Microsoft, Activision Cut 1,900 Jobs in More Video Game Layoffs

This is really sad and disappointing to see. Hoping all those affected land on their feet elsewhere.

That’s 3 times the population of where I grew up!

We knew it was coming (these things happen after a merger because of overlap in job roles) but it's a shame for those who have been affected.

Microsoft saving Blizzard.
Really sucks for the people affected though.

I truly thought this was fake when a friend of mine sent me the news today. It's surreal how many job losses there have been this month already, and that was before this. My heart goes out to the people affected.

So many job losses in the games industry. ☹️

Wow, thats pretty scary :x

See what happens when u get too big this why that merge should had never happened. We all know it was coming

Only a fool wouldn’t have seen this coming.

@CharlieChooChoo Coincidentally it's also 3x the population of PSVR2 buyers

Awful. At some point people will realize that Phil Spencer & his cronies are all just more cutthroat suits who only care about the bottom line. Congrats to everyone who cheered this to the finish line so they could get a bunch of old games on their stupid subscription service. Shout out to the "hope it goes through, so sick of the articles" people as well.
Love this industry, but sometimes it really makes you question what you are supporting and its happening a lot lately.

$69 BILLION to purchase but we can't afford to keep you employed.

@TrickyDicky99
Okie dokie.

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2023/05/psvr2-sales-at-600000-six-weeks-after-launch-sony-confirms

MS is bringing games to every screen and bringing developers direct to every unemployment line. They really can do it all!

Just think! These people can now fully invest in MS and contribute to the Xbox user engagement now that they don’t have silly jobs to take up their time! Microsoft brilliance!

@TheLotteryMan1 they’re gonna use AI to make all of their games, can’t do that with all those pesky humans in the way.

I think people who thought Microsoft were going to spend $69 billion to come in, fix Blizzard's/Activision's predatory BS and give us new Spyro and Crash Bandicoot games were a bit naive.

Guess Microsoft's deep pockets are spent on everything (think Mixer) except employees, it's where they draw the line

Microsoft spent $36,000,000 per person laid off to purchase Activision.

After a big acquisition this looks and sounds so cynical. What lame lines Phil Spencer dust off for the media.

After offering years of game pass to Xbox-owners for virtually free, I thought they would simply let their deep pockets carry their business and customers through the worst of it. Quite funny how a seemingly xbox-owning user suddenly drops a one liner explaining how natural this is. You gotta laugh.

@lacerz Holiest of the molies, that is absurd. For one billion less, they could have retained their staff, it seems.

I dont get how Microsoft with all that money are laying off all those people.lies of p phil spencer is at it again.aka ron desantis lookalike 🤔.word up son

Pretty sad to see all the time and money to litigate and finance acquisitions only to leave nearly 2k people jobless. Corporatocracy at its finest. As much as the hive mind may make this some talking point for console war garbage, Sony has been no better. It's just all around a shame.

The gaming sector is kind of going to ***** in terms of its work culture.

Oh fun fact: Microsoft as a whole was just valued as having a 3 trillion dollar market value for the first time ever and is now only the second company to ever do so....

Humans are just embarrassing.

Well, Microsoft already replaced the CEO of Microsoft Gaming with a corporate AI called Phil Spencer, now they're going to replace these employees too.

At least Microsoft paid Bobby Kotick his $390,000,000…so they’re not all bad…. … ….

Wake up people, this will happen more often and not only in gaming.
Hope all the people that lost their jobs find a new one quickly.

And to think a lot of fanboys were cheering for their acquisition. Anytime there's a merger or acquisition of large companies, it ends in massive layoffs. Microsoft laid off a ton of people last year in preparation of the acquisition and don't be surprised if there's even more later in the year. They own so many studios and gamepass is no where near the level they need for it to actually be profitable.

Sony must be resisting the urge to post either the Leo Di Caprio raised glass meme, or even the Ray Liotta laughing one.

Redundancies after a merger/buyout. No surprise here.

Unfortunately foreseeable. My post from last Friday:

“At this point I'm less interested in how the game developing companies are impacted by layoffs as how much the employees are.

