Activision Lays off 150 Employees
Distressing news from the games industry job market continues to surface, as Activision lays off about 7% of its workforce, or 150 people. From the Gamasutra report: "The cuts are said to be across the board, with no specific developer or publishing unit announced as being affected more than another, with spokesman Ashley Dyer commenting that the layoffs were part of an effort to 'realign' the company's operations for the next two years."
FTFL: Kotick maintains that Activision's future is bright, however: "In the long term, we are planning for market growth that historically follows the introduction of new console hardware. To leverage this future growth and prepare for fiscal 2008, which we expect will be the biggest year in Activision's history, we will continue to focus on investment in our product development resources and intellectual property portfolio, growing our international operations and optimizing our worldwide cost structure and resource allocation."
This is completely asinine. These layoffs are for the short-term to appease Wall Street - in the short term. In the meantime, they're destroying employee moral and hurting their long-term performance. And I bet they have the gall to demand loyalty from their employees.
Activision ran into a major "Pitfall" and are on the brink of going "Kaboom".
(Doh. Why wasn't there Slashdot back in the days of the Atari 2600. Then at least this comment would have been current...)