Microsoft to Lay Off 1,900 Staff at Gaming Division, Including Recently Acquired Call of Duty Maker Activision.
Activision Blizzard and Xbox will be cutting 1,900 workers this week, Microsoft announced on Thursday. These layoffs are the latest in a string of significant IT sector cutbacks that will continue through 2024.
The majority of the cuts, which amount to approximately 8% of the whole Microsoft Gaming division, will be made at Activision Blizzard.
Along with the departure of Chief Design Officer Allen Adham and Blizzard President Mike Ybarra, Microsoft also revealed that Blizzard’s previously planned survival game has been shelved.
The announcement of Microsoft to Lay Off 1900 Staff at Gaming Division comes months after Microsoft finalized its $69 billion (about Rs. 5,73,621 crore) acquisition of Activision Blizzard, strengthening its position in the videogame business with hits like Call of Duty to more effectively take on market leader Sony.
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“Microsoft’s announcement that it will be laying off 1,900 video game workers makes clear that, even when you work at a successful company in an extremely profitable industry, your livelihood is not protected without a voice on the job,” Communications Workers of America (CWA) said.
“We will continue to support workers at Microsoft and across the video game industry who want to have a union voice on the job,” it added.
To cut expenses and increase profitability, a number of other large companies, including Alphabet, Amazon.com, and eBay, have also fired thousands of employees in recent weeks.
According to the tracking website Layoffs.fyi, 76 tech companies laid off over 21,000 employees in January overall.
In 2023, the tech industry lost 168,032 jobs, making it the industry with the most layoffs overall, per a report released earlier this month by Challenger, Gray, and Christmas. At Microsoft, that entailed over 10,000 layoffs.
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Experts in the field and analysts have predicted that this year will see fewer layoffs; companies who are trying to catch up in the AI sphere are more likely to reduce staff in order to counterbalance the billions of dollars they are investing in the technology.
The Verge broke the story of Microsoft’s most recent layoffs first.
