Video game maker Activision Blizzard Inc. will soon lay off nearly 400 people in its in mobile gaming divisions in Santa Monica and Irvine, eliminating redundancies among its staff following last year’s $75.4 billion merger with software giant Microsoft Corp.
These layoffs come on top of 1,003 already made over the past year by Activision, ranging from operations in Novato and Foster City in the Bay Area to Southern California offices, according to state filings with the Employment Development Department.
Activision Blizzard, which was acquired after in last year’s merger with Microsoft Corp., informed the EDD that 140 jobs were to be eliminated beginning Oct. 11 at the Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine.
The jobs being eliminated cover a broad swath of positions in the company’s Irvine operations, according to a letter filed by Leslie Campbell, the director of Activision Blizzard’s human resources. They include accountants, software engineers, the director of human resources for World of Warcraft video games, artists, the director of technology game designers, game producers, sound designers and a game director and vice president.
Campbell was not immediately available for comment on the 393 layoffs recently announced.
“Anything you are looking at in the WARN system would be part of reductions that were previously announced,” said Activision Blizzard spokeswoman Delay Simmons, in an email statement.
Simmons said the company was not able to share additional details “about which teams were impacted and their locations.” She pointed to media reports on two rounds of major layoffs announced previously.
In January, 1,900 layoffs were made within the Microsoft Gaming division’s Activision Blizzard, Xbox and ZeniMax Media units. Earlier this month, Microsoft Gaming announced 650 layoffs.
“The 400 roles you’re seeing in the system are part of the recent news and are not new; the roles that were impacted include mostly corporate and supporting roles, and some impacts to gaming teams.”
The letter Activision sent to EDD regarding the latest round of job cuts was dated Sept. 12.
Since it was founded in 1991, the biggest video gaming hit for Blizzard has been World of Warcraft. The combined company also produces other popular gaming titles such as Call of Duty and Candy Crush.
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Blizzard had been a unit of Vivendi from 1995 until 2007 when the game maker merged with Santa Monica-based Activision.
The latest layoffs include software designers, engineers, human resources and product managers who worked on mobile versions of Call of Duty: Warzone and WoW, as well as a third game based in Irvine that is experiencing sagging sales, according to Michael Pachter, a managing director and gaming research analyst at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles.
“You had overlapping teams working on the two mobile versions,” Pachter observed. “You don’t need two people designing weapons.”
Warcraft Rumble, a mobile action strategy game designed in Irvine and set within the Warcraft universe, is taking a hit with the layoffs has encountered trouble gaining traction with sales, Pachter said.
The EDD filings also show that 143 cuts will be made at Activision’s Jefferson Boulevard studio at the Reserve Business Park in Playa Vista, and 110 jobs at the company’s Olympic Boulevard studio in Santa Monica.
The layoffs at the studios will come in waves, with the first for Irvine and Santa Monica studios beginning Oct. 11, and Playa Vista cuts coming in mid-November.
Layoffs at all three locations should be completed before the end of the year.
The filings with California’s Employment Development Department were made as part of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act — commonly referred to as WARN notices. The filings are required when an employer lays off more than 50 employees.
Last year’s acquisition by Microsoft of Activision Blizzard was the biggest in video game history and faced scrutiny from regulators around the world and raised concerns that the merger would reduce competition in the gaming industry.
