The publisher claims that the coronavirus global pandemic’s effect led to laying off fifty people.

Bloomberg and Sports Business Journal both reported about how Activision Blizzard fired fifty of its former employees – they were mainly working on the publisher’s live events and esports businesses. „Players are increasingly choosing to connect with our games digitally. Everything we do is through the lens of our players, and over the past year, we have been exploring how we might best serve their needs.

The esports team, much like traditional sports, entertainment, and broadcasting industries, has had to adapt its business due to the impact the pandemic has had on live events. We retained a vast majority of the team throughout a complex year and these changes were not made lightly, particularly in the current environment. We are taking extensive steps to ease the transition for all affected employees,” an Activision Blizzard representative told Gamesindustry, without clarifying which divisions saw the cuts.

„We learned a lot last year in terms of how the leagues can be structured for online play, and we’ll look to carry forward the best practices from that. In terms of timing, it’s a reaction to the realities of how the leagues are playing and what resources we need to allocate to best serve the league, owners, teams and fans,” Activision Blizzard president of sports and entertainment Tony Petitti told Sports Business Journal, confirming that the live events for Call of Duty League and Overwatch League aren’t going away entirely.

„Live events are still very much a part of both the Overwatch League and Call of Duty League strategies. We plan to get back to them as soon as it’s safe to do so and logistically feasible,” an Activision Blizzard representative further clarified. Bloomberg added that the laid-off US employees will get at least 90 days severance and a year of continuing health benefits.

In October, Activision Blizzard closed offices in France and the Netherlands. Then, the publisher said it wants to hire 2000 people (presumably for lower pay…) to meet the production demands, only to cut more people in the Asia-Pacific studios in November. All while the company is highly profitable…

Source: Gamesindustry