[alanfalcon]

I suppose I could easily see many of these coming from support as that department has been running more an more like a separate entity since Blizzard more or less moved support to Austin, TX from Irvine (keeping only a small, but eventually growing staff around in Irvine). With support wait times dropping as much as they have, it seems they would have reached a point where efficiencies and lower subscriptions in the US could mean making the hard decision to reduce support staff. UPDATE: I know one of those affected, and he was a trailer in the support staff, and one of the best guys around who really fit the company culture. He knew everything there was to know about WoW, and was constantly learning so he could make sure that our new hires, some of whom had never played the game, could learn all there was to know. Guys like him were what made the support staff special at Blizzard, even as things became more corporate and removed from the "cool" entertainment side of the business.

Testers are technically development, so some of the "60 development staff" may have been from that department, but they tend to be very overworked (I'm not sure they would consider that to be the same thing as understaffed) so unless they realized there is no way they will have new products nearing completion for a good long time I find it hard to imagine this is testers.

I'm not sure that the Diablo team really uses contracted developers rather than proper employees. It doesn't feel like the Blizzard way of doing things where developers have a very low churn and company loyalty is well rewarded.

All guesses and speculation on my part. I was shocked to see this news because it isn't something the Blizzard I know would have done except as a last resort, and it's hard to imagine the company being near any "last resort" situations—the worst case scenario right now seems to be lower profit sharing for the higher ups, and I've never seen any of those guys as in it for the money rather live of the games. I know the company line at Blizzard is that Activision has no control or say in operations. I hope that's still the case, but this move, lacking any specific details, does smell like Activision all the way.