I'm expecting a lot more layoffs as MS absorbs their latest acquisition and fires a lot of people due to "synergies".😜 “

The gaming industry needs a damn reboot...

@playstation1995 it’s not about money. It’s about necessity. After the merger they don’t need 2 “Game Tester #6” so they let the incoming person go. Yeah it sucks. But this is what’s happening here.

But Gamer Phil & the Microsoft P.R. machine, lawyers & media influencers kept saying how "good" it was for gamers the buyout was!

Funnily enough,it only was of benefit to both Microsoft having control of some of gaming's biggest selling IP's & Bobby Kotick & his directors recouping their millions in legal settlements & getting golden parachutes!🙄

Precisely why multi trillion corporations shouldn't be allowed to swallow up all the AAA third party publishers but gotta recoup those board member payouts somehow!
Megacorps & executive double Dutch at its finest.
Not so much for the employees sadly.

@NoHope yup! Back in 2008 when Chase Bank bought Washington Mutual, I was let go after training who didn’t realize was to be my replacement. Still kinda stings to this day.

Microsoft doing what they do Best acquire stuff and ruin it over time 😒. Remember people Microsoft is worth $3 trillion.

I take it out of the 1900 none of them are in high powered position making lots of mony aside from Mike Ybarra leaving as well.

It might seem funny to laugh at MS after the merger, but honestly there is a chance Sony will follow suit with some cuts.

People acting like Microsoft the only company to ever layoff a developer. There was news reports as early as December about Sony pressuring its 1st party studios to make massive cuts, including talks of layoffs, in the face of increasing development costs. This is an industry wide issue, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Not a single game company is above this.

It’s always funny to read the comments on purexbox. Second comment immediately calling laying off people a typical Sony thing to do😂

OT: shame for the guys and girls who lost their jobs. But as people mentioned when M&A happens the new owner will look into cutting costs. Mostly these are supporting roles such as HR or Finance

@commentlife Complete BS. We know Sony lay off people. Japan studio is a prime example.

Didn't Playstation just had some layoffs as well a few months back?! This is getting out of hand. Folks are losing their jobs left and right. Now matter what side of the console box you're in, this is terrible.

As much as this sucks, supposedly the employees found out through the news and a lot of them don't know if they were impacted or not. If true, that's a real BS move from MS, but not very surprising.

@JSnow2 so you’re saying that had Microsoft not bought activation blizzard everyone would still have jobs and there’d be no forced redundancies? Bobby Kotick would still be running the company - he was the epitome of profit maximisation above employee welfare.

Everyone is making job cuts in the video game industry right now. It’s moronic to think that with independence and their former CEO in charge that activation blizzard would continue to maintain its staffing levels. Given his reputation, Kotick would be making as many forced redundancies as possible to maintain profits for his shareholders.

Me: 1,900 job losses is awful.
Also Me: I'll wait for a sale...

It sucks, but how many lawyers does Microsoft need?
HR staff?
Accountants?
Executives?

While those people still deserve to work, their roles are redundant. This is what happens when big company merges with big company: there is overlap.

A corporation paying for more personnel than what is necessary is no different than a person paying for a different cleaning company to handle each room of the house - sure that person might be rich and can afford it, but it's completely unnecessary.

And if you think that no one lost jobs when Sony acquired any of its studios over time, you are oblivious to the reality of how business works. The only difference here is scale.

It's been a terrible start to the year for the games industry in terms of job losses. Wishing those affected all the best.

Spent $76 billion but can’t retrain people. Classy.

A real shame 😔 where's the Microsoft £? I thought they purchased them to grow the company or at least keep them stable. I understand loads of studios and publishers are struggling right now but it's not like Microsoft is 'ol mother Hubbard in the money department.

Some posted this on Pure xbox.
And they still can’t produce a top end AAA between the lot of them.

“On another angle even after this round of job losses Xbox (≈ 20,000) will still have over TWICE as many staff as PlayStation (> 10,000) and almost THREE times as many as Nintendo (7,317). There are no excuses anymore, they have to deliver.”

