The lost subscriptions are one sign, but the laying off of almost 600 employees is another. Hoot has brought to our attention in the forums that Business Wire reports Blizzard is laying off approximately 600 employees. The company anticipates approximately 90% of the affected employees will come from departments not related to game development – which means about 60 are being laid off from the game development departments.
They do say that it’s not going to affect any of their upcoming releases such as Mists of Pandaria or Diablo III. In addition, Blizzard is still recruiting and looking to hire qualified developers for a number of open positions. Further details are available at http://jobs.blizzard.com. It looks like it was more shrugging off excess overhead that they gained during their WoW growth than a “we’re not making any money so we’re laying off all these people!” Layoffs are always a sign of interior house cleaning though and it does point to the fact that Blizzard probably isn’t making as much money as they were during WoW’s height.
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