Activision Blizzard is changing with the times and that means that some of its employees will be adversely affected.
It has been announced that Activision Blizzard will be laying off around about 50 people. These employees predominantly deal with live events and esports and will be restructuring these divisions.
Activision Blizzard has said that the reason for this is that the pandemic has changed the viewership habits of its core audience and also the viability of live productions for the esports leagues it owns.
The company said in a statement to Bloomberg “Players are increasingly choosing to connect with our games digitally and the e-sports team, much like traditional sports, entertainment and broadcasting industries, has had to adapt its business due to the impact the pandemic has had on live events.”
The spokesperson also said that U.S. workers will receive a minimum of 90 days severance and health benefits for a year as well as “job transition support.” Each employee was also given a $200 gift card to Battle.net which is the Blizzard online game service.
Even though the whole world is turning to online events and, sadly, these employees will be let go Activision Blizzard has said that it expects to hire 3,000 people in 2021.
The company runs two very large esports leagues for two extremely popular game franchises namely, Blizzard’s Overwatch and Activision’s Call Of Duty series.
These leagues both had global travel orientated productions planned in 2020 when the pandemic hit and travel was banned. Both leagues then had to shift their operations online and hold remote competitions or face cancelling.
Tony Petitti, who is Activision Blizzard’s president of sports and entertainment, recently said in an interview “In terms of timing, it’s a reaction to the realities of how the leagues are playing and what resources we need to allocate to best serve the league, owners, teams, and fans.”
He did mention though that the company is “really optimistic” that the esports side will grow with a new focus on online production.
Despite this set back it seems Activision Blizzard did really well in the company’s latest quarterly earnings report that was released last month.
Even though some have lost their jobs it doesn’t seem to be slowing the company down at all but is just a sign of the times and their way of keeping up and adjusting to the global climate.
Only time will tell if they do indeed hire “3,000” employees by the end of 2021