Activision Plans to Cut Hundreds of Jobs Next Week

Megalith

Megalith

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With plummeting stocks driven by waning interest in key titles such as Overwatch and Destiny 2, Activision Blizzard is already drowning in bad news, but things are about to get a whole lot worse for the gaming giant: Bloomberg has learned hundreds of employees will lose their jobs on Tuesday as part of a restructuring attempt aimed at centralizing functions and boosting profit. Many of these layoffs will reportedly be in non-game-development departments, such as publishing, marketing, and sales. “Analysts expect Activision’s sales to decline by about 2 percent this year, to $7.28 billion.”

In January, developer Bungie announced that it was parting ways with Activision and ending its development contract early, putting the bow on a long-doomed relationship. Bungie would hang onto the Destiny franchise as a result. The business angle is that Activision is now missing one of its biggest tentpoles, but the human angle is that the split leaves people in danger of losing their jobs. Activision employed an entire team full of Destiny support staff—PR, marketing, social media, business, and so on—who now have no work.
 
Well, from a business standpoint, it would make no sense to have folks in those positions to support a brand that is no longer a part of your product line. Sucks, but if you want to point the finger, it would be at Bungie for splitting apart (the reason for the split is a different subject).

To make matters worse, if Act/Bliz can't move those folks to a different brand to support, it speaks of a lack of anything even on the horizon too.
 
Played a couple months of WoW when last exp came out after being inactive for over a year and I will never go back to a subscription required game... Only thing I look forward to playing from Act/Bliz is the WC3 remake and mainly because I never played the original. Quit playing D3 years ago as well, same ole shit over and over, they should have at least came out with another xpac after Reaper of Souls.
 
Bloomberg has learned hundreds of employees will lose their jobs on Tuesday as part of a restructuring attempt aimed at centralizing functions and boosting profit. Many of these layoffs will reportedly be in non-game-development departments, such as publishing, marketing, and sales. “Analysts expect Activision’s sales to decline by about 2 percent this year, to $7.28 billion.” WHILE EXECUTIVES OF THOSE DEPARTMENTS WILL RECEIVED HEFTY BONUSES AND LOTS OF BACK PATTING FOR CUTTING COSTS.

fixed that for them.
 
Activision and blizzard can choke on their own manufactured trash. They, like EA, need to die.
 
alamox said:
their executives are taking 15-40mil$ a year, if each of them get 1mil$ less per year they could keep these 200 ppl they wanna layoff and recruit 100 more.
nobody needs to make that much money, and on top of that they probably scam the taxes
Click to expand...

Yes, I don't understand how a company this small pays their exec so much. Does Apple pay their execs 30 times as much? I mean, Activision-Blizzard had a $7 Billion revenue. Apple's was $265 Billion. And judging by some news, the highest exec in Apple got $24 million. So how the fuck a company that has almost 40 times as much revenue pays only double or triple to their execs? (that is a 10x the amount paid to the execs per dollar of revenue. It makes no fucking sense).

Yeah, because the gaming companies are overpaying their execs. In comparison, Activision execs should all be making less than a million a year. Specially in this context of stocks being so fucked up.
 
alamox said:
their executives are taking 15-40mil$ a year, if each of them get 1mil$ less per year they could keep these 200 ppl they wanna layoff and recruit 100 more.
nobody needs to make that much money, and on top of that they probably scam the taxes
Click to expand...

If you don't take care of your employees, they won't take care of your company. Activision should know that lesson the most after they broke off from atari. Or does history have to repeat itself ?
 
MAN :rolleyes:
I think if someone ever make a game i would like to play, and even if it is successful, its just a matter of a few years then its all over.
But as it is probably going to be a marginal game ( judging on what people play ) then i don't think i will have more than a year of gaming joy.

Pretty sad the world are that sick.
 
I utterly abhor Activision and I am pretty unhappy with some of the shit Blizz has pulled lately. That said, the gaming industry as a whole is the real loser here. I would much rather see these companies wake up and get back to making the kind of games that made them the behemoths they are, not burn to the ground. I want to see more quality games..not less.
 
alamox said:
their executives are taking 15-40mil$ a year, if each of them get 1mil$ less per year they could keep these 200 ppl they wanna layoff and recruit 100 more.
nobody needs to make that much money, and on top of that they probably scam the taxes
Click to expand...

They certainly don't when our first responder's and teachers make just enough to scrape by. Its ridiculous how much the executives make. I'm not against rich people but damn, being a CEO of a gaming company is not life or death. On top of that, they churn out crap & have no real vision. Maybe Actiblizzard should restructure, right into bankruptcy!
 
I've never understood why the executives of any company make so much. Do they make the company run? Do they bring in the money to actually run the company? Nope and nope. It's the people on the bottom rungs of the company that really make the company money and do the real work necessary to keep the company going. Oh but they're the first ones to go meanwhile the C-level assholes pat themselves on the back and give themselves big fat stacks of Benjamins.

Is it any wonder why people are so pissed these days about the wage gaps?
 
So the next Call of Duty is going to suck big time.....I'm not sure if the Blizzard launcher was a good idea but I think it did pretty well the last 6 or so Call of Duty games seems to be a dying franchise frag wise.
 
darckhart said:
Bloomberg has learned hundreds of employees will lose their jobs on Tuesday as part of a restructuring attempt aimed at centralizing functions and boosting profit. Many of these layoffs will reportedly be in non-game-development departments, such as publishing, marketing, and sales. “Analysts expect Activision’s sales to decline by about 2 percent this year, to $7.28 billion.” WHILE EXECUTIVES OF THOSE DEPARTMENTS WILL RECEIVED HEFTY BONUSES AND LOTS OF BACK PATTING FOR CUTTING COSTS.

fixed that for them.
Click to expand...

Sounds like they are trimming the fat and getting rid of some useless people. I bet they hired the consultants Bob & Bob from Office Space. Good for them!
 
.. and so it begins.


Activision Blizzard began notifying its employees who are being laid off across Activision, Blizzard, and King this afternoon.

In its earnings call with investors, Activision Blizzard says it plans to add talent to key development and incubator teams and reduce administrative and underperforming initiatives (although it wasn't specified what the latter was.)

The publisher went on to say that it expects an overall 8 percent headcount reduction, likely resulting in around 800 staff to be laid off.

Blizzard president J. Allen Brack told employees that "staffing levels on some teams are out of proportion with our current release slate," according to a note obtained by Kotaku.

"This means we need to scale down some areas of our organization
Click to expand...
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/336488/Significant_layoffs_hit_Activision_Blizzard.php
https://kotaku.com/activision-blizzard-begins-massive-layoffs-1832571288
 
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