@AhmadSumadi that is brutal man, I'm sorry you went through that

"It prints money!"

Yeah, sure..

Nice one Phil, so this is in line with your “growing” business yet you’re making people redundant?

Tell me again about those GamePass profits…oh wait, never did.

$69 billion to secure games that you don’t have enough people to make to put on a platform that is losing money.

Sad to see, hope those affected land well.

@commentlife Didn't MS fire 10000 people a little ago. 😅

@GamingFan4Lyf

If you were in one of those positions you wouldn’t be here arguing why it makes sense. These people still have families to support and mortgages to pay.

EDIT: I work in M&A so no explanation needed as response 😀

@Flaming_Kaiser yes, layoffs are happening throughout the tech industry. Those cuts represented around 5% of their global workforce. Google recently cut 12,000 and Amazon recently cut 27,000. The cuts MS made to their gaming division, while a seemingly large number, still only represents about 8% of that division. Recent layoffs at other companies were much more severe, with some companies laying off over 50% of their workforce.

@Sanquine I get it. No company cares about you. You are a cog in a machine - plain and simple.

@AhmadSumadi

I feel for you, always crap to lose your income/job.

In general, I think with AI getting more and more efficient , this is only the beginning.

This is the equivalent to Bobby Kotick blowing up part of the building on his way out.

@GamingFan4Lyf indeed… My previous employer asked after two days after we lost our first child when I would return again (luckily now two healthy children)… Then I learned I was a cog.

@GamingFan4Lyf don't engage with them.

Your first words were "it sucks". So you had already acknowledged that it was sad for those laid off.

You were absolutely right in your post. They don't need 5 HR departments, so duplicates have to go when acquiring all these firms.

That's factored in when people acquire firms, as they calculate that via rationalisation, they can run it more profitably than it is currently.

Sanquine was just using an "appeal to emotion" fallacy, which isn't helpful.

@themightyant Yup, execs aren't immune either!

I know the optics are horrible: spend billions on a company only to turn around and cut jobs. It's never anything that will look good - especially in this social media reality. And it's a horrible day for all affected - no one wants to walk into work and get a pink slip.

But if I can afford to spend billions of dollars to redo my lawn and I have 1900 people standing around staring at the people working because they have nothing to do, why pay the people to stand around with nothing to do simply because they have families to feed and mortgages to pay?

Or am I just expected to send a career horticulturist to electrician school so they can rewire my house at a later date simply because I can afford it?!

@TrickyDicky99 wow your hilarious!

@SgtTruth Don’t engage with them? My point still stands. His points also stands as I understand synergies like no other (e.g. you don’t need 2 HR departments if you have 1 who can do the job).

@Gunnerzaurus we've had the "appeal to emotion" fallacy.

Now we have the strawman fallacy.

No one said they had that many HR employees. It was merely an example of one of many different roles that are duplicated.

@Sanquine I'm sorry for your loss.

I have been fortunate enough to at least not been treated as a cog (despite still understanding I am one)...yet.

We lost my wife's grandfather a while back and my managers told me to take all the time I needed beyond the standard bereavement leave the company provided. That extra time would have come out of my own personal leave balance, but I wasn't pressured into returning to the office so soon even for someone I wasn't personally close to.

I didn't need more than what the leave policy allowed, but it was nice to be treated like a person.

Most staff were customer support and physical sales
Well, guess you won't be needing those if you keep aiming at the third place.

Sucks for those who got fired and for those who got an Xbox.

Severance from Microsoft: Here’s a gift card for three free months of game pass—one month for each year of employment—and here’s an EXTRA large box for your belongings, because, hey, you’re worth it!

MS making that ABK deal look worse than it already did. Gee, I sure hope Phil Spencer gets his bonus after these layoffs....

@themightyant

It looks bad on paper but I’m very confident that everything will continue as normal.

There’s NO WAY Microsoft will jeopardise the IPs and devs they have gained from the ABK buyout.

I guess time will tell.

