Activision Blizzard Cuts 8% of Jobs Amid 'Record Results In 2018' (kotaku.com)

On an earnings call this afternoon, publisher Activision Blizzard said that it would be eliminating 8% of its staff. "In 2018, Activision Blizzard had roughly 9,600 employees, which would mean nearly 800 people are now out of work," reports Kotaku. "This afternoon, the mega-publisher began notifying those who are being laid off across its various organizations, which include Activision, Blizzard, and King." From the report: On the earnings call, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick told investors that the company had "once again achieved record results in 2018" but that the company would be consolidating and restructuring because of missed expectations for 2018 and lowered expectations for 2019. The company said it would be cutting mainly non-game-development departments and bolstering its development staff for franchises like Call of Duty and Diablo. Development sources from across the industry told Kotaku this afternoon that the layoffs have affected Activision publishing, Blizzard, King, and some of Activision's studios, including High Moon. At Blizzard, the layoffs appear to only have affected non-game-development departments, such as publishing and esports, both of which were expected to be hit hard. "Over the last few years, many of our non-development teams expanded to support various needs," Blizzard president J. Allen Brack said in a note to staff. "Currently staffing levels on some teams are out of proportion with our current release slate. This means we need to scale down some areas of our organization. I'm sorry to share that we will be parting ways with some of our colleagues in the U.S. today. In our regional offices, we anticipate similar evaluations, subject to local requirements."

Thankfully, the letter promised "a comprehensive severance package," continued health benefits, career coaching, and job placement assistance as well as profit-sharing bonuses for the previous year to those who are being laid off at Blizzard. "There's no way to make this transition easy for impacted employees, but we are doing what we can to support our colleagues," Brack wrote.

Comments

Don't worry

[93 Escort Wagon]

"This afternoon, the mega-publisher began notifying those who are being laid off across its various organizations, which include Activision, Blizzard, and King."

Don't worry - I'm sure there are still plenty of iterations of Candy Crush still in the pipeline.

Re:Don't worry

[93 Escort Wagon]

And I'm pretty sure Candy*rush(tm) is from another publisher, I think is from Facebook,

Nope, it's King.

Facebook seems to do very little actual development. They mainly open up their platform to companies like King and Zynga, as well as look for new ways to market your personal data to whomever they can.

It's been a record year for blunders

[WolfgangVL]

The video-game industry spent 2018 shooting itself in the foot. Waiting for Bethesda and EA to follow suit.

"missed expectations for 2018 and lowered expectations for 2019" == The microtransactions and loot-boxes are not working out. We need to start actually making games with realistic budgets and profit expectations.

Re:It's been a record year for blunders

[darkain]

What are you waiting for? EA pioneered canning people. https://heavy.com/games/2017/1...

Re:It's been a record year for blunders

[apoc.famine]

It's not just a realistic budget and profit expectation that's needed - what's needed is some risk. They almost all play it safe, and just iterate the same-old-same-old now with better graphics.

Trust that you've got good people, (that is, if you haven't laid them all off) and let them try something new. A lot of the tries will be flops, but if you can find that big new thing, you're going to make bank. No, it's not a sure thing. But FFS, you're just laying people off left and right anyway. Might as well take a risk to have a break-out hit in the process.

If I was in the business, I think I'd rather try something crazy innovative and get laid off when it didn't work out than grind out another clone of a decade old game only to get laid off anyway.

And if you're just trying to milk your stock incentives, you've got enough name recognition and money to risk having to take your golden parachute and go cry on your yacht for 6 months before getting hired somewhere else. Take a risk and shoot for a giant payout! I mean, if you're the C* of a major gaming company, you absolutely do not have anything to lose. At least nothing that you're going to miss.

Re:It's been a record year for blunders

[thegarbz]

what's needed is some risk

Oh I don't think anyone has taken a bigger risk than Blizzard recently. Announcing a mobile game at Blizcon? The developers are lucky they didn't get lynched by the angry mob.

Bad all around

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a record year. Don't let the misleading slashdot headline and summary fool you. They are idiots.

The real news on Activision Blizzard

Re:Bad all around

[Creepy]

Yeah - I got laid off after 9.8% growth when they required 10% growth, as did 15% of the company. Got a consultant role that paid basically the same (benefits aren't as good), but pay is decent; Everyone I know that was laid off was hired by the same consulting company, and all of them extremely competent. I have no idea what the layoff criteria was, but I could pick 15 more incompetent workers than the did, but I imagine it was all about salary.

Non-dev = commodity human

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> the layoffs appear to only have affected non-game-development departments

Good news from the perspective of a Slashdot citizen: tech skills continue to keep us out of the pool of commodity humans.

They're prepping for the recession

[rsilvergun]

that everyone knows is coming. It's so frustrating because we know a recession is coming and we're doing jack squat to stop it. Just more layoffs to keep the stock prices high and maybe another round of tax cuts.

It's not even like we don't know what to do: Regulate Wall Street so they can't gamble with our money (and make no mistake, it's out money since they're "too big to fail"), pump some money into the supply side (Tax Cuts for people who actually spend money, e.g. the working class, and the "Green New Deal"), increase the minimum wage and lift those stupid bloody tariffs. It doesn't do good to put tariffs on China when they can just build their stuff in Mexico and ship it here duty free (lord I shouldn't have to explain that).

