Xbox lays of nearly two grand of employees at Activision Blizzard.

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Phil Spencer's statement:

“It’s been a little over three months since the Activision, Blizzard, and King teams joined Microsoft. As we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business. Together, we’ve set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and ensured that we’re all aligned on the best opportunities for growth.

“As part of this process, we have 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. The Gaming Leadership Team and I are committed to navigating this process as thoughtfully as possible. The people who are directly impacted by these reductions have all played an important part in the success of Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax and the Xbox teams, and they should be proud of everything they’ve accomplished here.

“We are grateful for all of the creativity, passion and dedication they have brought to our games, our players and our colleagues. We will provide our full support to those who are impacted during the transition, including severance benefits informed by local employment laws. Those whose roles will be impacted will be notified, and we ask that you please treat your departing colleagues with the respect and compassion that is consistent with our values.

“Looking ahead, we’ll continue to invest in areas that will grow our business and support our strategy of bringing more games to more players around the world. Although this is a difficult moment for our team, I’m as confident as ever in your ability to create and nurture the games, stories and worlds that bring players together.”

Well, can't say I didn't see this coming as it always happens with mergers, but mixed with the horrid trend of the industry overall laying off employees, my sympathies are with all those affected.

The gaming industry is experiencing mass layoffs and this definitely does not come as a surprise. I am more surprised it didn't happen sooner.

$3 trillion market cap. $70 billion acquisition. Lays off 2K employees. 🙄

But like Pedro said, the industry is having a rough January. I mean look….

• Riot
• Google
• Unity
• Twitch
• Discord
• Embracer
• Xbox

And it’s worse when you look at the entertainment industry as a whole. The recent Netflix news looks good by the headlines. But do a little reading and you learn they’re over $14 billion in debt, talking about removing the base tier and incorporating ads into their higher tier plans. Oh, and another price hike is looming. Spotify is a ticking time bomb as well.

2024 is gonna be interesting.

What a load of PR BS from Spencer.

Layoffs can be bad for those involved.

Happens all time with mergers.

Sad for all the employees. I have no doubt that Activision was probably poorly run and had excessive number of redundant employees.

Bloated crossovers from mergers happen. Sorry for those affected.

Really getting tired of all these layoffs.

A blizzard game got canceled and Senior leadership is also leaving.

Very lame. I guess this is the end of the great Blizzard as we knew them but when they merged with Activision was probably the first sign.

Doubtful that he was part of the layoffs but, the president of Blizzard is leaving as well.

That guy wants nothing to do with MS lol

@Nonstop-Madness: Actually…

Wait… lol. I have no words for this. Why is there an official Phil Spencer statement out there in the public if this is the case?! What a mess

Fucking Jason, lol. He is such a pony. Nobody from MS is texting him lol!

Sadly to be expected after the buyouts. Naturally there will be a lot of duplication across the organisation after such big buyouts.

But this is SW so it has to be said now...MS IS DOOMED!! DOOOOOOOMED!! DOOMEEEED!!

Seriously though hopefully those affected land on their feet.

I hope they get back on their feet. Sometimes ex employees will form another new studio.

I wonder what the status is on forming the union at ABK?

Phil Spencer is your saint. And also, you, Xbox peeps, CHEERED for acquisition and how is that good for the industry.

Now Bobby Kotick is richer than before and with his conscience clear since he hadn't to lay off his former employees.

Definitely sucks for those involved. Hopefully they land back on their feet soon. Sadly this is just what happens with acquisitions and ABK was a pretty huge one. Also it’s just what’s been happening lately with numerous tech and entertainment companies.

@adsparky said:

Now Bobby Kotick is richer than before and with his conscience clear since he hadn't to lay off his former employees.

There are always those who are left behind because of mergers / acquisitions the size of ABK.

I'm sure folks loved seeing the old C-Suite get the boot but, they got big fat checks while the rest of folks are going through a Russian roulette of layoffs.

Industry layoffs are only going to get worse as companies lean more on AI for tasks.

And they thought Microsoft ISN'T exiting the gaming space by 2027🤣🤣🤣

Wow , just imagine the 69 bill that Ms Could have done if they used that to fund the gaming division to make a decent game. But instead MS had to use that money to buy games .

Maybe Uncle Phi and his cronies could take a pay cut to help keep some these people in a job

This Era member nailed this prediction. And lol at them being banned. It’s a tough board to post on outside of calling everyone racist and transphobic. Talk too much and the ban is inevitable.

Sucks being laid off, hope they get nice severance packages.

Looks like ABK was running pretty inefficiently and had a lot of redundancy.

Jeff Gerstmann is still a threat

I don't wanna hear shit about about how this merger was supposed to be great for ABK employees and others across Xbox. At three trillion, they have the least excuses to be trimming jobs. Painful my ass. Kotick gets his golden parachute and nearly two thousand others get reamed.