@JSnow2 I'm glad it went through. It's bad for the people losing jobs but this always happens in mergers in any sector 🤷 that's life unfortunately

This is what happens with mergers in any sector any company would be doing the same. It sucks for the people losing their job but its no surprise. You can't keep un needed employees around and pay out a fortune for them...

These layoffs will have been planned ages ago, part of the merger plans. People are always laid off when mergers happen. Hope they got good redundancy pay though.

Sony have already announced cuts at the very end of last year, @PsBoxSwitchOwner, and Sony do not have the excuse of not having just acquired a bunch of people that are doing the same jobs as those they already had. There were always going to be layoffs once the dust of the merger had settled. It was absolutely inevitable. There will always be people that do the same jobs in both companies, and then those numbers will be slimmed down. It's not nice, but it always happens without fail.

Ultimately, ABK was not in good shape when acquired by Microsoft. There was a reason that they were looking to be bought out (Microsoft were not the only ones that Activision approached). Who knows how many jobs would have gone had they not been bought? It could, indeed, have been far worse...

I understand your pain, @Sanquine. My wife (now deceased) lost a baby at 15 weeks, and then lost the twin at 19 weeks (having to give birth to the second young girl). I was a Police Officer at the time, and I was permitted a week off to look after my wife. I then took a weeks sick leave afterwards because it affected me too, only for a senior Officer to make it his mission to get me sacked. He failed, but made a damn good go of making my life a misery. It was at that point I knew for sure that most bosses care only about themselves and their next promotion, and that it matters not who they step on during their ascent...

That’s the equivalent of 8+ large/PlayStation studios…
F*** Microsoft

This is definitely outside the norm lately. Every day is a new article about people losing their jobs, being kicked out, or resigning. I know people will say that “Layoffs and departures are all part of the business. It’s not a big deal. The internet is catastrophizing it…” But the level and amount of layoffs, executive firings and resignations, and just general unrest in the industry is concerning.

@Americansamurai1 Sony do the same

@Americansamurai1 and sony?

We've only 25 January and so many layoffs.
It's bad

“The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products,”

Steve Jobs

@jedinite and Sony what? Sony doesn't have 40+ studios and put everything on a subscription service day one.

The usual suspects running damage control I see. The same people who said the ABK acquisition was actually a good thing for the industry. Now all these people have lost their jobs they are just repeating its to be expected but if it was to be expected why did you champion it? Just for a few more games on GamePass that were always going to be on Xbox anyway. Disgusting.

Mike Ybarra quitting is quite a telling signal. It's likely that Activision/Blizzard had forecasts for the year that were okay, but after the acquisition, Microsoft likely took a look at their current revenue forecasts, decided it wasn't enough against the $69bill they just spent and so cuts would have to be made to reduce operation costs and help increase gains against the cost of acquisition, resulting in Ybarra deciding it isn't worth sticking around.

None of Microsoft acquisitions have performed well post-acquisition.

@EYEBALL

“I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If that was the case, Microsoft would have great products.” - Steve Jobs

Microsoft has been laying off people since the summer aren't they over like 10 thousand

@Mortal Haven't caught up with the latest, but when it first broke Jason Schrier posted a previous quote from Mike Ybarra they'd have to drag him out of the Blizzard offices (after the Microsoft merger was finalised),& he had no intention of leaving.

That the Xbox cheer squad is still trying to spin "its just HR or lawyers",or "these things happen", expose yet again the hypocrisy of PR friendly Public Phil vs the truly corporate Gamer Phil who operates like every other corporate executive but keeps being given a free pass by his acolytes that he's different from the other suits.

This is why I work for myself, as the only person that can fire me is me.

Also my boss is a handsome son of a gun, charming too.

This is par for the course with Microsoft. They fired many more last year but people sleep on it.
It's the usual mismanagement. We are already seeing what is happening to Bethesda. Activision blizzard is next. 🤷
I feel sorry for these people but if the gaming company i was in was bought by MS it would be the hint to start looking for something else. Most of these studios will close within 10 years.

