If yesterday was the day for supportive Twitter hashtags, today is the day for anger and action, or so says pro-union group Game Workers Unite, which this afternoon began a Twitter campaign calling for the firing of ArenaNet President Mike O’Brien.
As we’ve been chronicling, ArenaNet – the famed MMORPG studio behind the popular Guild Wars franchise – laid off over 100 people from its 400-person headquarters yesterday in a move it said was dictated by owners at NCsoft. Workers assigned to Guild Wars 2 as well as those building the now-canceled unannounced gamers were affected, and today’s GW2 update was postponed as the studio has been closed for two days of regrouping, though the execs have suggested the core game will continue at least through its fifth season of content. We updated our list of some of the devs being let go as recently as this morning; they include some extremely well-known developers, including Gaile Gray, Josh Foreman, and Matthew Medina.
Game Workers Unite today characterized industry layoffs as “deliberate efforts by the heads of the companies to extra profits at any cost, even if it involves punishing the workforce generating those profits.”
https://twitter.com/GameWorkers/status/1100457436312424448
Gamers will recall that the group also began a #firebobbykotick Twitter campaign with a petition (now nearing 10,000 signatures) in the wake of Activision-Blizzard’s move to lay off 800 employees in spite of a record financial year in 2018. ArenaNet is obviously not as large a studio as Blizzard, but it still performed relatively well last year in spite of a weak fourth quarter.
It is not entirely clear why the group did not include NCSoft West CEO Yoon Song-Yee or her husband, NCsoft CEO Kim Taek-Jin, as well, given ArenaNet’s implications that the layoff mandate came from NCsoft.
If unionization efforts aren’t your thing but you still want to support the devs, you can use the #love4arenanet hashtag on Twitter, post your messages on the official wiki, or even just show up in-game:
Gathering in LA to show our #Love4ArenaNet – this community is truly amazing ♡ Everso grateful for the world the devs at @ArenaNet have created for all of us to feel at home in ♡ pic.twitter.com/DVMZGYtMqo
— A(nti-Covid) Schneck 🐌 (She/Her) (@AuronaCosplay) February 26, 2019
It seems we've missed the mark on Mike O'Brien.
For that, we apologize. 😔
Mike is held in high regard by both ANet employees and fans.
The layoffs originate from NCSoft West CEO Yoon Song-Yee and NCsoft CEO Kim Taek-Jin.— Game Workers Unite ✊🏿✊🏽✊🏾 (@GameWorkers) February 26, 2019
