Last week, Activision Blizzard reported that 2016 was its best year ever, with $6.61 billion dollars worth of revenue generated. $4.87 billion of that revenue was digital. Analysts also noted that Activision’s acquisition of King, the developer of games like Candy Crush, was a big asset.
However, according to Kotaku, it seems that employees have lost their jobs across multiple Activision studios this week. Sources report that up to 5 percent of employees working under Activision Publishing were laid off. Activision Publishing is a division of Activision Blizzard that is comprised of the publisher’s corporate headquarters in Santa Monica, in addition to a number of development studios across the country including Infinity Ward, Beenox, and Treyarch.
One source reports that Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare developer Infinity Ward was one of the hardest hit by these cuts, with around 20 people laid off. Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg was very realistic when talking about the game on the earnings call, stating that the game “didn’t resonate” with part of the franchise’s audience.
This is fairly accurate, as the FPS title was widely criticized by fans when it was announced last year, with the initial reveal trailer receiving over a whopping 3 million dislikes. Many fans were not too pleased about the game’s sci-fi and outer-space theme, although Infinite Warfare was ironically still the best-selling game of 2016.
