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posted by martyb on Thursday February 14 2019, @03:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the employees-got-de-activated dept.

Overwatch and Call Of Duty maker to cut 800 jobs

Video games publisher Activision Blizzard has announced it will lay off about 800 people, despite reporting record revenue in 2018. The company made $7.5bn (£5.8bn) last year, up from about $7bn in 2017. Its chief executive, Bobby Kotick, said the results were "the best in our history" but did not "realise our full potential".

[...] Most of the job losses would not be in game development departments, the company said. But many roles related to its e-sports business appear to have been cut. King's Seattle-based mobile game studio Z2Live will be closed entirely, with the loss of 78 jobs.

Activision's stock price had plunged in recent months. As part of the restructuring, the company will increase (by hiring?) the number of developers working on several of its franchises:

"The number of developers working on 'Call of Duty,' 'Candy Crush,' 'Overwatch,' 'Warcraft,' 'Hearthstone' and 'Diablo' in aggregate will increase approximately 20% over the course of 2019," Activision said in its release. "The company will fund this greater investment by de-prioritizing initiatives that are not meeting expectations and reducing certain non-development and administrative-related costs across the business."

Also at CNBC and The Hollywood Reporter.


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  • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday February 14 2019, @04:48AM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Thursday February 14 2019, @04:48AM (#800879)

    Company has a pretty good year, but not good enough for Wall Street. So, off with their heads!

    I think most MBAs don't realize what layoffs do to morale. I've survived several, and been caught in a few. The entire company culture changes.

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