Microsoft Lays Off 1900 Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax & Xbox Employees

[T0@st]

The Verge has obtained an internal Microsoft memo that outlines a comprehensive reduction of headcounts across a number of Xbox Game Studios departments. Microsoft's gaming division has fought tooth and nail to complete their takeover of the highly prized (~$69 billion) Activision Blizzard + King group, yet this freshly acquired operation is set suffer the most. Microsoft Gaming CEO—Phil Spencer—was tasked with delivering some unfortunate news to an unlucky 8% of the current workforce: "It's been a little over three months since the Activision, Blizzard, and King teams joined Microsoft. As we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business. Together, we've set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and ensured that we're all aligned on the best opportunities for growth."

He continued: "As part of this process, we have made the painful decision to reduce the size of our gaming workforce by approximately 1900 roles out of the 22,000 people on our team. The Gaming Leadership Team and I are committed to navigating this process as thoughtfully as possible. The people who are directly impacted by these reductions have all played an important part in the success of Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax and the Xbox teams, and they should be proud of everything they've accomplished here. We are grateful for all of the creativity, passion and dedication they have brought to our games, our players and our colleagues. We will provide our full support to those who are impacted during the transition, including severance benefits informed by local employment laws. Those whose roles will be impacted will be notified, and we ask that you please treat your departing colleagues with the respect and compassion that is consistent with our values."




He signed off with: "Looking ahead, we'll continue to invest in areas that will grow our business and support our strategy of bringing more games to more players around the world. Although this is a difficult moment for our team, I'm as confident as ever in your ability to create and nurture the games, stories and worlds that bring players together. Phil."

Spencer's executive colleague, Matt Booty (game content and studios president) chipped in with an update regarding a change of guard at Blizzard Entertainment: ""As many of you know, Mike Ybarra previously spent more than 20 years at Microsoft. Now that he has seen the acquisition through as Blizzard's president, he has decided to leave the company." Allen Adham, chief design officer at the house of Warcraft, Diablo etc. is another departing team leader. Booty elaborated: "As one of Blizzard's co-founders, Allen has had a broad impact on all of Blizzard's games. His influence will be felt for years to come, both directly and indirectly as Allen plans to continue mentoring young designers across the industry." Booty's statement mentions that a new Blizzard president will be revealed next week. He also confirmed that Blizzard's "previously announced survival game" is no longer in development; important decisions have been made: "shifting some of the people working on it to one of several promising new projects Blizzard has in the early stages of development."

We have observed an uptick in staff layoffs and shuttering of whole studios in recent months—mostly involving the Embracer Group's funding problems. It is a little bit shocking to see Microsoft (with its access to big budgets) implement a such a widespread redundancy initiative only a month into 2024. We send our best wishes to all of those affected by the late 2023 and early 2024 staff reductions.

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[Easy Rhino]

Makes sense. You don't spend $69 billion AND keep your own people on board. Microsoft buys up crap and ruins it anyway. The laid off employees are better off in the end.

 

[Denver]

Because now they can launch beta games with upscaling for Muggles to test.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
AI works cheaper hehe

 

[Double-Click]

Guess it was finally time to clean Activision's house with who's left from the Kotick regime.

 

[Chrispy_]

I don't think anything of value was lost at Activision Blizzard. They've demonstrated mostly greed and incompetence for well over a decade. My guess is that Microsoft just bought them for the rights to all their games and IPs.

Bethesda have been in a bad spot as a games studio for a while. Several misfires since Skyrim, peaking in Starfield which just feels rushed, shallow, small, dated, and made by people who don't actually know why older Bethesda games were fun. For such a large development team, the game is (un)surprisingly broken and unfinished even now.

I hope Arkane survives; Redfall was a rushed misfire in an otherwise pretty solid list of games including Dishonored, 2020's Prey, and Deathloop. I think it still has some of the original Looking Glass people in it from the System Shock days.

id/Machinegames have also been putting out great quality stuff, IMO - Wolfensteins and Dooms, with the new Indiana Jones game looking pretty good based on the trailers alone.

 

[Event Horizon]

Have a lot of fond memories playing Blizzard games. They've now ruined every single franchise they own.

 

[HairyLobsters]

Why are people in chat making this about their opinion about games and not the people making them that were laid off?

 

[Easy Rhino]

Why are people in chat making this about their opinion about games and not the people making them that were laid off?

In chat?

