Something that popped up today...

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/03/bli...-not-affected/

600!

While this is unquestionably devastating news for those affected, have a think about this in relation to STO for a moment.

Blizzard just, one might say casually, axed 600 people of their work force without affecting a single development team for their key franchises.

I'm not entirely sure how many staff Cryptic have working for them (wikipedia suggests it was 1-200 in arouind 2007) but for those who do beat up STO for its output of content, this is a number worth contemplating, and worth keeping in mind next time the proverbial finger is pointed in the direction of Blizzard or EA, followed by the question "If they can do it, why can't you!?"

Keep up the wonderful work, Cryptic.

Always thought only 20+/- people were working on STO

Which goes even further to underscore the point, really. I would expect the "creatives" in a games company to make up the minority of staff, with the vast bulk of people in the company working in management, finance, marketing, sales and administration.

True. And it's also a valid point that Cryptic runs other games (CO, and another one?) and only a fraction of their staff will work on STO and fewer, if any, will work only on STO.

There are times when people get job cuts in the gaming industry after a new release. Almost like they were temp employees and the contract time was up and work was done. So has Blizzard put out anything recently where that may not be too big a deal? Honestly I stopped paying attention to Blizzard when they announced their new Kung-Fu Panda MMO. They couldn't even get Jack Black for VO work on that so they no longer have much credibility in my book. lol

Diablo 3 is due to launch soon.

It's a matter of scale. Cryptic is a lot smaller. And you know, $44 million small and all that. Blizzard is not that small.