Activision Blizzard Cuts Hundreds Of Jobs, UPDATED 800 Fired

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https://www.gameinformer.com/2019/0...blizzard-will-result-in-hundreds-of-lost-jobs


Bloomberg is reporting an upcoming plan from Activision Blizzard to lay off hundreds of workers as the company attempts to restructure and centralize its operations.

Sources tell us the layoffs will will come from different parts of the company, including Blizzard, though it's not clear what parts of the studio will be affected. At the end of 2017, Activision employed 9800 people across all sections of the corporation.


*edit/update


https://www.wsj.com/articles/global-stocks-rise-with-u-s-china-trade-talks-in-focus-11549875306


Communication stocks were the biggest drag on the broad index, with the sector falling 0.6%. Videogame company Activision Blizzard fell 6.8%, while Take-Two Interactive Software shed 3.7%, extending their losses so far this month into the double digits on a percentage basis.

Missed earnings and weak outlooks for the year, partly due to the rise of mobile game “Fortnite,” contributed to rebuke from investors, analysts said.

Industrial stocks, meanwhile, were among the best-performing stocks in the broad index Monday. Aluminum-parts manufacturer Arconic and railroad company Norfolk Southern both rose more than 3%, triggering more modest gains throughout the S&P 500’s industrial sector

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/atvi


**update 2


https://kotaku.com/activision-blizzard-begins-massive-layoffs-1832571288


Publisher Activision Blizzard has begun its long-rumored layoff process, informing employees this afternoon that it will be cutting staff. On an earnings call this afternoon, the company 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.

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

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.
 
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Not surprising.

Bit of a bitter kick after giving that CEO 15 million for nothing not long go.
 
The gaming industry seems to be very volatile. Not sure why. Automotive despite it's up & down include the auto recession in 2008, seems more stable, at least for Research & development.
 
The gaming industry seems to be very volatile. Not sure why. Automotive despite it's up & down include the auto recession in 2008, seems more stable, at least for Research & development.
Volatile...nah, just idiots in charge.
 
This is the issue with publicly traded companies that are run by people who don't seem to understand the industry. You can't ever just get by with just making money, there has to be growth and cuts in expenses and that's not how the video game industry is meant to be run. It's bad enough that some AAA games are sold at full price on top of having a free to play pricing model attached to them but you cant just mass produce garbage and expect to be successful.
 
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As bad as it is, it could go more south if they try to outsource my development work & Customer service to lower cost countries like India like many software companies already doing.
 
Gaming companies often have layoffs when one project is finished and the full staff isn't needed until the next one is further down the line, have they finished anything substantial lately?
 
Gaming companies often have layoffs when one project is finished and the full staff isn't needed until the next one is further down the line, have they finished anything substantial lately?
They do, but the wording in the original article says something else entirely.
 
Activision Blizzard Reports Record Revenue as They Fck Over 800 Employees

“While our financial results for 2018 were the best in our history, we didn’t realize our full potential.” — Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby "Moneyball" Kotick


Activision Blizzard, a company of more than 9,000 employees who’ve built some of the world’s most popular games, is a few things. They are a company who bragged about having a “record year,” on an earnings call this afternoon, a year where only raking in $2.4 billion in revenue was considered a disappointment. They are a company who granted a $15 million signing bonus and a $900,000 salary to a high-ranking executive who joined last month. And they are a company who just laid off around 800 employees, or 8% (!!!) of its total workers.



800 people will be without jobs at the end of the day. 800 people head into an uncertain future, wondering how long their severance and health insurance will get them before the next job. That list of 800 will not include Bobby Kotick. He will, of course, sleep well tonight.


Activision Blizzard, like most of corporate America, does not have the courage to call this what it is: the ruination of lives in service of endless growth and profit maximization to serve the ultra rich becoming the mega rich at the expense of an exploitable underclass with no power to stop every effort to undermine them. No, no—it’s a “restructuring.” There is no end to the call for growth. There is always more. To them, the publishing of video games are a means to an end, a people-driven creative medium to be exploited until the well runs dry.



The workers at Activision Blizzard are, like most of the industry, not unionized. Unionization is not a catch-all solution. It will not stop layoffs, nor will it suddenly turn capitalism into socialism. The notion that changes to marginally improve the lives of people won’t suddenly make everything perfect and thus aren’t worth exploring isn’t critique, it’s management bootlicking. Unionization forces a powerful wedge into the relationship between employer and employee, disrupting the power balance.

Recently, VICE’s editorial group negotiated a new union contract with management, and successfully argued for better severance packages. We worried layoffs were coming and they were—250 people were cut this month. The VICE union wasn’t able to save their jobs, but did give them more security.



Gaps in health insurance. Missed paychecks. Daily stress. Even if someone laid off today found a job tomorrow, life is interrupted. What if the job is across the country? In another country? If you’ve got kids, how do you tell them the reason you’re changing schools, forcing them out of social circles and uprooting all they know is because, dang, shareholders aren’t happy with two billion, they need three billion? That’s more than a hiccup—that’s trauma.
 
Activision are far and a way the worst gaming company, EA aren't even in their league.
 
You would think with a new gen of consoles on the horizon they'd want to be staffing up not cutting back.
 
As someone who worked in 2 multinational corparation & seen 2 layoff from each. I am not remotely shocked.

Corprations & their CEOs are all about maximising profit for their investors/shareholders, not securiting jobs let alone create jobs for people.