In a report by Bloomberg, Activision Blizzard is planning substantial layoffs this Tuesday after the company announced slow sales and restructuring of the centralizing functions to boost profit.
Activision Blizzard is one of the biggest gaming companies and has a number of around 10 thousand employees. The layoffs planned are in hundreds, which does not seem a lot compared to the number of employees, but for the industry, it is a massive layoff.
The company is not doing great in terms of sales, as a few months ago it announced that Destiny 2: Forsake failed to meet sales expectations. A few weeks later, Bungie and Activision parted ways with Bungie retaining rights to the Destiny Franchise. The move could reduce the annual revenue by as much as $400 million.
Bloomberg also reported that games like Overwatch and Hearthstone were also seeing declining numbers in users, where the company acknowledged this in a conference call back in November. It also reports that the company’s share dropped again, this time 2.5 percent to $42.88 on Friday, while analyst predict the sales to decline 2 percent this year to $7.28 billion.
The company has also shaken up at the top over the past year as well, as the CEO of Activision Erich Hirshberg and the boss of Blizzard Mike Morhaime had both left at the start of this year. Meanwhile Activision also revealed to be firing its CFO Spencer Neumann.
Activision blizzard has not provided any official statement regarding this issue, however, Bloomberg is a very reliable source when it comes to industry news as such. Nonetheless, we will find out more on Tuesday as the day that the report confirms is of the layoffs.
The company has not had the best times recently, as this decline further adds to the woes of the company. Whether this is a just a rocky phase the company is going through is yet to be seen.
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