Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Activision Blizzard To Slash Almost 800 Employees

Santa Monica-based game developer Activision Blizzard says it is slashing 8 percent of its staff, or nearly 800 employees, as a part of a restructuring effort at the company. The move comes even as Activions Blizzard reported record net revenues in 2018 of $7.50 bllion, up from the $7.02 billion it had in revenues for 2017. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said that, although its financial results for 2018 "were the best in our history", the company "didn't reaize our full potential"--triggering the job cuts. Most of the cuts are in non-development positions--Activision Blizzard said that the number of developers working on its popular Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Overwatch, Warcraft, Hearthstone and Diablo titles, in aggregate will increase approximately 20% over the course of 2019. According to the company, the cuts will be to non-development and administrative-related areas, plus "initiatives that are not meeting expectations".

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