Activision has reportedly laid off employees across several internal studios in the last week. Staff members at Beenox, Infinity Ward, several other internal studios, and the Activision corporate office have been affected by layoffs. This comes after Thursday's Activision earnings call in which it was stated that Activision surpassed their revenue targets for 2016.

Reports indicate that Activision Publishing has laid off around 5% of their total workforce. Blizzard Entertainment and MLG weren't among the divisions that suffered layoffs. Instead, it seems that only those companies comprising the Activision Publishing division of the company were targeted.

The layoffs come on the heels of Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg's statements at the earnings call that Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare had disappointing sales numbers. It's easy to see then where the decision to lay off a reported 20 people at Infinity Ward came. It seems like a poor work environment when a company gets a "better-than-expected and record fourth-quarter" and lays off employees anyway.

Activision's current slate for 2017 only includes Destiny 2 and the annual Call of Duty entry. From playing Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, which had a great campaign, I can speculate that it wasn't the actual quality of the game that had an effect on weak sales numbers. The multiplayer component of Infinite Warfare, which is Call of Duty's typical selling point, was much too close to 2014's Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and 2015's Call of Duty: Black Ops III. With a total of three studios working to put out a new Call of Duty title each year, perhaps it's time to take the approach EA has with the Battlefield series and give the franchise a rest.

Kotaku reached out to Activision concerning the layoffs and received a canned response. Activision stated that they're "realigning" their internal resources to support upcoming products and adapt to the digital market.