Blizzard says mass layoffs are 'just a rumor'

"is just a rumor".

Doesn't have quite the ring about it that "is false" would have, don't you think?

Definitely glad the layoffs are just a rumor. Good luck to Staats.

They denied the "rumor" before I even heard of it.

Methinks they doth protest too much...


...though I really doubt they, of all people, are in a position where they need to do layoffs.

Do we even know what Titan is yet?

There was never a rumour of mass layoffs, only an idiot would think that. It was simply one man, John Staats, who doesn't like the direct Blizzard is taking with Titan, what they have done with WoW, and have they have lost their way from a gaming company to just being Activision cash cow developer. He wanted out, much like many others in the past have, and many more in the future will. If the job market wasn't so horrible right now, you'd see a lot more leaving Blizzard.

The rumor came from the fact that a bunch of Blizzard employees changed their Facebook status to "Worked at Blizzard."

And the fact that he specifically said that "massive layoffs" is a rumor leaves it wide open and doesn't contradict that idea that those people no longer work for Blizzard. Perhaps they all quit at the same time because they objected to something. Perhaps Blizzard doesn't define a layoff as massive unless there are a certain number of people involved. Perhaps they will say "We weren't lying, layoffS -- plural -- was a rumor ... there was just one."

See, there are all sorts of ways that this response isn't a definitive answer other than to say that whatever Blizzard defines as "massive layoffs" has not occurred.

It is all about the phrasing, "layoffs" could have happened. But "mass layoffs" didn't.

Blizzards subs are down by over a million. Titan may be scrapped at this rate while they concentrate on core WoW. Blizzard might want to thinking breaking away from Activision as well.