The Microsoft-owned publisher continues to reduce its workforce, but this time the layoffs won’t be in the console/PC sector.
The affected employees (nearly 400 in number) worked in Santa Monica and Irvine, California, USA, in the mobile division, eliminating redundancies after Microsoft spent $75.4 billion to absorb Activision Blizzard King. Previously, 1,003 employees were laid off in Novato, Foster City, and Southern California last year, according to documents filed with the Employment Development Department (EDD).
Activision Blizzard King told the EDD it plans to lay off 140 people from its Blizzard Entertainment studio in Irvine, effective Oct. 11, affecting several positions within the company, Leslie Campbell, director of human resources for ActiBlizz, wrote in the letter. Accountants, software engineers, the director of human resources for World of Warcraft, artists, producers – they will all be affected, and not just junior positions, as a vice president and a game director will also lose their jobs.
According to Delay Simmons, spokesperson for Activision Blizzard King, the company is unable to provide further details on which teams are still affected and where, which is interesting because it’s the kind of thing you need to know, so they’re probably just being secretive: “The 400 roles you see in the system are part of the recent news and are not new; the roles that have been impacted include mostly corporate and support roles and some impact to game teams.” In addition to the Irvine/Santa Monica layoffs on October 11, layoffs will also take place at the Playa Vista studio in November and will be completed by the end of the year.
In January, 1,900 people were laid off from Xbox, ZeniMax, and Activision Blizzard, and in September, the Redmond tech giant laid off 650 more. Given Microsoft’s track record in the gaming industry, there is a strong possibility that more people will lose their jobs in the future. With a quarter of the year still to go, be prepared for up to 25,000 job losses in 2024 alone…
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