Activision Blizzard Lays Off 50 Employees in Esports Division

Posted 2021/03/16 at 3:00 PM by perculia

Sports Business Journal

We learned a lot last year in terms of how the leagues can be structured for online play, and we’ll look to carry forward the best practices from that,” he said. "In terms of timing, it’s a reaction to the realities of how the leagues are playing and what resources we need to allocate to best serve the league, owners, teams and fans." Petitti, who reports to Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, also noted that there were discussions about how to best structure the league even before he started in August. The decision took time in part because "you never take anything like this lightly," he said.

Bloomberg

“Players are increasingly choosing to connect with our games digitally and the e-sports team, much like traditional sports, entertainment, and broadcasting industries, has had to adapt its business due to the impact the pandemic has had on live events,” a company spokesperson said. The affected U.S. workers will receive a minimum of 90 days severance and health benefits for a year.

Update:earnings call

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Comments

Comment by don1010220

Just lay off activision and make blizzard great again.

Comment by Divinehorror

Just lay off activision and make blizzard great again.

Blizzard is activision at this point, they'd just have to layoff the entire company

Comment by wespens

Continued growth means a reduction in employees. Makes sense. In some reality.

Comment by Kaneiac

Blizzard's most-recent earnings call reported better-than-expected results for Q4 and the full year of 2020.

Is always my favorite part to read in these layoff announcements.

Comment by Yetanotherone1

call of duty had a league?

Comment by Matrixwolf

this is fine as long as they hire more actual devs to reduce content droughts, add more zones classes , mogs also dont need as many esports ppl when everything was online

Comment by Eldrich

Continued growth means a reduction in employees. Makes sense. In some reality.

It makes sense to the shareholders and, unfortunately, that's usually all that really matters to the executives.

Comment by Hellboy999

call of duty had a league?

I know, right? never heard of that one either. Then again, I haven't heard much of anything of an OW league in the last year(s)

Comment by Hazzadragon

How many e-sports employees do they have if they can lay off 50 like that?

Comment by Ant343

They just "allocated" them, lads.

Or as they say in my country: they "relocated" them.

Comment by Hinalover

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1371917222738821130

MORE: It wasn't just esports and live events. Activision Blizzard also laid off others across the company including at King, developer of Candy Crush, sources tell Bloomberg. An Activision spokesperson confirmed but did not say how many other people were laid off.

Comment by Seniaa

How many e-sports employees do they have if they can lay off 50 like that?

Why do you need so many people in esports when everything is online and remote? Don't need a bunch of cameramen or sound crew if you don't use a studio for example.

Comment by Cyyna

Activision Blizzard = E.A. change my mind.

Comment by couchpotato2013

Just lay off activision and make blizzard great again.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lg7MAacSPNM

This is pretty much blizzard at this point.

Comment by Acel

Activision Blizzard = E.A. change my mind.

EA has had some bangers recently

Star Wars Squadron
Star Wars Fallen Jedi
PvZ: Battle for the Neighborville
Apex Legends
C&C Remastered

Activision really hasn't and instead have just milked existing games. Hell, add in EA Play which is also included Xbox Game Pass, the difference is night and day. Yes, EA has had some stumbles and facepalms (looking at you Battlefront 2 and Anthem!) but they also admit they messed up and improve from it.

On topic however, this is frustrating as Activision continues to show a lack of proper vision, support, and development for new ventures. They screwed up OWL (hard) and now it's the employees that were working hard at it that are paying the price. The management needs to go; the talents needs to stay.

Comment by Raynuru

*sigh*
There will be day where Bobby will lay off everyone else..except for him..and then we all can finally say "Farewell my Orc Shaman..i knew you well :( "

Comment by Momoi

the true face of greedy humans is showing its ugliness right now everywhere in the world as long as they provide minimal effort with as few workers for minimum wages as they can this is going to continue... emphatie is dead for them all what matters is money money money and more money for the the top 5% in every company

all hail to the capitalism ...disgusting

Comment by Chioy

Let's just hope Ashes of Creation will finally be a good one, so we can leave this multi dollar company for themselves

Comment by Cr00xY

https://i.redd.it/3y551cdbvzo51.jpg

Comment by JulioB

This is just stupid.. And instead support Ashes of Creation which is not even released yet and already has 300 hundred in game store cosmetics..it's full of MTX ^&*! nobody needs that.. I'm not defending blizzard but holy #$%^ when blizzard added the that transmog in the IG store everybody went and wanted to blizzard to burn.. and now look at everyone licking interprid's ass..Stop supporting big companies from the beginning to the end....It's so bad that a lot of people bought that 500$ Alpha access to AoC.. it's just stupid.. paying for a !@#$ing unfinished project..

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