You may have recently read about how Microsoft has overtaken Apple to once again be the most valuable company in the world, with a whopping $3 trillion market cap. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to have stopped the corporation from cutting over 1900 jobs across Xbox, Bethesda, Activision and Blizzard.
In an email from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer (obtained via an anonymous source as per Windows Central), Phil wrote that they “made the painful decision to reduce the size of our gaming workforce by approximately 1900 roles out of the 22,000 people on our team” and that the senior leadership have now aligned “on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business.“
Current Blizzard president Mike Ybarra is also leaving the company, alongside Blizzard Senior VP Allan Adham. In an internal memo to Blizzard staff (obtained by The Verge) Matt Booty wrote that “Mike Ybarra and I have been discussing his future and some of his personal passions for some time. As many of you know, Mike previously spent more than 20 years at Microsoft. Now that he has seen the acquisition through as Blizzard’s president, he has decided to leave the company.“
The frequently discussed “Project Odyssey” – Blizzard’s anticipated stab at survival genre game – has also been cancelled, with Matt Booty stating “As part of this focus, Blizzard is ending development on its survival game project and will be shifting some of the people working on it to one of several promising new projects Blizzard has in the early stages of development.”
This sucks.
Many may have hoped the worst had already passed as we saw record job losses across the industry in 2023. Sadly, the new year looks to be continuing the trend, with gaming companies still making redundancies, despite record profits.
I think we all expected to see some consolidation of roles as a company the size of ActivisionBlizzard was consumed, but regardless, the timing and the sheer number is incredibly depressing. Console warriors, if you’re out there using this moment to “celebrate”, then you need to take a long, hard look at yourselves. And game developers? Please unionise.
I wish everyone affected by this decision the best of luck.
