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After conducting a review of its business and analyzing "current organizational needs," Blizzard made the tough call to axe around 600 employees, the game developer and publisher announced this week. Only about 10 percent of those pink slips will be handed out to workers in departments related to game development, and of those roughly 60 workers, none of them will be from the World of Warcraft team.
"Constant evaluation of teams and processes is necessary for the long-term health of any business. Over the last several years, we've grown our organization tremendously and made large investments in our infrastructure in order to better serve our global community. However, as Blizzard and the industry have evolved we've also had to make some difficult decisions in order to address the changing needs of our company," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment. "Knowing that, it still does not make letting go of some of our team members any easier. We’re grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the people impacted by today’s announcement, we’re proud of the contributions they made here at Blizzard, and we wish them well as they move forward."
Blizzard made it a point to say that current development and publishing schedules will not change as a result of the layoffs. The company plans to announce a specific release date for Diablo III "in the near future" and will "drive aggressively toward beta testing for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard DOTA, and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm."
Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard, went into a bit more detail about the layoffs in a blog post. In short, he said Blizzard determined that some areas had simply become "overstaffed." Those being let go will receive a severance package and "other benefits," Morhaime said.
Comments are closed on this article
TechLarry
March 02, 2012 at 1:19pm
Ok, so we got this new game ready to ship that's gonna make us millions.
Now, you 600 over there that got us here, there's the door. Thank you for your support.
P.S. I love the new yacht you guys bought me !!! Hugs and kisses !!!
Archangel1976
March 02, 2012 at 11:24am
Hey, it was either let those 600 people go, or Mr. Kotick had to give up his bonus. We all know you guys would rather have Mr. Kotick get his bonus as opposed to better customer service or something ridiculous like that!
Archangel1976
March 02, 2012 at 11:29am
Let's do a little math.
100k subs lost... $15 a piece. $1.5 mil
600 jobs cut... $2500 a month in wages each... $1.5 mil!!!!
yammerpickle2
March 01, 2012 at 4:41pm
I wonder how many programmers and other working developers they could afford to keep on if the eliminated just one level of senior management? I mean they are already extremely profitable, do they really need to lay off people, or do they just want to reduce head count to get bigger bonuses for the executives.
OCFRED
March 01, 2012 at 9:33pm
From what I do know the pyramid is much wider and not nearly so tall as You imply; if anything it's due to suits in France pushing for a nickel in dividends.
Archangel1976
March 02, 2012 at 11:34am
Blizzard employed 5000 people. Past tense. They just cut 12% of the workforce. You really honestly think the "base" is so much wider than the pyramid is "tall"? Really?
Pay attention to the news sometime. The top of the pyramid, as a whole, is waaaaaaaaaaay ahead of the base. I doubt it's much different at Blizzard.
Jeffredo
March 01, 2012 at 9:33am
Indeed. Never thought of the parallel, but you're right. Its getting ridiculous.
Slurpy
March 01, 2012 at 8:02am
Hopefully they laid off the guy who decided to eliminate randomly-generated maps and skill trees in Diablo III.
