- It is time for Shattered Soul Stone featuring the latest news from Sanctuary and beyond. Each episode, a heroic party of Nephilim Band together to help keep you informed on everything in the Diablo universe. And now your Diablo Community podcast - Coming to you from somewhere in sanctuary. This is episode 4, 4 3 of Shattered Soul Stone, your Diablo Community podcast. This episode is called 1900. It is January 26th, 2024, and I've got a lot of not great news for you today.
Unfortunately. We're gonna start with The Verge with an article titled to Microsoft Lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox Employees. It continues with Blizzard President Mike Ybarra has also decided to leave and Blizzard Survival Game has been canceled. This is written by Tom Warren. So here is a bit from this actually. I'm gonna read you a lot of this. Uh, Microsoft is laying off 1,900 employees at Activision Blizzard and Xbox this week.
While Microsoft is primarily laying off roles at Activision Blizzard, some Xbox and Zenax employees will also be impacted by the cuts. The cuts work out to roughly 8% of the overall Microsoft gaming division that stands at around 22,000 employees. In total, the Verge has obtained an internal memo from Microsoft Gaming, CEO, Phil Spencer, that confirms the layoffs. Here's what Phil Spencer said, it's been a little over three months since the Activision Blizzard and King teams joined Microsoft.
As we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business. Together, we've set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and ensured that we are all aligned on the best opportunities for growth.
As part of this process, we have made the painful decision to reduce the size of our gaming workforce by approximately 1,900 roles. Out of the 22,000 people on our team, the Gaming Leadership team and I are committed to navigating this process as thoughtfully as possible. The people who are directly impacted by these reductions will have all played an important part in the success of Activision Blizzard, Zenax and the Xbox teams. And they should be proud of everything they've accomplished here.
We are grateful for all the creativity, passion, and dedication that they have brought to our games, our players and our colleagues. We will provide our full support to those who are impacted during the transition, including severance benefits informed by local employment laws. Those whose roles will be impacted, will be notified, and we ask that you please treat your departing colleagues with the respect and compassion that is consistent with our values.
Looking ahead, we'll continue to invest in areas that will grow our business and support our strategy of bringing more games to more players around the world. Although this is a difficult moment for our team, I'm as confident as ever in your ability to create and nurture the games, stories and worlds that bring players together. Phil and then Mike Ybarra had something to say about this, which I'm gonna pull in real quick here. And he wrote it on X, so he wrote this.
I want to thank everyone who is impacted today for their meaningful contributions to their teams, to blizzard and to players' lives. It's an incredibly hard day and my energy and support will be focused on all those amazing individuals impacted. This is in no way a reflection on your amazing work. If there's anything I can help with connections, recommendations, et cetera, dmm me to the Blizzard community. I also want to let you all know today is my last day at Blizzard.
Leading Blizzard through an incredible time and being part of the team shaping it for the future ahead was an absolute honor. Having already spent 20 plus years at Microsoft and with the acquisition of Activision Blizzard behind us, it's time for me to once again become Blizzard's biggest fan from the outside to the incredible teams at Blizzard. Thank you. Words can't express how I feel about all of you.
You are amazing. Continue to do incredible things and always keep Blizzard blue and the player at the forefront of every decision. To all of those impacted today, I am always available to you and to understand how challenging today's news is, my heart is with each one of you. That's what Mike Ybarra wrote over on Wow Head. We have an article titled 1,900 Laid off from Mike, Microsoft Gaming, Mike Ybarra and Alan Adham quitting. We already got word from Mike Ybarra and from Phil Spencer.
So here's what Alan Adham wrote. Another departure resulting from the layoffs is that of Senior Vice President Alan Adham, one of the original co-founders of Blizzard Entertainment all the way back in February of 1991 when it was still known as Silicone and Synapse. Adhe had previously left the company in 2004 and returned in 2016, being made once again part of the company's leadership team in 2018.
Adhe was an executive producer as relayed by Microsoft game content and studio president Matt Booty. Ybarra and Adhe were not part of the layoffs and both chose to leave Blizzard and Microsoft plans to name a new blizzard President next week. It has not been reported how many of the 1,900 employees are from Activision Blizzard specifically and uh, wow Head says, we wish ad him Ybarra and everyone affected by the layoffs. Good luck and solace in these trying times.
