Another wave of cuts in Activision Blizzard. On Tuesday, the company announced the dismissal of 50 employees involved in organizing esports tournaments and other offline events for Overwatch and Call of Duty. But journalist Jason Schreier talked to his own sources and said — in fact, there may be much more dismissed.
Sports Business Journal was one of the first to write about the dismissals. It published an interview with Tony Petitti, president of Activision Blizzard for sports and entertainment. In it, the top manager admitted that the company was forced to cut 50 employees as part of the restructuring.
Petitti noted that Activision Blizzard is going to build work with events differently, hold fewer offline tournaments. This does not mean that the company completely abandons them, but now the focus will be on online events. And first of all it concerns Overwatch League and Call of Duty League.
However, Schraeir, citing his own source, writes that these dismissals are only the tip of the iceberg. The current wave of cuts affects less than 2% of the entire company (that is, less than 190 people). The exact figure is not called.
And layoffs affect not only those who are engaged in esports. Employees of the King division, which is responsible for the casual direction of the conglomerate and is preparing for the worldwide launch of Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!, also came under attack.
Activision Blizzard says the cuts were a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This was also told by Schreyer’s source. Activision Blizzard is forced to change its business strategy due to the consequences of the lockdown. First of all, because of this, she transfers most of the events online.
The dismissed employees will be compensated. They will get a 90-day severance package, medical insurance for a year, “job change support” and $200 gift cards for the service Battle.net .
The publisher has made large-scale cuts before. For example, last October Activision Blizzard closed an office in Versailles, France, where 400 people worked. Later, the media started talking that the company was planning to outsource all personnel not involved in game development.
At the same time, a month ago during the BlizzCon conference, the publisher announced that he was going to hire 3,000 new employees in 2021.