Yet again, there are more layoffs. This time, Activision Blizzard are the ones responsible, and they will soon be laying off nearly 400 people in the mobile gaming divisions of their company, which are located in Santa Monica and Irvine. By doing this, it eliminates redundancies among the staff after their expensive merge with Microsoft last year, which cost $75.4 billion.
It’s hardly surprising anymore when Activision Blizzard lays off staff, as they have already laid off 1,003 staff in the past year, with staff being from Novato, Foster City, and Southern California, as stated by filings with the Employment Development Department.
Activision Blizzard has told the EDD that 140 jobs were to be scrapped beginning October 11 at the Blizzard Entertainment studio in Irvine. The jobs that are being eliminated in Irvine cover a large variety of positions in the company, according to a letter filed by Leslie Campbell, who is the Director of Activision Blizzard’s Human Resources department. The jobs being eliminated include accountants, software engineers, the Director of HR for World of Warcraft, artists, game producers, and many more. The jobs eliminated weren’t exclusively junior roles either, as a Game Director and Vice President were also on the list of those being laid off from Activision Blizzard.
Activision Blizzard spokeswoman Delay Simmons said that the company was unable to share additional details about “which teams were impacted and their locations,” which she pointed to the slew of media reports on the two previous rounds of major layoffs.
January saw 1,900 layoffs made within the Microsoft Gaming divisions Activision Blizzard, Xbox and ZeniMax. Then earlier in September, Microsoft Gaming announced a further 650 layoffs.
Regarding the most recent layoffs, she states, “The 400 roles you’re seeing in the system are part of the recent news and are not new; the roles that were impacted include mostly corporate and supporting roles and some impacts to gaming teams.” The layoffs are said to be coming in waves, with the first happening at Irvine and Santa Monica studios on October 11 and Playa Vista layoffs happening in November. It’s said that all layoffs at the three locations should be completed by the end of the year.
With Microsoft’s current finances from their gaming divisions specifically, it’s possible that there will be even more layoffs in the future, but it can only be hoped that this doesn’t happen. There have already been an astounding number of layoffs this year, and there are still three months left in the year, which could see the number rise even higher.
