Microsoft said on Thursday that the company will be laying off 1,900 staff from Activision Blizzard and Xbox this week.
The majority of the layoffs, which amount to around 8% of the whole Microsoft Gaming division, will be made at Activision Blizzard.
Along with the departure of Chief Design Officer Allen Adham and Blizzard President Mike Ybarra, Microsoft also revealed that Blizzard’s previously planned survival game has been shelved.
The announcement comes months after Microsoft finalized a $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, strengthening its position in the videogame business with hits like “Call of Duty” and enabling it to take on market leader Sony.
In an effort to cut expenses and increase profitability, a number of other large companies, including Alphabet, Amazon, and eBay, have also let off thousands of employees in recent weeks.
According to monitoring website Layoffs.fyi, 76 tech businesses laid off almost 21,000 employees in January overall. In 2023, the IT industry lost 168,032 jobs, making it the industry with the most layoffs overall, per a research released earlier this month by Challenger, Gray, and Christmas. Microsoft had almost 10,000 layoffs
