In the latest round of job cuts resulting from the Western video game industry’s having spent recent years greedily expanding far beyond their actual means, Microsoft has announced that they will be cutting roughly 1,900 jobs across their Activision Blizzard, Xbox, and ZeniMax studios.
These layoffs – which, when all is said and done, will affect roughly 8% of the company’s 22,000-strong video game division workforce – were first announced by Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer via an internal memo sent to employees on January 25th.
“It’s been a little over three months since the Activision, Blizzard, and King teams joined Microsoft,” said Spencer, per a copy of the 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.”
“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,” he added. “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.”
Following Spencer’s memo, Microsoft President Of Game Content and Studios Matt Booty sent a separate message to the Activision Blizzard team to inform them that in addition to those affected by the layoffs, they would also be saying good-bye to Blizzard President Mike Ybarra, who had chosen to part ways with the company after roughly two decades of service.
“In addition to the events today, Mike Ybarra and I have been discussing his future and some of his personal passions for some time,” wrote Booty in the memo, as once again obtained by The Verge. “Now that he has seen the acquisition through as Blizzard’s president, he has decided to leave the company. As we move forward, we will continue to build on the positive momentum that Mike created and strive to continue exceeding the expectations of Blizzard’s players.”
Booty also announced that as a result of these layoffs, “Blizzard is ending development on its [previously soft-announced] survival game project and will be shifting some of the people working on it to one of several promising new projects Blizzard has in the early stages of development.”
As noted above, Microsoft is but the latest in a long string of Western video game-related companies to undertake such drastic cuts to their workforces in recent months.
From The Last of Us II studio Naughty Dog, to video game live-streaming platform Twitch, League of Legends and Valorant developer Riot Games, to instant messaging and voice chat platform Discord, to the titular company behind the Unity game engine, it seems more and more entities are finding that their current standard operating procedures, whether through their own mismanagement or players finally wising up to their poor business practices, are no longer sustainable.