Microsoft laid off 2,500 video game workers this year.

[Fielder]

650 about 4 days ago.

 

1,900 seven months ago (January)

 

Edited September 15 by Ray Proudfoot
Wokers changed to workers.

[strider1]

Only going to get worse with the FED printing so much money. Inflation is robing the population of purchasing power and effecting jobs as consumer start pinching pennies. Meanwhile, you have the Brics countries ditching the dollar as a reserve currency. 

[Garys]

31 minutes ago, strider1 said:

Only going to get worse with the FED printing so much money. Inflation is robing the population of purchasing power and effecting jobs as consumer start pinching pennies. 

Doent matter what side of the fence you sit one, these layoffs are never anything more than corparate greed. But continue to point the finger if it makes you feel better

[Funky D]

@Garys I was just about to post the same statement. Microsoft has been pulling in record profits. Don't forget Wall Street greed as well... infinite double-digit growth is not sustainable, but don't tell that to Wall Street.

Edit: MSFT's Q4 earnings statement: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor/earnings/FY-2024-Q4/press-release-webcast

Edited September 15 by Funky D

[Tuskin38]

39 minutes ago, strider1 said:

Only going to get worse with the FED printing so much money.

It has nothing to do with that.

[btacon]

35 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

It has nothing to do with that.

Well…actually it does. 

[Abriael]

How exactly is this in topic? This forum is about Microsoft Flight Simulator, not generic Microsoft. Shall we talk about Halo next?

Microsoft has acquired another publisher of similar size and scope doing the same thing (Activision Blizzard), which means that the company found itself with a lot of people performing exactly the same role, of which they only needed a certain number.

In fact, if you bothered to go back to the actual source of this news, the latest round of layoffs was among corporate and support functions (which would have been redundant following the acquisition) on top of a couple of mobile games, making this completely unrelated to MSFS. 

Layoffs suck, and I say this as someone who got laid off earlier this year with all the other layoffs in the gaming industry and had to claw himself back into a job, but I'm not sure what the purpose of discussing it here is besides FUD. There's zero indication that the MSFS team has been affected. There was no one at Activision making flight simulators.

 

Edited September 15 by Abriael

[Bobsk8]

56 minutes ago, btacon said:

Well…actually it does. 

Another Avsim conspiracy theory rises from the ashes. 😉

[strider1]

1 hour ago, Garys said:

Doent matter what side of the fence you sit one, these layoffs are never anything more than corparate greed. But continue to point the finger if it makes you feel better

I don't feel any better than I did before my comment 😬That's part of it, but it's not the big picture. It's bad policy, regulations, greed, and money printing.

1/4 of a ounce of silver could buy a gallon of gas in the early nineteen hundreds. A quarter in today's money can't even buy you 1/4 of a candy bar. That's inflation, too much money chasing too few goods.

Addendum: A quarter Oz of silver can still buy a gallon of gas today, it never lost its purchasing power, the monopoly money is on the verge of hyperinflation.

 

Edited September 15 by strider1

[YVR_23]

Some of you are worse than CNN, slapping a 'breaking news' banner on every story. The reality is, tech companies went on a hiring spree during COVID, and now, with demand stabilising and falling back to pre-COVID levels, they have to trim the fat. Unfortunately, that starts with employees.

[Abriael]

26 minutes ago, YVR_23 said:

Some of you are worse than CNN, slapping a 'breaking news' banner on every story. The reality is, tech companies went on a hiring spree during COVID, and now, with demand stabilising and falling back to pre-COVID levels, they have to trim the fat. Unfortunately, that starts with employees.

Yep, and in Microsoft's case it's worse because they literally mashed 2 big companies together and of certain roles, you only need one big company's worth. 

[Sethos]

2 hours ago, YVR_23 said:

Some of you are worse than CNN, slapping a 'breaking news' banner on every story. The reality is, tech companies went on a hiring spree during COVID, and now, with demand stabilising and falling back to pre-COVID levels, they have to trim the fat. Unfortunately, that starts with employees.

Exactly this. All these conspiracy theories and bad financial market analyses people come up with and it simply boils down to this. Gaming industry, among many others, have been hit with mass layoffs and restructurings post-covid because they saw a surge that wasn't going to last and hired thousands of people and now the market is settling once more.

[dave2013]

13 hours ago, strider1 said:

Only going to get worse with the FED printing so much money. Inflation is robing the population of purchasing power and effecting jobs as consumer start pinching pennies. Meanwhile, you have the Brics countries ditching the dollar as a reserve currency. 

Well, you've got a point, but in this case it's actually the opposite.  That is, since the Fed stopped printing money and raised interest rates to a normal level(a whopping 5%!!!), things aren't going so well.  It takes time, but when you take away the punch bowl at the party, everyone will eventually get an ugly hangover.

The Fed is corrupt and works for the politicians and big banks.  They had to do something about price inflation as it can ruin an economy if left to fester for too long, plus people were, and still are, very angry with the politicians who helped create this mess.  Now they're claiming that inflation is totally under control, so they're going to start dropping rates again.   The real reason they're cutting rates is because 1)a recession, even a mild one, terrifies the politicians, 2)they need to allow the corrupt govt. to borrow money cheaply again, and 3)they have to keep the stock market juiced and goosed.

It's all a game where they win and the average person loses.  Meanwhile, you are correct that much of the world that we have ignored or bombed over the years has decided to move on and create their own economic order and trade system outside of the USA-dominated "rules-based order" which has existed since the end of WW2.  This system will eventually have its own currency.  Once this happens, the USA will be in serious trouble as the dollar will lose its reserve currency status.

Dave

 

[qqwertz]

 When Covid struck, governments worldwide (yes, it really isn't just the US struggling with the economy) had to make a choice how to handle the associated shutdown of the economy. Most, like the US, started printing money to avoid a repetition of the great depression. It was clear that, eventually, this would lead to inflation. Central banks started to fight inflation, and that's were we are now.

Difficult for many, no doubt. But I still think most governments handled it pretty well. A great depression would have been way worse than the period of relatively high interest rates we have now. And, historically, interest rates have at times been way higher than 5%. I remember a colleague who told me of an 18% mortgage he had to take in the early 80s.

[martin-w]

11 hours ago, Abriael said:

How exactly is this in topic? This forum is about Microsoft Flight Simulator, not generic Microsoft. Shall we talk about Halo next?

 

 

Feel free to talk about Halo, in fact we have, many times. Films, physics, UFO'S, as long as its not a banned topic. Look at the rest of the topics in this sub-forum.