Microsoft lays off 1,900 employees from Activision Blizzard and Xbox
Microsoft lays off 1,900 employees from Activision Blizzard and Xbox
Blizzard President Mike Ybarra out as well
Where are all the platitudes about how this merger would be good for the videogame industry now?
Regulators all over the world really bungled this by allowing it to happen. Only gonna get worse from here.
I am not in a position to judge if this merger will be good for the industry, but this round of layoffs says nothing about that either.
On an individual level it is terrible for the people involved. But on the business level this is a perfectly normal and healthy thing to do and says absolutely nothing about the state of the games industry.
Turns out the FTC says otherwise lol
These layoffs really aren't a sign of anything and wouldn't be something regulators would care about in the first place. Layoffs happen after just about every company merger or acquisition. There will be redundancies, structure changes, budget changes. Some people get their positions shuffled, others just don't have a good fit in the new scheme. Nothing to do with the health of the business or the competition impact on the industry. It definitely sucks for those impacted, and I hope they land on their feet soon.
That absolutely impacts the competition in the industry. Competition isn't just about protecting consumers. Consolidation hurts the competition among employers, vendors/partners, lenders/creditors, pretty much every single possible relationship a business can have.
And yes, layoffs happen with pretty much every merger and acquisition. That's a huge part of why those are bad, and why most developed countries have regulatory agencies responsible for preventing that, most of which have suffered from regulatory capture.
How much did Microsoft pay you to post here?
Blizzard President Mike Ybarra out as well.
Ybarra gone is great news. Its sad that 9% of the 22k employees at Activision-Blizzard-King have their roles eliminated because they overlap, but smaller teams tend to be easier to focus during development.
Ideally, anyone in leadership that was put there under Kotick should be investigated and eliminated if needed as well, since nothing Kotick did is trustworthy. And hopefully many of the 1900 employees laid off are.
It is a small indi company afterall
I worked at ABK for a while and I honestly can’t think of that many people in my department that could be let go without major repercussions.