![Microsoft reportedly lays off 1,900 employees from gaming division [UPDATED]](https://d1lss44hh2trtw.cloudfront.net/resize?type=webp&url=https%3A%2F%2Fshacknews-www.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fassets%2Farticle%2F2024%2F01%2F25%2Fphil-spencer-stage_feature.jpg&width=1032&sign=O_TLZUI15BYbmW6dgooLH9zJISf6NEIa8m01VXdlnW0 "Microsoft reportedly lays off 1,900 employees from gaming division [UPDATED]")
Microsoft reportedly lays off 1,900 employees from gaming division [UPDATED]
Microsoft is cutting jobs a few months after closing its acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
Updated on 1/25/24 at 9:44 a.m. ET: A report from The Verge claims that the majority of today's layoffs at Microsoft impact Activision Blizzard, though there have been some layoffs at ZeniMax and Xbox proper. As a result, Blizzard's previously-announced survival game has been cancelled. Blizzard President Mike Ybarra is also leaving the company.
Original story: A massive round of layoffs may have just hit the gaming industry as IGN is reporting that Microsoft is cutting the jobs of 1,900 employees. This comes just a handful of months after the trillion-dollar company was able to close its acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Xbox’s Phil Spencer reportedly shared the following memo internally.
Microsoft has yet to provide a statement on the layoffs. We’ll be sure to update this article with new information if that changes.
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replyDonovan Erskine posted a new article, Microsoft reportedly lays off 1,900 employees from gaming division
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Layoffs at Microsoft games
https://www.ign.com/articles/microsoft-lays-off-1900-staff-from-its-video-game-workforce-
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This is a gross post
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Diablo 4 probably wasn't your cup of tea but they worked hard on that garbage. Blame management for forcing this garbage.
There are lot of worse games than D4 out there. Starfield lol
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Blizzard has a pretty strong marketing team so I’d probably disagree with that.
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When comapnaies merge there's bound to be redundancies. Especially something like HR and management.
Then there's projects that aren't in the interest of the new owner to continue but the last company kept around for whatever reason.
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As well as Allen Adhem.
Sounds like blizzard may have been hit hardest.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/25/24049050/microsoft-activision-blizzard-layoffs
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Jesus.
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Didn’t you hear? Layoffs are so IN! You gotta try it.
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Absolutely. Tech is getting lean no matter what it seems.
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Daily reminder to buy all the games I work on so I can work on more of them.
You can buy other games too....just later.
This industry sure is a rollercoaster sometimes! -
They probably needed a few extra bucks after that $69 billion Activision buy-in.
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Damn! Not shocked though. Are the jobs redundant with the acquisition?
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WOW they canceled the Survival game that they were working on. I know a ton of Devs from the Hearthstone team moved to that team. Sad.
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They don't even know yet, which is sad. But if they cancel a game your working on ... one could imagine theyd be part of the layoffs? We'll see. Sad situation.
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Saw a bunch of devs I followed on twitter just get canned. Yea, most of the survival team is gutted.
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Total games industry job losses at 5000 in just 2024 alone.
Add that at least 9000 were lost in 2023
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/over-5000-games-industry-workers-have-already-lost-their-jobs-in-2024/-
Yup: https://twitter.com/tha_rami/status/1750532050833322419
Around TGAs I talking about the 2023 layoffs with someone who up until a few years ago was very high up in that world. He recently retired so he might have felt a bit more open to discuss this even though it was just one to one at dinner, but he said that there was way more pain to come in 2024.
Now we see what he was talking about lol
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Insane :(
I’ve seen rumours about them starting to release games for Switch and PS, probably years after they debut on PC/Xbox.
Kind of makes sense once you acquire so many studios, they have 23 right now, with the long development times is gamepass subs and p/xbox sales enough to sustain all of that? -
https://x.com/jezcorden/status/1750590022842278391
That Series X refresh model from the FTC leak “now adorably digital” seems a lock now. -
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Seeing a fair amount of these: https://twitter.com/mollsiewallsie/status/1750606930102395027
Ugh, and this is a senior environmental artist, not a G&A redundancy. It feels like they had just enough to keep the live service game in good shape. Stripping the team of resources is going to reflect in the state of the game later this year.-
"Why are Western games plagued with me-too copypasta design and sameness?"
"Oh, 'cause we hire up and then fire people after they ship, then they go somewhere else and have to work with a completely new team and org structure and possibly learn new tooling and processes, only to get dumped again in 2-3 years, rinse repeat." -
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OW2 was announced before the press (centering on the Diablo and WoW teams btw) came out. As stories have said, OW2 was supposed to be the middle step before the eventual MMO dream of Project Titan that Jeff Kaplan and the core team hoped to resurrect. It can be debated if this was a mistake or not, I would argue that them creating a successful multiplayer shooter wasn't necessarily a greenlight to make a PvE and then an MMO, but that's neither here nor there at this point.
Post-merger cutbacks were inevitable unfortunately, just because that's what happens. OW2 has 50M active players and generated $225 million in revenue last year and that still meant cutting senior staff. -
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So many of us here called this shit out when the merger was happening. If the “inflation” in consumer goods alone still hasn’t made it sink in yet for people: industry consolidation is bad
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Holy shit lmfao: https://twitter.com/thehornetsfury/status/1750612652873928949
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