Microsoft Lays Off 1,900 at Xbox, Bethesda and Activision Blizzard - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 25 January 2024 / 9,893 Views
Microsoft announced it is laying off 1,900 employees at its gaming division. The layoffs are primarily at Activision Blizzard, however, some at Xbox Game Studios and Bethesda/ZeniMax will also be impacted.
The 1,900 laid off is about eight percent of the Microsoft Gaming division that has around 22,000 employees.
"It’s been a little over three months since the Activision, Blizzard, and King teams joined Microsoft," said Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in an internal memo obtained by The Verge. "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."
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) in a statement said none of the employees its represents were not impacted by the layoffs.
"Layoffs in the video game industry are becoming the norm, even at companies that continue to deliver huge profits," said Senior QA tester and member of ZeniMax Workers United-CWA Wayne Dayberry via GamesIndustry. "It hurts to see our coworkers, who are so passionate about this work, who actually make these video game companies so successful, be the first impacted by any cuts or layoffs at work."
"…Union representation can't always protect against layoffs, but through union representation and the bargaining process, video game workers can establish greater transparency and policies that put our needs first, including layoff protections.
"That's why we want every video game worker to join our union. Together, we have the power to set new standards for our industry so that we can do the work we are passionate about safe from exploitation."
Article updated with statement from the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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"The layoffs are primarily at Activision Blizzard..."
But sure, good guy MS will buy ABK and this will be great for workers. Lets encourage Xbox purchaseof of big publishers, it's good for industry, right!?! /S
Follow with one of the biggest Lays Off in ABK history.
This is a bad joke...
Unfortunately Microsoft is a business... And a stupidly successful business... And they know how to make money.
And business puts money before customers or employees.
However consolidating your work force is a normal process after an acquisition, it doesn't make sense to have TWO people doing the job of one person.
What I would have liked to have seen is Microsoft offer these displaced individuals work elsewhere in the company that may have augmented their skills, but I get that may have been impossible post-covid with tightening of belts... Even for a $3 trillion dollar valued company.
We all knew this was gona hapen but we got downvoted here for saying it and labeled as haters.
Yup, very true.
There are people trying to say that the acquisition of ABK doesn't make a difference, that the cut of ~1900 jobs would happen anyway... " it's the current state of the games industry, it would happen anyway..."
Bullshit!!
They at the same time defend that the firing would happen anyway and that they were all redundancies how would they be redundant if they didn't merge?
After surpassing Apple and reaching a market cap of 3 trillion.
Great job Microsoft. Bravo.
Terrible. That's an insane amount.
I agree. This is sadly what I expected from Microsoft aquiring activition blizzard thouhg.
I hope everyone laid off is able to find new work quickly. Layoffs following a merger the size of Activision Blizzard isn't a big surprise. But no matter what layoffs suck. 2024 is looking to be even worse than 2023 when it comes to layoffs in gaming.
1900 is insane!
Yes the merger was great for the employees, just like Phil, Lulu, union promised and some believed.
Layoffs were always going to happen after the merger. For starters there are alot of redundant jobs already handled by others within Microsoft Gaming in non game development departments (marketing, IT, financing, communications, etc.). We have also long heard tales of Blizzard in particular being massively oversized with the middle-management within each department at Blizzard sometimes being as much as 3 times larger than other game studios even after being adjusted for overall size. Too much middle-management leads to conflicts, too many cooks in the kitchen basically.
These layoffs are sad for sure, but ABK needed to be streamlined. Hopefully Xbox gives everyone affected a nice severance package that includes at least several months pay while they look for new jobs, and assists them with the job search.
I agree with you layoffs are going to happen. But it would have been nice if it was not so many employees.
Given the state of the games industry right now, mass layoffs at ABK were most likely inevitable even if they were still independent. That's just where the industry is right now. Yeah it sucks, but don't try to frame it like this is a MS only issue when there's already been thousands of layoffs in just this month alone.
Hell, Bobby performed mass layoffs in 2019 after record revenue and profits. There is always overlap in non-development positions in mergers of this size.
very true
Natural Lay offs are a thing, part of the industry. Not the case here, this is a +1500 bloodbath! Your statement is equivalent to saying:
"Trees die and fall every day, it's natural deforestation. The burning by fire that we experience now doesn't make that much of a difference"
Every single company is having layoffs. To suggest ABK wouldn't have been going through this exact same thing if they were independent would be disingenuous. There is nothing natural about what's happening with these layoffs in the industry.
I'm done with mergers though. I really don't want to see them anymore.
We talking about ~1500+ Jobs man! This is not just readjustment to the needs of the industry, this is the restructuring of a large company bought by another! The impact of the ABK purchase on these layoffs is absolutely undeniable and you are mistaken if you think otherwise
Unity fired 1800 jobs just a couple of weeks ago. Epic Games got rid of 900 employees last month. Look at the bigger picture man!
Yes, this is tied to the merger as well which is why I don't want to see further mergers, but a lot of these positions are non-development. I've seen a lot of community managers at Bethesda and Raven Software that are being laid off, which is a big position that has been let go around the entire industry. Like how all of Bungie's community managers were laid off recently.
Since January 2022 to now, ABK hired 4,000 staff in just 2 years. That's an insane amount of rapid growth! Bobby himself fired 1000 people just a few years ago. This was inevitable to happen again. Independent or purchased.
there is considerable difference between unity/epic vs ABK.
Unit almost imploded in controversy, they almost closed their doors. Epic never made a profit from the store, their losses were so great that they had to face reality and cut jobs.
On the other hand, ABK has always been profitable, yet...1900 jobs lost! please, just admit that the ABK purchase is a dominant factor in these cuts, stop trying to defend MS purchase.
At least we agree that the buying of big publishers has to stop.
It's a large number of people. But that's because Microsoft has a huge gaming business. Percentage wise, it's in line with what we've seen throughout the industry.
Sure it could (and possibly would happen), but when you put 69B to buy the company and promise it will be better for employees firing that many (8 or 9%?) in 3 months is certainly not a good thing.
And that is after MS had already made 3 or 4 massive layoffs in the past 2 years.
It will be great for the employees. The ones still there.
Mind i remind everyone Nintendo laid off nobody (or a low amount i don't recall) in the Wii U era while they were struggling to sell consoles and games at all.
Oh no! Who could have seen this coming? I wonder how many of the laid off Acti Blizz employees signed onto the letter in support of the takeover by MS?
What a depressing time to work in the games industry. It's so hard to even be excited about games these days. You'll be playing a great game and you can't help but wonder "but at what cost?" You have to wonder how much overlap there were with positions after a merger like this as ABK seems to primarily be most affected, but god damn I hate this......
Absolute greed. They have more than enough money to keep employees. ABK purchase should not have been allowed. Microsoft should not be allowed to buy anything else they are sucking it all up and turning it to trash.
Boycott game pass, spend your money else where.
Dont worry guys, microsoft buying the whole gaming section piece ny piece will be a great thing for everyone
Expected when you purchase companies that there would be redundancies that would be let go. With all the talk of at least in the USA the GDP is solid, stocks are at an all time high especially Microsoft which is up 70% from what it was a year ago, you would hope for fewer layoffs. Hopefully we can get back on track later in the year and see less and less of these kinds of layoffs.
MS is the worst
Hum, I wonder... did propaganda-Lulu also get layed off or did she get a big fat bonus?
I don't think we are going to see old ABK IP's being revived someday soon. It seems like every major publisher is laying off around 10 of its workforce aside from Nintendo. They seem to be the only ones with a sustainable strategy.
Playstation done some layoffs, but I didn't see 10% reduction on most of their teams.