And where the hell is the media in all this? Why the hell aren't they calling the current Admin out for doing nothing to stop the recession?

Re:They're prepping for the recession

[SirAstral]

"It's not even like we don't know what to do:"

Boy you got that right!

" Regulate Wall Street so they can't gamble with our money"

Never going to work... not ever!

The only thing that is going to happen is that new laws designed but make it look like you are getting what you wanted but ultimately will be used to just make you subservient and to further entrench the wealth of the elite into a smaller group of hands.

You, like most others, are going to spend their entire lives under the thumb of the bourgeois because you keep giving them power over you. When you elect someone to perform that regulation you are either going to elect them from the crowd you are trying to regulate or they will join their cause when all of that money get flashed in their face. They will crumble too... and not long after you have already trashed them as part of the problem the moment they make even a single mistake.

" It doesn't do good to put tariffs on China when they can just build their stuff in Mexico and ship it here duty free (lord I shouldn't have to explain that)."

No, you do have to explain that, and what is the real shame is that you figured that much out but still think you can "vote in" relief.

There is only 1 viable source of regulatory control... the consumers, for them to effectively boycott shit businesses and institutions... that is REAL democracy! Voting with your wallets, and as long as you convince yourself that voting in a buyable stooge that is going to betray you to look after the interests you should be looking after you are going to deserve every dagger you get in the back!

It is better to have to deal with the inconveniences of too much liberty than to have to deal with the inconveniences of too little liberty.

Regulation will only work long enough for the generation that put it into place to die, after which it is forgotten and then turned into a bludgeon to further bash over the heads of the next generation... just like College Tuition fees and the near impossibility of getting out from under them even during a bankruptcy.

The entire financial institution from top to bottom is there to treat you like a servant and regardless of the mouth breathing of either party it will be maintained.

Re:They're prepping for the recession

[Gravis Zero]

And where the hell is the media in all this? Why the hell aren't they calling the current Admin out for doing nothing to stop the recession?

Funny thing there. If you tell everyone that the current administration is doing nothing to stop the impending recession, you actually cause people to be concerned which in turn can trigger the very recession you were trying to avoid.

The other thing is that people don't like bad news and studies have demonstrated that they begin to avoid news if it shows their own outlook as bleak (but they relish bad news for perceived enemies). Yeah, it's kinda like humans have their own Peril Sensitive Sunglasses.

Re:They're prepping for the recession

[blahplusplus]

And where the hell is the media in all this? Why the hell aren't they calling the current Admin out for doing nothing to stop the recession?

The media doesn't work for the public, it's there to lie to you and keep you distracted.

Media under capitalism

5.8 million

[rsilvergun]

if these numbers are to be believed.

The 770 are folks need to support new product launches. Activision is letting them go because they're not releasing anything next year (except maybe a COD).

Re:eSports vs streamers

[Cmdln Daco]

Games. Games for regular people to play. Games for regular people to have fun playing.

The rest is just a diversion.

and an 8% increase in it's dividend, coincidence?

[rjejr]

Besides announcing the the 8% increase in their stock dividend they also announced a $1.5B, that's billion with a B, stock buyback. That's enough money to pay 1,500 employees, if those employees made $1 million per year. Sickening.

Re:What about the dividends?

[kenh]

The "little people" are the 800 or so people being let go as "redundant" to the company needs, and are getting a period of free healthcare coverage, a generous severance package, and their profit-sharing bonus from last year.

Short of keeping the employees in no-show jobs, they are doing the right thing by "the little people" IMHO.

Regulating Wall Street worked just fine

[rsilvergun]

until we stopped doing it. It started with a bit of Carter and Reagan, who began dialing back regulations on what banks could do and making stock buy backs legal (funny thing, those used to be illegal market manipulation). Clinton continued it by breaking down the wall between "Main Street" and "Wall Street" banks so that investors could mix doggy stock investments with safe mortgage investments.

Undoing all that would be a start. Talk to any economist who isn't paid by right wing think tanks and they'll tell you the rest.

Following the Great Depression economists at Universities spent decades studying all this and figuring out solutions. The only problem is nobody listens to them. Get rich quick schemes are too popular.

Re:What about the dividends?

[thegarbz]

They are doing the best thing possible given their gross levels of company mismanagement.

Generous severance packages suck compared to having a steady job at a company that is able to create stable sustainable employment.

One of Activision's CEOs

[rsilvergun]

once said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that he wanted to take all the fun out of making video games and make it just another business because that's what would be the most profitable. I'm fairly certain that he was deeply resentful of the fact that he was running a video game company and not something more grandiose like an arms manufacturer.

Point is, these are not gamers. They don't think like gamers. They think like businessmen. Innovation isn't their thing. Let other's innovate and they'll be there to crank out a copy. Look at PUBG. They're doing alright, but the bigger companies are moving in (Epic with Fortnight and now EA with Apex Legends). Activision just fell behind on that curve, but the curve still works.

Let somebody else take the risk while you reap the rewards. This works because you can beat them to market on the consoles and release a better product because you can throw more money at optimizations. Again, PUBG needs a beast of a machine to hit a stable 60, but Fortnight does it on a Toaster.