Last week, Blizzard Entertainment began laying off 190 employees, 50 of whom reportedly came from esports and live events. Now we know which other departments might be affected, as over the weekend we learned the studio is also putting an undisclosed number of European staff out of work due to closing and consolidating its publishing offices on the continent.
Fingers crossed that those affected score one of those sweet $200 gift cards.
“Players are increasingly choosing to connect with our games digitally,” said an Activision-Blizzard representative to Games Industry. “We have shared plans with our teams in Europe for how we would evolve as an organization, adapting to this change to serve our players and best positioning the region for future growth. We will be taking extensive steps to support all employees and ease the transition for those of our colleagues who might be impacted by these proposed changes.”
Speaking to this last part, the company announced that it’s starting up the Activision Blizzard Alumni Community, a networking site to talk about games and maybe get a job to replace the one these developers and staff lost. The initiative is being run by Enterprise Alumni, which operates other such LinkedIn-like sites for companies and boasts a 20% job fulfillment rate.
