Friday, March 2, 2012

Blizzard Entertainment, Maker of World of Warcraft, Laying Off 600


I reported a story back in January about declining video game sales, and sure enough, like nigh follows day, now comes word of layoffs in the industry. Here is Shack News we the details:
Blizzard Entertainment has revealed plans to cut around 600 jobs globally, saying it needs to align its workforce with "current organizational needs." It insists that its "current development and publishing schedules will not be impacted," though around 10% of the people affected are from departments "related to development."


"Constant evaluation of teams and processes is necessary for the long-term health of any business," Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said in the announcement. "Over the last several years, we've grown our organization tremendously and made large investments in our infrastructure in order to better serve our global community. However, as Blizzard and the industry have evolved we've also had to make some difficult decisions in order to address the changing needs of our company."

"Knowing that, it still does not make letting go of some of our team members any easier. We're grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the people impacted by today's announcement, we're proud of the contributions they made here at Blizzard, and we wish them well as they move forward."
The reason for the layoffs was described in this passage:
The layoffs are probably in support and customer service, especially considering World of Warcraft is slowly but steadily losing players. The support-intensive MMO was down to 10.3 million so-called "subscribers" in November 2011, from a peak of 12 million in October 2010.
So have we finally reached Peak Video Gaming?


Bonus: Proof positive that video games never did make good subject matter for popular music

1 comment: