What you need to know
- Activision Blizzard is a game developer under the Activision banner that works on popular games like World of Warcraft and Overwatch.
- The company has been having a rough time, with underperforming finances and mass lay-offs and reorganizations across the board.
- The latest news to come from that end is the shuttering of Blizzard's office in Versailles, France, which employs up to 400 people.
- The office is being closed down, and it's possibe that every employee will be laid off, rather than transferred to another area.
Activision Blizzard has been having a bit of a rough time, to put it lightly. Back in February of last year, we reported that Activision Blizzard was going to make significant changes to the company's organization, and that as many as 800 employees could be affected by mass lay-offs. In lieu of these continued troubles, Activision Blizzard employees are striving for better treament and pay. The latest news to come from that end, however, is not happy news, with a report from Bloomberg claiming that the game developer is shuttering a large office in Versailles, France.
NEWS: Activision Blizzard is closing the long-running Blizzard office in Versailles, France, employees tell Bloomberg News. This comes after a restructuring and many months of turbulence following mass layoffs in 2019. https://t.co/avAztpArEVNEWS: Activision Blizzard is closing the long-running Blizzard office in Versailles, France, employees tell Bloomberg News. This comes after a restructuring and many months of turbulence following mass layoffs in 2019. https://t.co/avAztpArEV— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) October 6, 2020October 6, 2020
The Versailles office employs as many as 400 employees, and primarily deals with customer service, marketing, and localization for any Activision Blizzard games heading to Europe. The decision was quite sudden, with staff reportedly being told that they'll learn more next week. It's not clear just how many employees are poised to lose their jobs with this change, but at the very least labor laws in France require that employees affected by mass lay-offs are compensated with severence packages, so there's that at least.
The news aren't all bad from the Activision Blizzard front, however, as former employess are banding together to create Dreamhaven, a new publisher with two studios under its belt. And Activision Blizzard has a couple of potential wins in the loop as well, with Diablo 4, Overwatch 2, and World of Warcraft: Shadowlands all hotly anticipated by fans in the coming months and years. Hopefully any employees affected by these changes are duly compensated and are able to quickly find new work befitting their talents.
