You would possibly recall that when the Microsoft Acquisition of Activision Blizzard finalized in October of final yr, this author made some extent of claiming that layoffs could be inevitable—and right here we’re, with 1,900 staff now laid off. Microsoft has made the choice to launch employees from its Activision Blizzard and Bethesda studios. Xbox head Phil Spencer made the next assertion relating to the layoffs:
“It’s been slightly over three months for the reason that Activision, Blizzard, and King groups joined Microsoft. As we transfer ahead in 2024, the management of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is dedicated to aligning on a method and an execution plan with a sustainable value construction that may assist the entire of our rising enterprise. Collectively, we’ve set priorities, recognized areas of overlap, and ensured that we’re all aligned on the most effective alternatives for development.
As a part of this course of, we’ve got made the painful determination to scale back the dimensions of our gaming workforce by roughly 1,900 roles out of the 22,000 individuals on our workforce. The Gaming Management Group and I are dedicated to navigating this course of as thoughtfully as potential. The people who find themselves instantly impacted by these reductions have all performed an essential half within the success of Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax and the Xbox groups, and they need to be pleased with all the pieces they’ve achieved right here. We’re grateful for the entire creativity, ardour and dedication they’ve dropped at our video games, our gamers and our colleagues. We’ll present our full assist to those that are impacted in the course of the transition, together with severance advantages knowledgeable by native employment legal guidelines. These whose roles might be impacted might be notified, and we ask that you just please deal with your departing colleagues with the respect and compassion that’s in step with our values.”
Observe that Spencer appears to deliberately draw consideration to the truth that Microsoft had 22,000 staff on its roster of recreation builders, probably attempt to soften the discharge of almost 2,000 employees. Whether or not or not that may really resonate with shoppers, lots of whom have change into fairly jaded relating to layoffs from recreation corporations that stay extremely worthwhile, is but to be seen. This isn’t the primary shakeup in current occasions for Activision Blizzard, as its longtime, controversial CEO Bobby Kotick stepped down from his function this previous December. Regardless of changing into wholly owned by Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, a minimum of as of this writing, stays dedicated to producing titles throughout all gaming platforms. How these layoffs will impression the assorted collection that Xbox produces on Nintendo {hardware} is unknown, however we are going to proceed to report on this because the story develops.
Within the interim, we provide our honest condolences to those that had been impacted by these layoffs.
Supply: GamesIndustry.biz