 

[RandomWan]

Why are people in chat making this about their opinion about games and not the people making them that were laid off?

Because it's comments/forum and people are free to express whatever related opinions or thoughts they want to. This is going to continue in the development sector as they've been overhiring for a few years and it's definitely going to show up any time there's a merger/acquisition.

 

[Beermotor]

Makes sense. You don't spend $69 billion AND keep your own people on board. Microsoft buys up crap and ruins it anyway. The laid off employees are better off in the end.

100%. They had no intention of keeping them as working studios, they just wanted the Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, CoD, and Overwatch franchises.

 

[Deleted member 237269]

Last Blizzard game i bought was D2 Resurrected. I haven't seen anything since that has sparked in me a desire to become a consumer of their products again.

Employees who are still in this toxic company are also the problem. There are studios like Laria who recruit but obviously the salary should not be as high as Activision...

 

[Easy Rhino]

Last Blizzard game i bought was D2 Resurrected.

Yup, this is the last Blizzard game I bought. Still the best ever.

 

[Denver]

The gaming world began to enter this low-quality route when the companies behind the big titles started going public and falling into the hands of those who only comprehend numbers, not games. Let's revisit some examples:

"One of the studios responsible for Call of Duty’s success is laying off QA testers that are reportedly earning $17 an hour for their work on the franchise Activision Blizzard said brought in $3 billion dollars in 2020.*

So the guy in the suit's only focus is to increase the numbers and consequently his own salary:

"Activision Blizzard has shown a pattern of laying off workers amidst booming business, as Kotaku points out. In 2019, the company laid off around 8 percent of its employees after CEO Bobby Kotick announced that its 2018 financial results were the best in the company’s history. In June, Kotick reportedly received $155 million dollars after a shareholder vote — a few months before that, the company laid off around 50 employees that managed events, giving them three month’s severance and $200 Battle.net gift"

 

[kapone32]

The gaming world began to enter this low-quality route when the companies behind the big titles started going public and falling into the hands of those who only comprehend numbers, not games. Let's revisit some examples:

"One of the studios responsible for Call of Duty’s success is laying off QA testers that are reportedly earning $17 an hour for their work on the franchise Activision Blizzard said brought in $3 billion dollars in 2020.*

So the guy in the suit's only focus is to increase the numbers and consequently his own salary:

"Activision Blizzard has shown a pattern of laying off workers amidst booming business, as Kotaku points out. In 2019, the company laid off around 8 percent of its employees after CEO Bobby Kotick announced that its 2018 financial results were the best in the company’s history. In June, Kotick reportedly received $155 million dollars after a shareholder vote — a few months before that, the company laid off around 50 employees that managed events, giving them three month’s severance and $200 Battle.net gift"

Sierra is the best example of how Corporate ruined an excellent Gaming house.

 

[Chrispy_]

Why are people in chat making this about their opinion about games and not the people making them that were laid off?

The two things are related; Microsoft is presumably culling the dead weight of studios that haven't made successful games in a while. The financial success of a game, and it's importance to Microsoft is strongly tied to how good the game was and how much we, as paying customers, enjoyed it.

Personally I feel Blizzard-Activision and Bethesda are bloated carcasses that lost their creative spark 10-15 years ago. Arkane/id/Machinegames don't fit into the same category, so I'm hoping that Microsoft are laying off those responsible for sucking the life out of Blizzard and Bethesda whilst keeping the talent that still knows how to make a fun game.

Until we know details of who's been laid off, all we have is conjecture and banter about the games themselves.

 

[AsRock]

Makes sense. You don't spend $69 billion AND keep your own people on board. Microsoft buys up crap and ruins it anyway. The laid off employees are better off in the end.

Never truer words spoken, it's the MS way always has been.

 

[Assimilator]

Guess it was finally time to clean Activision's house with who's left from the Kotick regime.

This. When you have a shitstain as large as Bobby there are a lot of people licking the edges, gotta dump those before they ruin the good ones.

 

[ThrashZone]

100%. They had no intention of keeping them as working studios, they just wanted the Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, CoD, and Overwatch franchises.

Hi,
MS just wanted candy crush

 

[Prima.Vera]

Starcraft 2 and Diablo 2 were the last best games.
I hope the entire Diablo 4 team would be relocated to other projects, never to touch a Diablo game again, but that's just wishful thinking. Not fired, since they have families, taxes to pay, etc.

 

[DaemonForce]

Makes sense. You don't spend $69 billion AND keep your own people on board.

