Last week’s announced Activision Blizzard live events and esports layoffs, include employees in Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, and UK amid reorganization of the company’s European offices amid a shift in how players are leaning into digital options rather than physical discs. While included as part of last week’s reorganization announcement from the company, the EU layoffs underwent a consultation period due to differing employment laws. The EU offices are being consolidated into a single London-based office.
According to Activision Blizzard’s representative, development and customer support employees will not be affected. However, publishing staff will be let go due to the restructure because “players are increasingly choosing to connect with our games digitally.” Many of the EU offices being consolidated were focused on retail partnerships and agreements. The restructure is part of an ongoing plan for Activision Blizzard’s international operations and the overall evolution of the company as the industry changes.
“We have shared plans with our teams in Europe for how we would evolve as an organization, adapting to this change to serve our players and best positioning the region for future growth,” reads the statement provided to Games Industry. “We will be taking extensive steps to support all employees and ease the transition for those of our colleagues who might be impacted by these proposed changes.” Amid the restructure and consolidation of the live events/esports staff and EU publishing teams, Activision Blizzard is also hiring for a number of other disciplines across the company.
These layoffs come amid record profits for Activision Blizzard. What’s more is Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick‘s reported $200 million payout, which investor group CtW has sharply criticized. As reported by Kotaku, this figure is based on performance over the last four years, though it should be noted that the number is not final and has not been paid out to Kotick yet. The compensation agreement—fully public as part of Kotick’s contract at the publicly traded Activision Blizzard—stipulates that it will need to be run through a compensation committee. Under Kotick, Activision Blizzard continues to meet financial targets and due to a “shareholder value creation incentive” clause in his contract, he continues to collect millions on top of his base compensation—also worth millions.
“While the increase in Activision’s stock price is somewhat commendable, as we stated last year and continue to assert, this achievement alone does not justify such a substantial pay outcome for the CEO,” CtW’s Michael Varner told Kotaku. CtW is labor advocacy group that routinely criticizes CEO payouts across various companies.
Our thoughts go out to the affected employees.
[Source: Games Industry, Kotaku]
