Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

It is worth understanding that this is "different" than... all the other layoffs in tech at this point.

MS acquired ABK. Any acquisition almost always leads to "downsizing". At a high level: ABK would have had their own payroll department. Now they go through MS payroll. Why do you need an entire department whose job is now superfluous? Obviously this gets a LOT more complex with developers and the like (as well as local management) but that is the mindset.

But... holy fucking shit that is a lot of people getting laid off at one of the worst times to be unemployed in "tech" in the past decade.

I never want to hear "job creators" as a reason for tax breaks and special treatment again.

68 billion to acquire IP, but can't afford to pay the people who make and maintain it.

The industry is at its most wealthy and yet it feels like its on fire.

January hasn't ended yet and we are at 60% of the total layoffs of last year.

I remember people on the Internet talking about the Microsoft Bethesda deal. I saw people saying that it's "actually a good thing" and how Microsoft can contribute more to Bethesda and they'll churn out better games for Xbox. Then I see shit like this and games like Starfield and understand why 99% of the people on the Internet have no fucking clue what they're talking about.

Just as long as one of the 1,900 is the CEO...

1900 employees, that's something like 10 big games that won't be released, or we can look forward to more outages and bugs in the new releases, and slower fixing of those bugs.

Thanks Microsoft for your contribution to enshittification 🏅💩

Probably not the guys with sexual assault charges though.

My initial reaction was to laugh my ass off at the extra drop of crap in the collective cup. Upon a second take however... considering what a horrifying den of depravity ActiBlizz became during the past years, this may turn out to be for the best in the long run...

It's a good thing we didn't raise their Taxes or Wages! Otherwise they may have fired their workers!

This stands to reason. There's probably a ton of infrastructure headed to Azure teams, like the entire Battle.net infrastructure or what it's called today.

I'm guessing only key executives and key creatives get to stay, while everyone else will be replaced by Microsoft alumni.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

While Microsoft is primarily laying off roles at Activision Blizzard, some Xbox and ZeniMax employees will also be impacted by the cuts.

His influence will be felt for years to come, both directly and indirectly as Allen plans to continue mentoring young designers across the industry,” says Booty.

Booty says Microsoft will be “shifting some of the people working on it to one of several promising new projects Blizzard has in the early stages of development.”

Microsoft completed its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in October, following 20 months of battles with regulators in the UK and US.

Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick stepped down at the end of December, with Microsoft not appointing a direct replacement.

The software maker is due to report its fiscal Q2 2024 earnings next week, which, for the first time, will include results from the impact of the Activision Blizzard acquisition.

The original article contains 397 words, the summary contains 149 words. Saved 62%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

This is the best I could muster this morning: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA