We all know the impact of COVID-19 on the entire game development scenario, having lots of delays that hit hard on the release schedule. But it seems, Activision Blizzard has not been affected at all.
Daniel Alegre, the president and COO of Activision Blizzard said during a conference call:
“As for your question on game development, we are fortunate that to date we really haven’t seen any significant impact on game development with our current games in the pipeline because we’re really meeting our pre-COVID milestone. And as we have seen in 2020 and also in early 2021 we’ve delivered the games that our players have expected and with the quality that really defines our company and we also have been very fortunate that we haven’t had to compromise game that our players have as a result just the best value for the money. So, it’s been incredible to see.”
Truly there have been no delays occurred from the side of Activision Blizzard so far. Meanwhile, Daniel Alegre specifically pointed out the plan to enlarge the headcount of certain development teams.
“Now, as mentioned in previous earnings calls, we have reopened some of our studio capabilities in the limited fashion for areas that really needed it like motion capture, for instance. And that was really to ensure that we just stayed on top of our milestone. And in each case, we obviously ensured strict adherence to heightened COVID testing and separation protocols that have ensured that our employees were kept safe.
But having said that, we recognized with our strategy of increasing game content and frequency as well as doubling down on live operations we must and we have to continue to grow our developer base. And this is why we recently announced, as Bobby alluded to in his opening remarks, the goal to hire 2000 plus developers over the coming few years, and we’re actively hiring around the globe and we have the benefit of having studios and cities across Asia, Europe, and of course, across the Americas.
So our teams are really adept at working across geographies and you’ll see us opening or expanding studios in locations such as Poland, and in Toronto for instance to give us access to some of the great pools of talent to really help us deliver on even more content in the years ahead.”
The recent Activision Blizzard release schedule contains Call of Duty 2021, Diablo Immortal, Diablo II: Resurrected, Diablo IV, and Overwatch 2, though the last two games are not going to be released this year.
