Activision May be Laying Off Hundreds on Tuesday

[Guest_Jim_*]

While some developers and publishers have been seeing great success of late, this is not true for all of them. Bloomberg is reporting Activision Blizzard may be laying off hundreds of its employees on Tuesday. This follows slowing sales for the company's games, resulting in a drop in stock value, and may be part of a restructuring meant to centralize functions and improve profits. Analyst expectations are for Activision's sales to decline 2% this year, which would translate to about $7.62 billion.

Some of this news might not be too surprising as back in November on a conference call Activision acknowledged Overwatch and Hearthstone were seeing their player numbers flatten or even decline and Destiny 2: Forsaken sales were disappointing. Also now Bungie has split from the company and a number of executives have left Activision over the past year too.

Source: Bloomberg

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[Braegnok]

It's all about the money, you need something to show shareholders,.. the stagnancy of Blizzards MAUs combined with a lack of new IPs is prompting Activision's executives to intervene. 

 

I thought they were doing OK with Diablo being huge in China, and then heard about a cancelled second expansion for Diablo III and cancelled Titan,.. It's tough for game developers to be passionate about creating games, when executives care more about profits than it's staff.

[Guest_Jim_*]

It's all about the money, you need something to show shareholders,.. the stagnancy of Blizzards MAUs combined with a lack of new IPs is prompting Activision's executives to intervene. 

 

I thought they were doing OK with Diablo being huge in China, and then heard about a cancelled second expansion for Diablo III and cancelled Titan,.. It's tough for game developers to be passionate about creating games, when executives care more about profits than it's staff.

Well, to be fair, you need the profits or you can't have the staff. Not to say all actions these executives (or any executive anywhere) have made is defensible by that logic, but that executives will have responsibilities both to the staff under them and the company/shareholders to make a profit. Even during good times neglecting one will hurt both and it does not seem like these are very good times for Activision currently.

Hopefully any of these people who end up laid off, assuming the rumor is correct, will be able to find work elsewhere quickly. Unemployment is hardly enjoyable.