Less than a week after the next mass layoffs at Activision Blizzard, as it became known — the publisher is already preparing for new ones. The media reports that this time the company plans to close most of its European offices responsible for the publication.
Activision Blizzard office in Spain. Source: Activision Blizzard
GamesIndustry writes about this.
As an anonymous source explained, the company made this decision after analyzing the behavior of users. It turned out that gamers almost do not buy Activision Blizzard games in disk format, but prefer to take a “digit”.
The cuts will only affect employees responsible for publishing games. While developers, game service support specialists and customer service employees will keep their jobs. Also, layoffs will not affect King offices.
We have already discussed with the European teams the steps for the future development of the company taking into account these changes. We will do our best to support employees and help with job changes for those who need it.
It should be noted that just four days ago it became known that Activision Blizzard had cut about 50 employees who were organizing esports tournaments and other offline events (according to rumors, it was then about plans to fire 190 people from different offices, it is possible that the current layoffs were meant). And against this background, there was news that the CEO of the company Bobby Kotick (Bobby Kotick) will receive a $ 200 million bonus.