

@Dunraven

Oh yes, the "oh trust me it's not around anymore but it was totally out there on the internet at one point." argument, with a slight mix of "you don't like what I'm saying because you're being blinded by your fanboyism." Even though you're the only person who's ever said anything by this, and we don't even know for sure if Anet is directly affected by this.

Considering Paragon hasn't been, I have my doubts.

@Dunraven
You appear to be the only person on the internet who has even had anything to say about this blog post, which is odd considering that things like that usually get jumped on immediately by both fans and decriers and according to you it was up as recently as a few months ago. You don't appear to be the kind of person who would lie about something like that, and I'm very curious, so can you provide details on what you read and what, precisely, you think it implies? Most companies have some issues at some point, but the ArenaNet employees have always seemed very enthusiastic about their work, their company, and their workplace, so any infighting so bad as to have a significant impact on the development of GW2 would really surprise me.

@Anulla

I was just thinking about that after I posted my comment. It seems weird that not long after the Garriot settlement that NCSoft is "restructuring" their staff.

And as usual the hard workers get the shaft while the CEO's get to keep their big fat checks. ;(

@Anulla

yep that CEO not going to sell his Ferrari--
" so we lost the lawsuit "worker drones" time for ya to go!!!"

@Ranxerox I doubt it NCsoft has a reputation of being ruthless to those development houses they own.. I bet that GW2 missed there expected launch window so NCsoft did a round of layoffs to motivate them.

@Dunraven The little I know about NCsoft and Anet is that they made a huge load of money with GW1 which was well unexpected, so ever since they got a preferential treatment.

They also mentioned: "We remain committed to fully support the development of games from ArenaNet, Carbine Studios and Paragon Studios." so I doubt that's the case.

Anet also mentioned on many occasions that NCsoft has been great with them over the years.