Even more people have to leave Activision Blizzard. This time it will affect European employees, including those employed in Germany.
In the last few days and weeks it has been shown again that Activision Blizzard sometimes simply has no ability to sync. After it emerged a few days ago that just under 190 Activision Blizzard employees were laid off and boss Bobby Kotick is raising nearly $ 200 million in bonuses, now comes the following bad news:
Blizzard is planning more layoffs in 5 countries, including Germany.
What is planned? Blizzard plans to close publishing locations in each European country. This affects employees in:
- Germany
- France
- Spain
- United Kingdom (United Kingdom)
- Netherlands
Layoffs should only affect the “Publications” and “Support Operations” areas.
Customer support and game development are not expressly affected.
It is not yet known how many employees will be affected by the planned layoffs.
At Blizzard, the negative reports are piling up, again.
Why is Blizzard doing this? Apparently, Blizzard plans to shut down the smaller publishing studios in European countries and merge them. In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz magazine, Blizzard said:
We share plans with our teams in Europe on how we want to develop as an organization and adapt to this change to serve our players and better position ourselves in the region for future growth. We are taking important steps to support all of our employees and ease the transition for those colleagues who will be affected by these changes.
The basic idea behind this is to bundle all of Blizzard’s publishing functions in Europe in one location, that is, in England.
Regardless of whether the layoffs are well-founded, long-planned, or strategically sensible, the timing is once again pretty bad, because that’s how negative reports pile up, putting a lot of pressure on the public perception of Activision Blizzard.
At the same time, Blizzard is likely working on many new games, such as an action game that could become “Destiny itself.”
What is your opinion about this? Is this the way things are? Or is it a disaster that people are fired again?
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