Activision-Blizzard has already laid off about 190 employees

Activision-Blizzard has already laid off about 190 employees

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Activision-Blizzard reportedly laid off nearly 190 employees, including 50 employees from the company’s e-sports division. Bloomberg reports that the layoffs affected less than 2% of the company’s employees – two percent translates to about 190 employees. Fifty of these employees worked in Activision’s electronic sports division. Dismissed U.S. workers will receive a minimum of 90 days of severance and health benefits for up to one year, according to Bloomberg, and each dismissed employee received $ 200 in gift cards for Battle.net, which is the store for company’s online video games.
The Sports Business Journal reports that Activision executive Tony Petitti said the 50 specific e-sports layoffs are the result of the company’s attempt to reinvent its e-sports division amid the global pandemic COVID-19. Petitti told SBJ that the company is planning a future in which Activision’s e-sports look different and are “less dependent on live events”.

Activision said that the dismissed employees will receive “adequate severance packages,” according to SBJ, and that despite the company’s shift in focus on its e-sports, which focuses mainly on the Overwatch League and the Call of Duty League, it does not plan to move completely away from live events. The Overwatch League and Call of Duty League switched from live events to online-only events over the past year and SBJ reports that it is possible that Activision will continue to follow this path for future events.

Petitti said the layoffs were due in part to the need to cut costs and in part to a means of freeing up resources to relocate to other areas of the company, but it is important to note that he was talking to SBJ about the 50 esports layoffs – Pettiti no Do not speak to SBJ about the other layoffs reported by Bloomberg. He said the company “learned a lot in the past year in terms of how leagues can be structured for online gambling” and that “it will seek to carry out best practices from there.”“In terms of time, it is a reaction to the reality of how the leagues are playing and what resources we need to allocate to better serve the league, owners, teams and fans,” said Petitti.

An Activision spokesman told Bloomberg that “players are increasingly choosing to connect with our games digitally and the e-sports team, as well as traditional sports, entertainment and broadcast industries, had to adapt their business due to the impact the pandemic had on live events. “

This is the second major round of company layoffs in recent years. Activision-Blizzard laid off nearly 800 employees in March 2019, including 209 Blizzard employees.

Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and creator of guides for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

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