And this article was written by, uh, RA A BK, the A BK Workers Alliance posted on X. We are very surprised to hear about these layoffs across Xbox and a BK and, uh, Activision Blizzard King and have seen some of our very active members affected by it.
As information continues to roll out and more people are informed of their status regarding the layoff, we are continuing to keep on top of developments and welcome both those who have been affected and those who wish to help into our communication channels. At the moment, we as a group are still identifying the full consequences of the layoffs and are doing our best to keep people informed and with access to whatever resources we can offer them.
As always, we will continue to work together to attempt to help and protect our fellow employees, current and former as we believe that above all else, working together to help each other is the best tool in regards to these situations. As information continues to come out, we will announce further developments on our side of things accordingly. We've also got from Nathan Grayson, who is a co-founder and reporter of the Aftermath site, also posted on x about CWA.
Nathan wrote CWA, the union that represents workers across Zeta Max and Activision Blizzard tells me him being Nathan Grayson, uh, that these layoffs do not impact workers represented by CWA. It also sent over a statement. Here is their statement. Microsoft's announcement that it will be laying off 1,900 video game workers. Makes clear that even when you work at a successful company in an extremely profitable industry, your livelihood is not protected without a voice on the job.
Every video game worker deserves not only their fair share, but also the peace of mind that comes from having a say over the impact of job cuts through organizing. Workers have established basic workplace practices that are now common from the eight hour workday to five day work week. By coming together and exercising their right to organize workers in the video game industry can make layoff protection standard practice for all u all workers. This is the power of organizing.
We will continue to support workers at Microsoft and across the video game industry who want to have a union voice on the job. And then there's more in here. It's a quote from someone named, um, let's see, Wayne Day Barry, who is the senior quality assurance tester and member of zenax Workers United dash CWA who wrote this. Layoffs in the video game industry are becoming the norm, even at companies that continue to deliver huge profits.
It hurts to see our coworkers who are so passionate about this work who actually make these video game companies so successful be the first impacted by any cuts or layoffs At work, companies will claim that we're all a family, but a family doesn't lay off or outsource people. It's clear that one way or the other, the only way forward for us all is to come together as workers to protect each other. Union representation.
Representation can't always protect against layoffs, but through union representation and the bargaining process, video game workers can establish greater transparency and policies that put our needs first, including layoff protections. That's why we want every video game worker to join our union. Together. We have the power to set new standards for our industry so that we can do the work we are passionate about. Safe from exploitation. That's what he wrote.
Game developer uh, has an article titled Update CWA says Microsoft Layoffs didn't Impact the developers it represents. This is an article written by Chris Care on Game developer. There's a blurb at the top, as we said in our original statement, CWA represented members of Microsoft were not included in the announced layoffs. So I guess the answer to this is join the union. I mean, maybe that would help if you're still there, join the union.
If you haven't, you'll be a little more protected is what I'm understanding from this. So there's an update on the Game developer article, so I'll start there. The update is from today. A former Blizzard Entertainment VFX artist indicated they were laid off by Microsoft despite being a CWA Union member. Okay, maybe I was wrong about that. Uh, earlier today, the CWA told the game developer the layoffs do not impact workers represented by CWA.
A tweet sent to game developer, however suggested otherwise. Yet after being contacted by game developer CWA communications director, Beth Allen reiterated that CWA represented members at Microsoft were not impacted by the layoffs quote. As we said in our original statement, CWA represented members at Microsoft were not included in an in the announced layoffs. Currently, CWA officially represents QA testers at Zenax, Raven, and Blizzard.
Albany CWA is not considered the official representative by the company for other units until a majority of the employees in a bargaining unit authorized CWA is their representative said, Alan, yesterday's news underscores the urgency of formal union recognition for workers in the video game industry.
And CWA activists won't stop until every worker at Activision Blizzard who wants a voice and an opportunity to bargain over these types of decisions can do so rather than being subjected to management's unilateral decision making. So that's the key part of this article. It goes on from here, but that's kind of, you know, the update I think says it all. We've got a couple things here from Bloomberg. So this one says, video game companies make workers relocate and then fire them.
And the blurb says, return to office policies are mixing with the inherent vol inherent volatility of the gaming industry with painful results written by Jason Schreyer. There's stuff in here that's not really relevant to this podcast. Uh, it's about other video games and things like that. Um, but here's the part that's relevant. Come back to the office. Now you're fired two of the companies that held mass layoffs this weekend or this week. Blizzard and Riot have a lot of things in common.
