Activision Blizzard reportedly set to layoff ‘hundreds’ of staff

At Blizzcon last year, it became more apparent than ever that things at Blizzard were changing. There has been a shift towards mobile gaming, Mike Morhaime has left the studio and Activision has chosen a new CFO to oversee and manage Blizzard's financial situation. Now, the folks at Blizzard are bracing for job cuts.

Throughout 2018, Activision started taking a more heavy-handed approach in Blizzard's operations. The main goal was to reduce costs, ship games more frequently and boost profits. We've already seen job cuts at Blizzard's support branch in Ireland, and we have seen the Heroes of the Storm team shrink. Now, it looks like more job losses are on the table.

As reported by Bloomberg over the weekend, Activision Blizzard is apparently set to lay-off a chunk of staff on Tuesday the 12th of February. Kotaku's Jason Schreier also stepped in with sources of his own, claiming that most layoffs will be outside of game development departments. So, this will mainly affect sales, marketing, publishing, support etc. Some job losses may also take place at Activision proper, not just Blizzard.

Given that this news made its way out ahead of time, we'll likely hear more on this later today.

KitGuru Says: Blizzard has had a license to operate as it pleases for many years now, so these changes are likely going to be tough on a lot of people. We're already starting to see signs of Blizzard changing, unfortunately all we can do now is wait and see how things evolve going forward.

Become a Patron!