14 DAY TRIAL // Video game developer Blizzard Entertainment has announced that it will be laying off about 600 of its employees as a result of the completion of a review regarding theorganization’s core needs.
600 is quite a high number given that reports from 2009 stated that Blizzard had about 4,600 workers and apparently added another thousand during 2010 and 2011.
Blizzard says that about 90 percent of those to leave the company will be from departments of the company that are not directly linked to video game development.
A statement from Mike Morhaime, who is the current chief executive officer and one of the co-founders at Blizzard, says, “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.”
He added, “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.”
The statement also says that its current development and publishing schedule is not affected by the lay-offs and that the company will be better able to operate with a slimmer structure.
At the moment the big project that Blizzard is working on is Diablo III, which the fan base was expecting to see launched before the end of spring and now seems set to appear during the fall after a set of major re-designs.
During the summer the company is also expected to launch the Heart of the Swarm expansion for Starcraft II while another expansion for the World of Warcraft MMO, called Mists of Pandaria, should also be launched before the end of the year.
Other Blizzard projects currently under development include a version of DOTA and the mysterious Project Titan.