Posted Thu Mar 1, 2012 at 10:30 AM PST by Dick Ward
According to GamesIndustry.biz, only 60 of those jobs are in any way related to gave development.
That's a scary headline, especially considering that the seemingly unstoppable gaming company has been showing signs of slowing. Warcraft subscribers are down since last year and BlizzCon has been cancelled, so it's easy to see doom if you're looking for it.
Now Blizzard is cutting a significant portion of its staff. Before you get too worked up about the future of the company's popular franchises, it should be noted that 90% of those employees are unrelated to internal development. There are a lot of people working at Blizzard, from tech support to cafeteria staff, and while no one is happy about people being laid off it does say something far different if most of the layoffs come from non-development staff. The 'World of Warcraft' team will be completely spared from these layoffs.
"Over the last several years, we've grown our organisation tremendously and made large investments in our infrastructure in order to better serve our global community," says CEO Mike Morhaime. " 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."
Source: GamesIndustry.biz
See what people are saying about this story in our forums area, or check out other recent discussions.
The latest news on all things 4K Ultra HD, blu-ray and Gear.