They both have sprawling campuses with thousands of employees. They both believe in player first development philosophies and they've both asked employees to return to their expensive Southern California offices over the last two years. Unlike its closest comparison, Hollywood, the video game industry is not centralized.
Big game companies are located in cities all across the globe and people who want to work in development often find themselves uprooting their lives as they have to relocate for new positions, that might be fine if not for the volatility that plagues the gaming industry.
Thousands of game developers have already lost their jobs in 2024, not just at flailing companies such as Unity Software Inc. But also at successful ostensibly stable shops like Riot and Blizzard, which was recently purchased for $69 billion by Microsoft Core, the biggest company in the world. The cuts are brutal but not abnormal.
A 2017 survey by the International Game Developers Association found that game workers had an average of 2.2 employers in the previous five years, meaning they switched jobs about every two years. The turbulence is also is so standard that the uh, the gaming site Kotaku, where I meaning Jason Schreyer was once an editor. We had an ongoing series called Video Game Layoff Stories.
A few years ago I published a book called Press Reset about what happens to game workers when their companies shut down and they lose their jobs. During the reporting process, I spoke to a number of designers, artists, programmers, testers and musicians who had lost their jobs. Some had left the video game industry entirely finding better wages and more stability in other fields.
Developers who worked at outfits like 38 studios in Providence, Rhode Island or Irrational games in Boston, Massachusetts told me the worst part of the shutdown was knowing that those cities did not have a significant gaming industry presence and that they would have to relocate for new opportunities. It was the largest factor driving many of them to switch career paths goes on from here, but you get the idea.
We've got another Bloomberg article from um, who wrote this one also, Jason Schreyer, which was the day before the one I just read to you. So this will probably be pretty short here. So Microsoft Canceleds New Blizzard video game after six years of development, the long in the works Title Odyssey is a casualty amid broader cuts.
Video game maker Blizzard Entertainment canceled one of its biggest projects on Thursday as part of a reorganization under new owner Microsoft Core that led to mass layoffs of 1,900 people or 8% of the gaming division's total staff. The cancellation of the game code named Odyssey left to blizzard employees reeling as some lost their jobs and others were left. Wondering about the future of the studio?
Microsoft announced the news in an email to employees early Thursday morning and many members of the Odyssey team were subsequently informed they were being let go. The news arrived three months after, after Microsoft closed the $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in the largest video game deal in history.
As part of the reorganization, blizzard also parted ways with President Mike Ybarra and Chief Design Officer Alan Adham, one of the company's founders, the maker of many hit games including World of Warcraft and Diablo four has mostly focused on its large existing franchises. But in recent years, the company made a big investment in Odyssey building up a team of more than 100 people to develop it.
The game set in a new universe was in development for more than six years and outlasted many other blizzard incubation projects. Now the future of such efforts outside of existing franchises is uncertain in a statement.
Blizzard spokesman Andrew Reynolds said the games development had ended, quote as a part of a focus on projects that hold the most promise for future growth end quote, and that the company would quote, move some of the people to the team to one of several exciting new projects Blizzard has in the early stages of development over on Maxwell. We're now shifting into talking about the current Diablo four uh, season. This one's written by Echo Hack. It's titled Legendary Aspects.
This is from a couple days ago, so it's got all the stuff you need. I'll read you a little bit from this. That's at least to give you some, you know, happier news I suppose. So this is what he wrote. When you get a legendary item during gameplay, you can equip it immediately or travel to the occults to extract the act aspect destroying the item in the process.
Once you have an extracted app aspect that's really hard to say all in Rowe, you can imprint it onto any rare item or legendary item that you wish. If you imprint a rare item, it becomes a legendary item. If you imprint a legendary item, it overwrites the existing aspect. Gaining the new effect. A limited number of aspects are also available from the codex of power and the seasonal journey. New season three legendary aspects.
The patch notes for season three just released with some limited details on new legendary aspects. All of the details about these items won't be known until after the season three launch, which he was writing before it launched. Uh, for updates, sign into your Maxwell account and pin this page. You can do that if you want to. You could find legendary aspects that are new or received a above or Nerf in the tables below.