Lol I would minimize this action but you know it would still happen. Makes better business sense to retain the assets and dump the rest. At some point if I'm somehow ever blowing 11 figures on some kind of deal, it's definitely in the interests of enabling tons of people with a dream and a ton of skills. Money is just a means to an end and at this point why would anyone care about the value of it when money printer goes BRRRR?

Microsoft buys up crap and ruins it anyway. The laid off employees are better off in the end.

There's also this going on. What's the SOP? Extend, embrace, extinguish or something. Typical Microsoft. Nothing new here.

This. When you have a shitstain as large as Bobby there are a lot of people licking the edges, gotta dump those before they ruin the good ones.

In whatever large studio running all kinds of pet projects that make little to no sense to neighboring departments, this is as normal as when I worked in manufacturing facilities featuring a morning shift and idiot shift. You can have the weirdest crack team of armflapping window-lickers running a baby project that probably doesn't deserve to exist but if the end product is what the public wants, it's gonna happen. Just look at what's going on with Palworld. I'm not even Pokemon generation and that looks so fun. It's also wild catching 15hr+ streams of it in side by side.

Projects like that would never survive a Bobby. Bobby would have to get gone fast. ✓

 

[Vayra86]

Starcraft 2 and Diablo 2 were the last best games.
I hope the entire Diablo 4 team would be relocated to other projects, never to touch a Diablo game again, but that's just wishful thinking. Not fired, since they have families, taxes to pay, etc.

I don't for a second understand or feel sympathy for developer individuals that are happy to keep working for a company like this. Its the same as those Twitter dudes that got fired. Sad? No. Justice, you shouldn't have ever started that train to begin with, or jumped off it somewhere in the past few years. Its about time someone made the choice for your lazy ass.

These people never helped us. They damaged us with shit content and they enabled the games we see coming out of there. They got paid to deliver horse manure that poisoned gaming and entertainment for us. Fuck Them.

If you want a better world, give credit where its due, not to the people that are too weak to stand up against something they actually dislike, but even worse than not standing up, actively aiding it to make money. 'But I believed I was helping out'. Mhm. 'Wir haben es nicht gewusst' comes to mind. People are absolutely, 100% responsible for their own actions. Some social media activism doesn't suddenly make one an idealist either, just another lazy clicking bum that wants to be part of the in crowd.

Everyone has a family, its a non argument. My world is very simple. You either are a part of the problem, or a part of the solution to a problem. Or somewhere in between. But you're a part of it anyway you explain it. Not a pawn without a will or a mind that can't help his own situation. That's the stance of people who aren't going to achieve anything in life and blame others (or circumstances) for it.

 

[theouto]

Hopefully this is microsoft getting rid of the rot left behind by kotick and his merry band of idiots, because from what we know there were some really bad non executives in ATVI/BLZ.
Otherwise it's the result of what happens when you put all your money in the subscription market, you fail because people don't want subscription services anymore. Look at ubisoft and netflix, people are getting fed up, and you can tell.

 

[remixedcat]

3T dollar company.... built in windows success from all the OEMs... More ppl flocking to azure than ever before now cuz what broadcom did to vmware, more hyper-v converts from vmware.... all this "philantrophy" from bill gates and all the tax breaks MS gets from that and they still have to lay ppl off? somethin not right here

 

[Chrispy_]

3T dollar company.... built in windows success from all the OEMs... More ppl flocking to azure than ever before now cuz what broadcom did to vmware, more hyper-v converts from vmware.... all this "philantrophy" from bill gates and all the tax breaks MS gets from that and they still have to lay ppl off? somethin not right here

They're profitable because they're not a charity keeping on staff and projects that aren't contributing to that profit:

Blizzard-Activision and Bethesda have been failing studios for a good while now. The last few releases from each studio have flopped in the reviews and gone dead. Starfield is well documented at this point as a flop, Fallout76 was an unmitigated disaster, Overwatch 2 basically killed Overwatch as a relevant game, It fractured the online community and rewarded those who jumped with lies and broken promises. Diablo IV actually sold well but player numbers seem to show that was misplaced trust from buyers because they bought it, played it a bit, and then put it down, never to return. Let us not forget the Diablo Immortal announcement, possibly one of the single most out-of-touch and tone-deaf things to come out of any gaming press event in my lifetime. Bethesda and Blizzard have cancer, this culling by Microsoft is an attempt to remove it.