Things are looking a little bleak for some of the employees over at publisher Activision Blizzard, according to a new report from Bloomberg. This news follows on the heels of Activision's major sale of the Destiny IP to Bungie, as well as harsh drop in stock over the past few months, nearly dropping by half since Fall 2018. The company is also dealing with a new CFO, Dennis Durkin, who replaced Mike Morhaime, who had held the position for nearly three decades. According to the information, Activision Blizzard will be restructuring, and as a result, "hundreds" of its 9,800 workers will be facing job cuts this Tuesday. Another industry titan, Electronic Arts saw stocks also plummet recently due to underperforming titles, though they quickly recovered after the launch of Apex Legends. This article will be updated when the official press report goes out later this week with more details.

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UPDATE

Tuesday has arrived, and the report was confirmed. Despite claiming that revenue for the company was at a record high in 2018, pulling in $7.26 billion, Activision Blizzard will be laying off about 800 of its workers. During the Q4 earnings report briefing, it was revealed that retail and microtransaction sales were on a higher than expected decline. Blizzard's CFO also announced that Blizzard has no major game releases set for 2019 outside of the mobile Diablo game, Diablo Immortal. "Several" console/PC projects are said to be in the pipeline, though we'll have to wait to see what those games could possibly be.

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[Noctosphere]

No major game released this year?
What about wc3 reforged?
Not major enough?

 

[anhminh]

uh what?

Trump tax cut aim at high income citizen and business.

 

[kumikochan]

A lot of people are justifying what they did and even going as far as creating conspiracy theories that activision wants to replace blizzard employees. It's one giant company now !! Not 2 working together so pls stop with that conspiracy. Also there's no justication whatsoever when 2018 is the year they made the most amount of money in their entire history. I really don't get why people justify laying off people when 2018 is the year they made the highest amount in their entire history

 

[JoeBloggs777]

Also there's no justication whatsoever when 2018 is the year they made the most amount of money in their entire history. I really don't get why people justify laying off people when 2018 is the year they made the highest amount in their entire history

probably because with no major releases this year, the end of this year might be one of their worse for turnover.

 

[Mythical]

I feel like they're definitely lying though. They're just trying to surprise people

 

[WiiUBricker]

Iwata and other executives cut off their own pay to keep people employed when Nintendo used to struggle while Blizzard fires people even though they’re doing well. Fucking scumbags.

 

[Ev1l0rd]

Realize that ActiBliz hired a new CFO back in January, who got a 15 million bonus just for taking the job.

https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-...ds-worth-dollar15-million-for-taking-the-job/

 

[FAST6191]

Choice video at this point, covers some more interesting things for the future as well

Yep. Its the douches at the top that tell the developers what to make.

If the place is so horrible to work for then are they not glad? Moreover there are plenty of problems with their recent efforts that are not readily attributed to word from on high to include more microtransactions or do something tonally stupid.

Realize that ActiBliz hired a new CFO back in January, who got a 15 million bonus just for taking the job.

https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-...ds-worth-dollar15-million-for-taking-the-job/

Fairly reasonable signing bonus for a CFO at that level, especially one brought on to sort a sinking ship.

 

[Ev1l0rd]

If the place is so horrible to work for then are they not glad? Moreover there are plenty of problems with their recent efforts that are not readily attributed to word from on high to include more microtransactions or do something tonally stupid.

They're not laying off the game devs, it's the other departments that are facing layoffs. Marketing and the like.

 

[FAST6191]

Fair enough. So some other departments have some dead weight and they are lightly trimming the fat. Not seeing the problem.

 

[BORTZ]

How can a company who's made literal billions of dollars justify the need to fire employees?

Its the exact thing that Buzzfeed is doing. They reported a net gain over the past few years, but there's more money to be made so thecut 100 people from the staff. Its a pretty sad and common thing now. Gaming companies are even worse. Notice how the timely virtue signaling announcement that "Soldier 76 is gay" broke right around the exact same time that ActiBlizz started making headlines for massive fraud charges? They don't care about their employees or customers. They care about money. As long as people are buying thing from them that's all they care about.

"Turning players into payers"

 

[Youkai]

Guys stop bashing them till you know the details ...

Of course it is usually a bad thing when people lose their Jobs but they haven't said what kind of people get fired and another source said they will give them a good compensation plus try to help them find a new job.

Some years ago I was working for a Company that was Nr. 1 in the World with their product (not anymore) and they changed from 50+ workers who actually produce something and maybe 5-10 Office workers to 10 people producing and 50 office workers who wanted to "manage" everything ... end of the game is that the Company still lifes but they are in the red for many years and it doesn't look like it will get better anytime soon....

The other Source said that Activision Blizzard announced that they want to hire at least 20% more programmer so I guess they are not kicking out any programmer and trying to get some of the "useless" people out (even though this is just my assumption)

 

[Mythical]

Realize that ActiBliz hired a new CFO back in January, who got a 15 million bonus just for taking the job.

https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-...ds-worth-dollar15-million-for-taking-the-job/

when your bonus is enough money to live an entire life?

 

[kuwanger]

Guys stop bashing them till you know the details ...

The problem I see is we have enough details. The revenue was short ~$150 million of expected so they're pushing a $150 million restructuring which includes mass lay-off of 800 people. It'd be a whole other thing if through the year they were laying off people here and there--even mass lay-offs--which were tied to under-performance. When it's done this way, it's clearly just being done to appease Wall Street. Whether those 800 people, being marketing and esports, are "useless" for the company? I wouldn't trust them to do a good job actually knowing precisely because it's a mass lay-off. So, some are likely useless. Others, they're just throwing under the bus.

PS - And to the point of lay-off != fired, if the point of lay-off is to let go "useless" people, who wants to hire a "useless" person? It can be seen as a more gentle thing, and some companies may understand it as such, but if your company "lays-off" people to avoid having a scene about "firing" a person, would you not presume most other companies do the same thing? So, a lot of time it can be a similar black mark to being fired. It heavily depends on the circumstance and the potential companies hiring.