‘Call of Duty’ maker Activision Blizzard plans to lay off hundreds of employees — reports

By: Niña V. Guno - 6 years ago

Activision Blizzard may soon announce layoffs in an attempt to boost profit, following lower sales in 2018 that has been felt too among other gaming giants.

Image: Activision Blizzard

Sources told Bloomberg in a Friday, Feb. 8 report that hundreds of job cuts are expected as the American video game restructures to improve its profits.

Stocks fell from a high of $84.68 (about P4,400) to $43.41 (about P2,200) on Friday, more than a 48 percent decline.

The company, which is behind titles such as “Guitar Hero”, “Call of Duty” and “Diablo”, admitted in a conference last November that there was a user decline for games which include “Overwatch”.

While Activision Blizzard is the parent company, Activision and Blizzard operate on their own.

In 2018, Blizzard was focused on cost-cutting and employees were instructed to cut budgets, according to Kotaku on Saturday, Feb. 9.

Layoffs are expected to hit departments in Activision and Blizzard which do not develop games, as per the report.

In January, Activision parted ways with game developer Bungie, which created the “Destiny” franchise after the “Destiny 2” expansion “Forsaken” did not meet “commercial expectations” in November.

Activision hired a support team solely for “Destiny”; thus, it is expected that those under public relations, marketing and sales will be removed.

Executives have also exited the company last year and as 2019 set in. These include Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg and Blizzard chief Mike Morhaime, who left in 2018, and Activision chief financial officer Spencer Neumann, who was fired on New Year’s Eve and is now CFO at Netflix.

Blizzard CFO Amrita Ahuja exited last January, while Activision consumer products division boss, Tim Kilpin, retired this month.

Gaming giants have also seen sales suffer over the past year, in part due to free-to-play online game “Fortnite”. Electronic Arts shares tumbled by 13 percent on Feb. 6, but bounced back on Friday after it announced a competitor to “Fortnite”, its own “Apex Games”. Niña V. Guno/JB

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