Activision Blizzard doing very well as a company that lays hundreds of staff off routinely during its best-ever year. This includes laying off staff who were directly involved with making their games better for the players while lying to the people by calling them “non-development staff”.
After laying off more than 1000 people, the company declared that they are willing to hire a new 2000 staff. The report says that more layoffs have been seen recently, giving laid-off staff a $200 Battle.net gift card while CEO Bobby Kotick has been paid $200 million in cash.
According to a source in a piece on GamesIndustry.biz, Activision Blizzard will enter yet another round of layoffs. It looks like the company is willing to run its European operations from a hub in the UK, with layoffs impacting staff in Germany, Sweden, Spain, two offices in the Netherlands, and staff within the UK.
Activision Blizzard replied when asked about this information:
“Players are increasingly choosing to connect with our games digitally. We have shared plans with our teams in Europe to evolve as an organization, adapting to this change to serve our players and best position the region for future growth. We will be taking extensive steps to support all employees and ease the transition for those of our colleagues who these proposed changes might impact.”
Activision Blizzard wants to make people understand that these layoffs will not affect localization and customer support teams. These proposed layoffs will be the fourth round in just six months, with the previous layoffs affecting key developer roles and ones that will need to be brought back post-COVID. These layoffs also come when the CEO of Activision, Bobby Kotick, is set to get a cash bonus of $200m.
