Blizzard Entertainment Inc. is eliminating positions currently held by 600 employees worldwide. About a third of these will be from its facility in Cork, Ireland, which primarily handles customer service in multiple languages.
The company said that the development team for its flagship World of Warcraft game would not be affected, adding that about 90 percent of the losses will be borne by departments not related to game development.
In fact, Blizzard is seeking to recruit qualified developers to ensure it can maintain current development and publishing schedules.
Among the titles nearing final release are Diablo III, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard DOTA and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm.
“Constant evaluation of teams and processes is necessary for the long-term health of any business. Over the last several years, we’ve grown our organization tremendously and made large investments in our infrastructure in order to better serve our global community. However, as Blizzard and the industry have evolved we’ve also had to make some difficult decisions in order to address the changing needs of our company,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment. “Knowing that, it still does not make letting go of some of our team members any easier. We’re grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the people impacted by today’s announcement, we’re proud of the contributions they made here at Blizzard, and we wish them well as they move forward.”
Related links:
RTE – Games company Blizzard Entertainment is seeking around 200 redundancies at its Cork plant
Dow Jones – Activision Lays Off 600 From Blizzard Videogame Division
Joystiq – Blizzard laying off 600 staff globally
