Activision Blizzard lays off 800 employees, Blizzard to not release any major titles this year

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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.

:arrow: Source

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.

:arrow: Source
 
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But it's still not the workers who caused the issues in the first place, it's was Activision Blizzard who pushed them to make unrealistic release dates, it was Activision Blizzard who pushed them to put out unfinished games, it was Activision Blizzard who created unrealistic expectations for the sales of their games, it is completely Activision Blizzard's fault and to be correct, the higher-ups fault for what's happening. Taking it out on the workers when it's higher-ups who created this problem isn't going to fix the problems with the company (and honestly other shit companies like EA and Ubisoft.) The people who created the problems are still there and will still continue to create the same problems in the future. No amount of worker isn't going to fix the problems when they aren't even addressing the problem in the first place.
Regardless of who created the problem, the existence of workers who now aren't necessary doesn't make sense. You can absolutely blame the higher ups for the problem, and I would concur in this case. Most of those higher ups have left the company. There was a mass executive exodus at Activison, the CEO was ousted, and the company's CFO was fired. So, the higher ups that made this mess are gone. You mentioned EA, and a similar executive exodus happened there.

Looking back at Activison, the company is undergoing a restructuring. That means some jobs will no longer be necessary. If we get into supply and demand, and if we take supply to mean the company's level of output, they lost a big series in Destiny, and have scaled back other series in light of demand (for series like Skylanders) dropping. With a cut in their ability to supply content, and with a drop in demand for some of their other content, the equilibrium of supply drops, and you now have a surplus of labor within the company. The more employees you have, the less efficient each employee is on average, as you hire the best talent first and then every consecutive hire is, on average, a decrease in talent. If your company is scaling back, the output falls under the bottom line efficiency when you have too many resources (in this case, workers) applied to too little production for the new equilibrium supply. And thus, inefficient resources need to be jettissoned. A round of layoffs is necessary to offset the decrease and buoy the company. It's basic economics that apply to all companies, regardless of size. You're hired for your labor and are let go if your labor is no longer needed.

On a more personal note, since it's easy to get too impersonal when examining economics, a CEO or executive team can lift a company into the sky or drive them into the dirt. It's unfortunate when the latter occurs, and unfortunate for the layoffs that typically follow. The ebb and flow of hiring and layoffs is an immutable fact of economics in a capitalist society, not just because of executive failures, but also because of market forces beyond the control of any one company. I believe companies that have cash should provide severance to ease the transition of laid-off workers into a new job. Activision, from what I hear, is offering 6 months of payment as severence. Hopefully that is enough for those laid off workers to find new work. We have labor laws to account for this, and I believe it's in the interest of game industry workers to unionize, given the volatility of the industry and its resultant conditions for worker exploitation.
 

FAST6191

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But it's still not the workers who caused the issues in the first place, it's was Activision Blizzard who pushed them to make unrealistic release dates, it was Activision Blizzard who pushed them to put out unfinished games, it was Activision Blizzard who created unrealistic expectations for the sales of their games, it is completely Activision Blizzard's fault and to be correct, the higher-ups fault for what's happening. Taking it out on the workers when it's higher-ups who created this problem isn't going to fix the problems with the company (and honestly other shit companies like EA and Ubisoft.) The people who created the problems are still there and will still continue to create the same problems in the future. No amount of worker isn't going to fix the problems when they aren't even addressing the problem in the first place.
Are you sure?
When learning about project design I was told always always always have a specification... and they were right. The one time, of many occasions I forwent this wisdom, that it did not come back to bite me in the arse was when I was doing work for reasonable people (something of a rarity in some of my circles).
Part of that is a timeframe/schedule of works. They then either failed to do a proper estimate, failed to work at the required/stated rate or encountered some unexpected troubles (and failed to allow some flexibility to fix it). Given the nature of their development this last few years I am not inclined to believe the latter is too troubling. I will have to look at how many of their games came in over budget but if that is the case then the execs were still prepared to stump up some more cash as well.

Similarly they are the ones that made the games that did not sell. It could be that some moron marketing department decided that the kids were into [this] and did them in that way, or it could have been directed from on high by the execs (rare as I imagine it is more of a pitch and sequel type affair). Similarly given that we have had fantastic games come out of rather dysfunctional environments, seemingly for far lower budgets (how many a late PS2/early 360 era dev would have loved to have even half of what a potentially flagship title would get today?) and far more restricted hardware then.

It could be that there is a single location to lay blame but from where I sit there looks to be lots to go around everywhere. If I am going to absolve the low level workers of anything then I am going to need something more.

Can't blame Blizz for slicing off what ever they can to save themselves. It's no secret that they've been hurting. Once they are able to stabilize will be good. They gotta survive though. I'd like a nice high taxing gpu version of WoW Where I can say wow at the graphics like I was a kid lol
Have you seen Pantheon? I have never been one for MMOs (much much prefer local co-op here) but that actually has me excited for something for the first time in a very long time.
 

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Last edited by Joe88,

leon315

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Well I see it in the overwatch community, seems all the top execs care about is pushing the OWL (less than 0.01% of the player base) than everything else that is wrong with the game right now.
Funny enough I saw ads in the blizzard launcher saying they are hiring engineers a few weeks ago which have disappeared now.
the overwatch has a lot of potential to become a major E-sport game, the goal was selling interval spots and get as much sponsors as possible, since overwatch user base has reached a saturate point and it's so hard to gain more new players.

p.s. can 't go further 2900, but making a smurf and entertain on golds and silvers is priceless xD
 

Joe88

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the overwatch has a lot of potential to become a major E-sport game, the goal was selling interval spots and get as much sponsors as possible, since overwatch user base has reached a saturate point and it's so hard to gain more new players.

p.s. can 't go further 2900, but making a smurf and entertain on golds and silvers is priceless xD
Well it's not so much about gaining more players, its more about keeping the player base steady which has been rapidly been dwindling for a while now. You can also see it on twitch and other streaming platforms and ow is not in a good place anymore.
 

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1)ActiBlizz can't sell what they never owned, Bungie always had ownership of the Destiny IP while ActiBlizz had a 10 year contract to publish and market the series.

Said contract was close to ending and Bungie having new funds from tencent wanted out while actiblizz also wanting out due to "low sales"

2)Activition and Blizzard are a single company
 

netovsk

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Don't think Blizzard is planning new IPs anytime soon (maybe they'll come with a battle royale of their own in a few years if the trend persists).

As for Activision, not sure if they're planning anything other than milking call of duty (which development is outsourced if I'm not mistaken) and crash bandicoot franchises.

Makes sense.
 

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Happy to say I contributed to those declining micro-transactions. Fuck Activision and what they've done to Blizzard. I've boycotted them along with EA - Always vote with your wallet! On to greener pastures (and better developers).
 

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Important distinction: Blizzard is not firing employees, they are laying off employees. Those employees will receive unemployment until their next jobs (or the unemployment time limit), and won't have their work record tainted with a firing.
 

Xzi

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Important distinction: Blizzard is not firing employees, they are laying off employees. Those employees will receive unemployment until their next jobs (or the unemployment time limit), and won't have their work record tainted with a firing.
I suppose in a way that's nice of them, but really the employees shouldn't be getting fired at all. The people at the top should be taking pay cuts and re-thinking the shitty direction they've been taking the company in recently. Instead they'll just release some low-level employees and remain entirely tone-deaf to their own fan base.
 
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