Blizzard layoffs 600 people shake the industry

　Yesterday, Activision Blizzard announced that the company would reduce the number of employees in its Blizzard Entertainment department worldwide by 600.

As the world's largest game development and distributors, the decision to see Blizzard is a big shock to the industry.

Blizzard is the game development company that sees Blizzard as its most profitable asset, and sees Blizzard acquired Blizzard from Vivendi in 2008. Its reputation in the field of PC platform gaming, like Apple's reputation in the consumer electronics industry, its "Diablo" series, "star Hegemony" series and "Warcraft" series games are popular worldwide, the world's most popular online game, Wow, is its product.

In an email sent to this newspaper, Blizzard Entertainment said the move was based on the company's recent assessment of the company's business in the form of demand from the current organization, with about 90% of the 600 job cuts expected to come from the non-gaming development department.

This is related to the recent earnings performance of Blizzard and the operating changes of World of Warcraft.

Earlier last month, the latest earnings from Blizzard reported a 6% per cent decline in revenue in the four quarter, despite a rise in profits.

This is related to the aging of its blockbuster products, "World of Warcraft". The number of users in the world's most famous games has been rolling for 7 years, and its user numbers have continued to decline in recent quarters. By the end of 2011, the number of users in World of Warcraft was 10.2 million, and they lost 700,000 users in the third quarter of last year, and lost 100,000 in the four quarter.

Blizzard Entertainment CEO Mike Morhaime says Blizzard has identified some business areas that are structurally sound and can benefit from the company's further development, but others have become bloated, "so we need to shrink some departments." ”

Blizzard Entertainment says the game development and publishing process will not be affected. The company will announce the details of "Diablo Ⅲ" in the near future and is continuing to actively promote the "World of Warcraft: The Mystery of Pandas", "Blizzard DOTA" and "StarCraft Ⅱ: The heart of the Swarm" test plan.

Blizzard Entertainment also mentions that, despite the reduction of 600 of employees, it continues to recruit eligible game developers. In addition, Blizzard China did not respond to this newspaper, whether the layoffs involved in the Chinese region.

In the Chinese market, the current "World of Warcraft" agent NetEase and Blizzard's 3-year contract is about to expire, the current renewal has not been disclosed. Prior to that, NetEase obtained the blizzard "StarCraft Ⅱ" agent power, there is speculation that Blizzard or "Diablo Ⅲ" and "World of Warcraft" agent of the right to be packaged to NetEase.