Make sure you don't ignore the early aspects you can gain from the season journey as they can help you level significantly faster. So here's some stuff. Aspect categories. Not all aspects can be imprinted to just any rare or legendary item aspects are divided by category and depending on its category, it can be imprinted on different slots. This forces you to think a little more deeply about your build instead of just putting every damage multiplier you can find on all your items.
So for offensive, there's like things for offensive defensive resource for utility and mobility and I'll leave you to read those. The codex of power is a library of legendary aspects that you can imprint at the occultist. You can add to the codex by completing dungeons or acquiring aspects from the season journey.
The main advantage here is that it is relatively easy to complete a dungeon or season journey chapter to unlock an aspect while leveling instead of randomly finding the right item future of the codex of power. During Bliss Con 2023, Joe Shelley hinted at a future where all aspects would be part of the codex of power. When that happens, this guide will be prepared to tell you all the details on how to extract all the aspects into the codex of power.
You can track and navigate to a dungeon directly in the game. Just open up the codex of power in the game and click on the aspect you want to track. Your map will now have a handy line that will lead you straight to the dungeon containing the power completing a season journey chapter. Each chapter of the season journey offers unique rewards, including aspects that are normally only available from drops.
These aspects can propel your character forward faster than the eternal realm and are an exciting way to level up. You need to complete the objectives in the season journey to unlock the chapter's rewards to see your progress open the season journey by navigating to the season tab. I think we all know how to do this.
If you've been playing, you know, throughout any of these, uh, seasons, not every legendary, it says the codex of power doesn't have every single aspect from each legendary in the game. In it this means you can only find some legendaries from drops by destroying hoards of the demons of of hell over and over again. And the lowest roll imprinted aspects that are imprinted from the codex of power automatically imprint the lowest roll possible.
For example, if you wanted to imprint needle flare, then it would automatically imprint a 20% chance, not a 40% chance. That's half the power of a full max roll according to Echo Hack. And you could see a full list of all the different aspects that are there where you can find them if they're a drop, if they go into a dungeon, if it's just part of the season journey, um, that kind of thing. And it goes into different, uh, classes from that point on.
Now for this season, I'm playing a sorcerer because I decided I had never played one. I might as well give it a try. So I might look at this to see what's going on with that. If you missed it from last episode on January 16th, uh, Diablo four or Blizzards technically unearthed a looming threat or unearth a looming threat to the season of the construct. And it kind of shows you a little bit where to go.
I'm gonna have to be looking at that closer because I was really lost when I was playing this game a little bit, uh, when I had time to do so. So there's a lot of like just, you know, instructions of where to go and how to get the al and all this kind of stuff and you start off in a place that isn't Ki Rashad, which is interesting. I know that was kind of interesting, but I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing in the game yet. I just started with the class I've never played.
So I think it'll be exciting for me to kind of see where I screw things up. , you know, going to wow head. We have an article titled Trading Disabled in Diablo Four, season Three. Uh, it's a Dupe Exploit and this is posted by Jen Tross. It says, with the start of season three players began fresh with new characters ready to once again climb the progression ladder in sanctuary.
However, it seems that another duplication bug has been discovered fresh in season of the construct and trading has once again been disabled. While, while we currently do not know when trading will be re-enabled, historically, it has taken a few days when a duplication exploit has been discovered to fix the issue. We'll keep you updated with the latest information once Blizzard makes an announcement. So you can't trade with people.
Now in the game there's also from Wow Head from Siic or sic, I'm not sure how that's pronounced. It says All aspect rewards from the season journey Dia before season three. It's got pictures of all those little things and it's got, I guess advice for what you could do for various classes. Like the first one up here, I think they did the alphabetically. Here is the barbarian.
So chapter one gets you aspect of SunEd ground chapter two, and I'm assuming that means they're being completed is devilish aspects. Chapter three is aspect of li Limitless rage and chapter four is aspect of encroaching wrath. And it goes on like this where it looks like each of the, each of the classes has like special ones for them, you know, so you can look at that if you'd like to. Everything that I talked about is gonna be in the show [email protected].
So you can find all of it there. And the last thing I have here is a Diablo four patch, 1.3 0.0 a Csol improvements and quality of life changes written by Popular. Popular. And there's a screenshot here of what's probably those things. Okay, so here we go. Blizzard has released patch notes for Diablo four patch 1.3 0.0, which will become available to download later tonight. This article was posted an hour and 26 minutes ago, , so it'll be later tonight.
