Activision-Blizzard Lays Off Nearly 200 People in Esports, King

Activision-Blizzard is at it again: despite being one of the biggest companies in the world with the fattest paycheck for their CEO, they’ve decided to just continue being the worst and announce fairly sweeping layoffs across the company, most noticeably in their Esports division and in King, the Candy Crush developers they own.

From Activision-Blizzard executive Tony Petitti:
 

“We learned a lot last year in terms of how the leagues can be structured for online play, and we’ll look to carry forward the best practices from that. In terms of timing, it’s a reaction to the realities of how the leagues are playing and what resources we need to allocate to best serve the league, owners, teams and fans."

Admittedly, after the famous 800-some layoffs of 2019 and the surprise shutdown of Heroes of the Storm, this is the least surprising and most understandable layoffs to come out of Activison-Blizzard in a while. Esports, like most other forms of entertainment, is struggling in the age of the pandemic, and the OWL league (that’s Overwatch esports) has been on a decline as well over the past few seasons, as the game has stopped getting meaningful updates in preparation for the inevitable but long-delayed release of Overwatch 2.

In any case, around 190 employees have apparently been asked to leave. They must have been redundant, though, because apparently Activision-Blizzard has no plans to change or adjust how the League is actually run. Still, it’s always sad to hear about people losing their jobs, especially during a pandemic like this one: even if we’ve got vaccines being handed out, we’re a ways away from being able to return to life as normal. If such a thing is even possible after almost a year of this bull.

The Overwatch League is set to return this coming April.