I called this bs on push square when it was announced the deal went through. I told yall that they would be lay offs to try and recoup some of that money from the buy out. I'll say this again too it's never none of the fat cats who got their pockets lined at the top of the food chain ether.

With the smoke cleared it seems this is more than just redundancies, most the devs behind the new Blizz game have been sacked and a few artists and designers from the Overwatch team have been cut lose

All these people getting fired from all these companies should group together and start their own little gaming company.

@Fiendish-Beaver Sorry for your losses 😢. I hope that all occurred some time ago? We lost our son of 23 weeks 2 years ago (also my condolences for the loss of your wife).

@KundaliniRising333 TBh not everyone was from ABK, remember, Xbox, Bethesda were also hit, reportedly including Xbox's entire physical media division.

And that kids is how you play Monopoly. I hope everyone affected will find a new job in the industry do they can continue doing what they love.

Hiring when things are going well and laying off when profits decreases is a way to discharge company's business risks on employees. That a multi-billion company resorts to this tells a lot about economic liberalism.

@Fiendish-Beaver Hi m8 sorry to hear about your wife and the loss of your children.
Reading that somebody could do that to to you got me so annoyed and at the hardest of times.
There are some disgusting soul less people in this world.
My Dad and Mum lost twins at birth and it scarred them and affected them to the day they both died. You never get over something like that.

Sometimes people only show their true colours under the right conditions ..Pressure, sex or where money is involved.
I had "friends" of 40 years walk away after getting an illness so you never know what's buried in the hearts of some people or what there prepared to do.

Wanted to message you direct but there's no way on here

@JSnow2 I own both consoles (PS5 being my main and all gaming is done on there)
Xbox Series X GPU runs out in April and I won't be renewing it or buying into the MS console space ever again.
I was in the xbox rewards program religiously for years but I knew when the ATB deal went through they would start butchering that scheme and they did making rewards for me not worth the effort anymore. I decided to quit before the end of 2023 and threw away a long streak of 60 weeks and few thousand points.
Im just so done with MS the only thing I use the xbox for now is once a week for watching videos - that's it.
MS with all their cash are still an amateur gaming division and even comparing the 2 consoles for me the X is a buggy mess and just feels clunky an an effort to use compare to the PS5.
I had 0 respect for MS as an institution (wasn't much to begin with ) when they went and bailed out Bobby K and brought them. You just don't support scum at any price. The Spence even had the neck to thank Bobby K for his contribution to gaming when he left...What all about the misery he brought to so many victimized ATB employees. I think the PR public spence is cleverly crafted to who he really is. Seeing the emails that were released you could see even the way he communicates with his team what he's all about... An absence of manners when talking to his team says it all for me. Small thing these days which might not matter to many but it carries weight still.

@Slayer25c For me quitting COD 12 months free now was the best decision I made.

Do we know what these jobs are? At the start of the article they are "workers in the gaming division". By the end, they are a portion of the 6k "developers" being laid off since the start of the year. How do we know that all these 1,900 are "developers", and not HR, legal, corporate, miscellaneous admin staff, and so on?

There is no such thing as miscellaneous people...
1900 jobs on any level and in whatever the roles are still a tragedy.
Capitalism at is extreme.. Brutal in the UK but in the US on a whole different level...

Will January 2024 be remembered as Black/Red January by the gaming media due to the massive amounts of layoffs and retrenchments that have occurred?

There's still 5 days left of this brutal month...

Just 3 months into the deal smh. That's totally MS, all they've done for the past 10 years is undercut, cut and drag while pretending like they're the nice guy.

Good to see Push Square fanning the console war flames. Why is this even on a PS website?

It's an evil necessity after a merger. Why have 2 people doing the same job. Some of the comments in this thread are pathetic and to me this article unnecessary on a PS website.

@commentlife none of them are trillion dollar companies though

@Mephisto2869 that’s unfortunately not how it works, every company regardless of size is beholden to a system that measures anything short of consistently rising shareholder profits as a complete failure. There’s a ton of factors here, COVID had a much larger impact on industry and markets than expected, the rising costs and extended development times of the average AAA video game, the consolidation of gaming revenue in the hands of a few large titles/companies (Fortnite, COD, etc), it’s a list a mile long. It affects every company. I’m not trying to justify any of this, I think it’s awful what’s happening, but it’s a systemic problem, not a Microsoft problem. Capitalism is coming in HOT right now.