But, layoffs have been brutal lately. I figure once everyone fully embraces AI, it's going to get even worse.

No. ABK had their own folks in behind the scenes positions or performing certain tasks that became redundant once they became a part of Xbox. Xbox doesn‘t need many of the people that came over with ABK. They have their own folks. How some people didn’t expect this to happen is kind of surprising.

But the biggest reason 2024 is gonna be a problem is because none of these publishers can figure out where the growth in the industry is going to come from. Gamers are playing the same shit they played in 2023, 2022, 2021 etc. When a $30 game with limited monetization opportunities is taking the industry by storm, the big wigs at these publishers are gonna hit the panic button. They need revenue and growth to move up in a nice steep incline or they’re gonna bounce. That’s how capitalism works.

we have made the painful decision to reduce the size of our gaming

If I gotten a penny every time an executive have said this word then I would have been the richest man in the world.

Looks like they were able to sneak in some other departments into the layoffs. It's not just ABK folks...

redundancy is the logical result of mergers.. still sucks for those that lost their job..

@ghostofgolden said:

This Era member nailed this prediction. And lol at them being banned. It’s a tough board to post on outside of calling everyone racist and transphobic. Talk too much and the ban is inevitable.

Bans continues today in this thread! MS shills at the best. Read from the 1st page if you want.

The ABK acquisition thread on ERA made it clear as day what’s going on there. And it’s always the same excuses by mods, constantly hiding behind the guise of curbing “console wars” when the discussion around MS acquisitions were so lobsided it wasn’t even funny.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ign-microsoft-lays-off-1-900-staff-from-its-video-game-workforce.809208/page-21?post=118131813#post-118131813

Xbox fandom and MS sucks!

Uh, what?!

There's always layoffs with acquisitions and mergers, especially ones this large. Anyone feigning outrage about that are just doing it with an agenda.

That said, I think the more important thing is WHERE those layoffs occurred.

Laying off those responsible for bringing Xbox games to disc is concerning, even if 80-90% of the industry is digital.

I expected layoffs, and its usually around 15-20% of staff. Hopefully all those people are able to find a home elsewhere in the industry.

Could be a positive. All of those studios had staffed up over the last few years as they were dragged into the call of duty machine. Hopefully this means they are able to focus on other stuff.

There's some early speculation that the 1900 number is off. And the areas that are being cut don't jive with a merger round of layoffs. There are some odd cuts happening. Like with the Xbox Community management all being let go and the folks responsible with physical game distribution like you said. They are now outsourcing customer support... COD devs are being hit unexpectedly hard as well.

Xbox paid Bobby $360 million to leave. All these layoffs will equate to around $200 million in payroll. Something isn't right

The COD machine prints money though. Why would Xbox mess with that?!

You have to correct that narrative.

MS didnt pay anything, he was entitled to that just by the deal closing as he had a large stake in the company.

The rest I agree with . There was going to be 2k layoffs with a purchase of this size, but WHERE tells a lot about the direction the company is going.

I dont agree with cutting physical media departments, but OK with cuts to the Call of Duty machine.

Cuts happen because you are one company now, you dont need multiples of every position, especially with publishing, PR, HR, community, etc.

They won't be. Activision already has the next four yearly releases of Call of Duty games lined up and in production.

Sorry, peeps said ( on this very forum too, Xbox ones especially ) that ABK acquisition will be good for the industry and for the worker's union and labor. Now look how that turned out, huh.

So Phil Spencer was on Blizzard campus a few weeks ago and told everyone they were safe and now they are firing almost 2000 people? LOL

Dammit man, we could see this coming but man...I seriously do hope both Sony & Nintendo hold strong on physical, but at least Sony has the detachable drive despite they are slowly moving away physical but not outright dismissing physical.

yikes. Microsoft has finally come full circle and killed off used games.

@Nonstop-Madness: Well, once I get my Series X, I think I might game less on Xbox the following gen...

I hear there's a total of around 10K at the company being laid off this month.

Sometimes I wonder if these are actually necessary or seen as redundant. Decades ago I recall Microsoft gutting profitable divisions for no other reason than to signal to stockholders that they mean to be lean but if you can a profitable segment I don't know how that helps your bottom line.

Microsoft definitely ne cutting their rewards program back for months. Microsoft Rewards for Bing searches have been scaled back, and have hourly reward limits. The Xbox app too has its reward activities scaled back drastically. As has the gaming rewards. I get my grandfathered 10% spending rewards still so that's good.

I also hear they're getting rid of their in-house physical media production. Probably outsourcing, I don't think they're ready to go all digital. That'd certainly create a stir if they did. Not just with gamers, but retailers, remembering what happened with PSP Go.