This patch focuses on improving the Chaw companion and multiply and multiple quality of life changes. Blizzard has also confirmed that Patch 1.3 0.1 will be released early next week and will incorporate changes based on the community's feedback of season three thus far. Here's a piece from Blizzard. Hi all. We first want to thank the Diablo community for the feedback since the launch of season three.
Earlier this week we have been listening and collecting feedback and we'll be releasing a patch late tonight. Patch 1.3 0.0 A, this patch helps with some changes and fixes to a few key items we have been hearing in the feedback including the chaw construct vaults and arcane tremors and the echo of Malus. You could read the patch notes in the link below, echo of Malus developers'.
Note, we have noticed players tended to use their pearls of waring for fighting echo of malus instead of on zoltan's wording, we are adding in igneous cores, a new item to used solely to summon malus instead of pearls. So players don't have to choose between extra protection in the vaults or fighting the boss. Additionally, we have made the fight against Malus more difficult, but also increased the reward it provides. Echo of malice has had their level raised from 85 to 100.
So don't jump in there. If your character is brand new. In my opinion, mine's brand new, I won't be doing that immediately. The health pool of echo of malice has been increased by 30%. A new item, igneous cores now exist for the purpose of accessing the Uber vault or and echo of malice. Confirm player facing names don't know what that means. Uh, this item will replace the usage of pearls of warding in providing access.
Igneous cores will have a chance to drop from vault heralds and are guaranteed to drop from son of malice. In World Tier four loot updates the drop rate of unique stones from malice increase from point 25% to 0.5%. Unique stones now have a 3% chance of dropping from the chest. After the boss defeating the echo of Malus will now return more legendary items. Additionally, level item level 9, 2 5 items will drop more often. We're also doing things with Thesal.
We received feedback that Thesal does not feel powerful. Thesal becomes more powerful as it reaches max level, but we have noticed that many players have not had the chance to level up their csol enough to experience this. We are introducing multiple changes to ensure players have more sources to earn governing and tuning stones so that they can level up their csol and unlock their new companions. Full potential crafting a governing or tuning stone will now always cost 200 shattered stone.
This always trips me out, man. That's like the podcast name, you know, close and 20 iron, uh, chunks regardless of level finding. A max level governing or turning stone will now grant 150 to 200 shattered stone governing and turning stone tuning stones can now be acquired as rewards for completing whispers. Son of malice now always drops two to three governing and tuning stones. Stones awarded from Al Stone caches have been increased from one to two stones.
Experience requirements for governing and tuning stones have been reduced, so they can't be ranked up more naturally with your level so they can be ranked up more naturally with your leveling experience. There's also, uh, vaults and arcane tremors and they're doing quality of life changes to that. And there's some bug fixes.
I always read the bug fixes because there's sometimes really interesting fixed an issue where the gate hall would not display on the map for players on PlayStation, fixed an issue where the brazier would, could not be interacted with in certain circumstances during the drums of the vault. Quest fix an issue where the beckoning thunder horse cosmetic was invisible. For druid players, that's a problem.
Uh, fix an issue where the damage effect and the visual effect were not in sync for floor traps in vaults and various stability and performance improvements. So that's basically all I've got today to tell you about. Uh, some of this is extremely unhappy stuff. Nobody likes it when big corporations hire people, maybe even make them move closer to where they have to work. Maybe they've got a lease somewhere and now they don't have a job.
So I really hate when big companies like don't really think about the humans that are working for them instead of, you know, how do we make our bottom line bigger for the high, the high ups? And so I'm just kind of frustrated by that. If you want to know more, you should go to x slash Twitter and you could see a whole bunch of people talking about that they've themselves have been laid off from Activision Blizzard King slash Microsoft and just how much that is.
And it just, just annoys the hell outta me when big companies that have plenty of money decide, well, we're just gonna ask people for the hell of it. You know what I mean? And that's where I'm ending the show today. You have been listening to episode 4, 4 3 of the Shattered Soul Stone. Your Diablo community podcast missed an episode. You could find the show blog and listen to the show archives at www shattered soul stone.com. Come join us in game or in game community and clan.
Both named Shattered Soul Stone are open to anyone who would like to join. You can also join us on Discord. For the ultimate team and community-based experience, find the Discord invitation link on our Twitter at shattered stone as well as the Shattered Soul Stone website. Thank you for listening.