@Sanquine wrong again, Japan studio was reorganised into sie and asobi.

Japanese companies can't just lay off employees on a whim like with western studios. The law and culture does not permit it except under severe circumstances, and let's face it, making shareholders happy isn't that.

That's why I always keep saying, Japan always was and remains the heart of gaming.

You’re welcome…

@themightyant The difference between grunts and the top is they get a golden handshake and developers can rollover and are just screwed. In the end its only Blizzard in name there is nothing left of the real Blizzard.

@KundaliniRising333 tech industry faces a lot of bloat. It’s the reality of things. Even if profits are high , they have way too many people being paid with not enough work. This comment is directed towards a lot of people on here that don’t understand this. No company enjoys laying people off. But it’s part of reality that people don’t understand.

@twitchtvpat I don't disagree that in some circumstances bloat exists. My issue is with the entirety of the system as a whole. It's far more complex and standardized and greed driven to just chalk it up to corporate buzz words like bloat and redundancies.

Its the climate that this practice is common practice and condoned by the brainwashed masses that is the bigger problem here. The fact that a company can hire people in times of need then fire them when things slow down all the while breaking profit records is insanity. Even more absurd is a company making major acquisitions at the behest of the top echelons of the companies, without any power or input from those affected that actually make the company run is also insanity.

In this specific case, the absurdity to acquire activision blizzard for 69 billion dollars, then achieve a market value of 3 trillion dollars, then the following day fire 2000 employees in the name of redundancies and accept this as just business , then I don't know man. It's a level of dissociation with empathy that i can't understand.

Yet I do fully comprehend that given the history and continued trajectory of our species. a great deal adopts or at the very least are conditioned to believe such a level of dissociation and predation is normal.

If this was really about trimming fat, and eliminating redundancies the focus would be on the massive executive level pay/bonus structure that make far more a dent in the bottom line compared to even the 2000 employees losing their livelihood. In all reality losing that livelihood so that the top can continue living in glut.
No one is saying that the company feels one way or another about doing this, I think that and who ultimately ends up being the first on the chopping block is the problem. I do not believe it's often redundancies and instead reasonings far shallower: Earnings projections amidst the fallacy that is the endless growth model.

Thank you, @NoToSheep. Sometimes, when the world falls from beneath your feet, some friends will walk away, and leave you to fall, but others, your real friends, will help you back to your feet. It is in those moments you see the true nature of the people you think of as friends, those that stand by you, and those that are no friends at all.

Time is a great healer, @Sanquine, but you do not forget. Nor do I forgive the man that tormented me, who, in his report, stated that my wife's miscarriage was a 'minor medical issue'. It's a phrase that has stuck with me for nearly 20 years, which I think goes some way to explaining just how much that hurt. The twins were lost approaching 20 years ago now, and my wife died April 15th 2022. Time marches on, and the horrendous memories fade with its passing. I hope that, in time, the sadness eases for you too...

@KundaliniRising333 you have to ignore all of that in the end though. you have to ignore how much they paid to purchase them , and how much they are worth. that doesn't mean anything in this case. at the end of the day if they don't have enough work for that many workers , they have to lay people off. i mean it is a job after all , they can't just keep paying people just for them to have a job if there is no work for them. that's completely unrealistic to expect that. its perfectly normal to feel bad for them because they just lost their job , and there is nothing wrong with that thinking either. but i'm just looking at it from a business point of view in why these things happen.

How many games get canceled now or delayed by 2-3 years?

@Sanquine Hi also sorry to hear of your 1st child dying....
I know from experience how the death of my twin brothers affected my Dad and Mum throughout their life until their deaths.
No Parent should ever outlive their children..
Take Care of yourself

Such an unstable industry. I always wanted to be involved in game design when I was young but now I'm glad I'm not.