Blizzard lost 209 workers in Activision Blizzard's massive wave of lay-offs

[Polycount]

In context: Activision Blizzard cut hundreds of jobs recently, despite pulling in record revenue and earning unfathomable amounts of money through microtransactions. This decision sparked widespread controversy throughout the industry, leaving many existing employees fearing for their jobs.

Now, courtesy of a filing obtained by PC Games Insider, we have some more specific details regarding precisely which jobs were cut.

The outlet discovered that a whopping 209 of the 800+ people laid off during this debacle were Blizzard employees. Of that number, 41 terminated employees worked in IT, and 29 worked in marketing. 29 "Live Experience" workers were also let go in the mass lay-offs.

Interestingly, it doesn't seem like many Blizzard jobs were lost on the development side. Based on PC Games Insider's report, 11 individuals were fired from Blizzard's QA department, but the outlet doesn't mention any terminations occurring in other development-related areas.

Though we typically advise our readers to remain skeptical with reports like this, Blizzard reached out to PC Games Insider with the following statement:

We are unable to provide additional details beyond what we’ve publicly disclosed... While the changes were difficult, they were important for supporting our current game-development priorities, which will serve as the foundation for Blizzard’s future. This will ultimately put us in the best position to create epic, high-quality content and entertainment experiences for our players around the world.

Notably, the company did not deny any of the information contained in the report, which may suggest that it's fairly accurate.

Outside of Blizzard, the lay-offs are also affecting other Activision Blizzard-owned companies. Candy Crush developer King's San Francisco location is set to close, taking 80 workers with it. The studio's Seattle office is also being shuttered, which will lead to the loss of around 78 more jobs.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/79104-blizzard-lost-209-workers-activision-blizzard-massive-wave.html

 

[Jamibi]

As much as I'm excited for WoW Classic. Honestly, R.I.P Blizzard.

One of my favourite and close to my heart developers. I loved Diablo (from the first one, Warcraft from the 2nd one, WoW and also played HoTS.) It really is sad to see it go this way.

Really just why? It's sad to even feel sad about it but, after spending so much of my life on their games I just don't get it!

 

[brucek]

IIRC, in their briefing to analysts, they mentioned planning to increase development headcount by 20%.

I'm not sure what those IT people were doing, but if it was internal enterprise app type stuff that was redundant with similar apps at Activision and whoever makes Candy Crush, consolidating on that to put the money into games may not be that dumb of a decision.

 

[amstech]

Make WoW $5 a month.
I'd pull out the o''l Draenei Mage and throw around some arcane pain.

 

[Nobina]

As much as I'm excited for WoW Classic. Honestly, R.I.P Blizzard.

One of my favourite and close to my heart developers. I loved Diablo (from the first one, Warcraft from the 2nd one, WoW and also played HoTS.) It really is sad to see it go this way.

Really just why? It's sad to even feel sad about it but, after spending so much of my life on their games I just don't get it!

Because of greed, that's it, nothing else.

 

[Uncle Al]

Well, history has taught us that the game maker industry has it's ups and downs like many industries. Often caused by managers and "creators" that cannot look far enough into the future to keep the troops working on the next great game. Rather than divide their work force in half with the first half working on further developments to the existing game and the other half in development to the newest game. When you look at games like Half Life, a series that had several more generations supported by the story line, it makes you wonder where these managers got their training much less their management skills ......

 

[Adi6293]

As much as I'm excited for WoW Classic. Honestly, R.I.P Blizzard.

One of my favourite and close to my heart developers. I loved Diablo (from the first one, Warcraft from the 2nd one, WoW and also played HoTS.) It really is sad to see it go this way.

Really just why? It's sad to even feel sad about it but, after spending so much of my life on their games I just don't get it!

I'm with you, Warcraft II and Diablo II LoD are my personal favourites from Blizzard but I did a fair amount of hours in WoW and Diablo III, they used to be my favorite develoer now days I have more respect for Ubisoft

 

[DAOWAce]

And they still refuse to add back the regional servers they used to have despite record profits and layoffs.

Or change "US East" to read "US Central", since that's where the servers moved to a few years ago.

Unless you live on the west coast of NA (y'know, near their HQ/datacenter), Blizzard doesn't seem to give a rat's *** about your game experience.