Not even Call of Duty developers are safe from layoffs

On January 25th Microsoft announced a workforce reduction of almost 9 percent In the company’s gaming department, a total of almost 2,000 employees have lost their jobs at Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax and Xbox. Some of these people worked on it call of Dutyone of the largest and most profitable franchises in the industry, showing that no one, not even those who work on this money-making juggernaut, is safe when companies decide it’s time to make the “difficult decision,” to reduce the number of employees and eliminate positions.

Read more: Microsoft is cutting nearly 2,000 jobs for video game workers

On social media sites like LinkedIn and X/Twitter (now former) call of Duty

Developers say goodbye as their jobs are thrown into the company trash can. Austin O’Brien, Community Manager at Raven Software, announced that he had been fired after three years of work War zone. Sledgehammer Games’ environment artist, Ethan Pflugh, was also fired after three years in this studio. Said Brad Dallaire, Sledgehammer systems designer You are now looking for workwhile the studio’s senior quality assurance manager said they would “basically lost [their] the whole team” as a result of widespread layoffs. Seemingly, a new branch Infinity Ward’s IT department reduce to a single person. Even People at Activision’s High Moon Studios, which helped with this call of Duty And determination, are affected. It’s a bloodbath.

According to Kick streamer DougDagnabbit, who runs the ModernWarzone X/Twitter account, every single one call of Duty Studio was affected by the layoffs. While there are no specific figures on the devastation, the scale appears to be quite large.

In received a memo to employees from IGNXbox boss Phil Spencer said it was a “painful decision” to cut about 1,900 employees from the 22,000-strong workforce and explained that Microsoft would offer all affected people “severance pay in accordance with local labor laws” while also underlining this The company’s commitment to “bringing more games to more players around the world.” The ABK Workers’ Alliance

a group of organized employees at Activision Blizzard King, isn’t too pleasedtell aftermathNathan Grayson says its members will “continue to work together to try to help and protect our current and former colleagues.”

Nearly every year, call of Duty sells like a gangster. 2023 Modern Warfare IIIone of the worst rated call of Duty games in history, still sold out Tears of the Kingdom. Despite Elden RingPopularity, Modern Warfare II surpassed the Soulslike epic. Some the best-selling games on Xbox in 2023

were old call of Duty Title. I could go on, but you get the point. Almost every time a call of Duty The game is coming, regardless the discourse about it or the crunch that was in it, the game will inevitably become a best seller for Activision Blizzard. However, in capitalism, where your employment is often subject to the whims of a CEO making millions – or billions – of dollars, job security is not guaranteed, no matter how successful or profitable the projects you work on may be.

My city Activision Blizzard and Microsoft have reached out to comment.

Read more: 25 days until 2024 and more than 5,900 video game layoffs have been announced

It’s painful to see all these layoffs. The year has just begun and almost 6,000 people have already lost their jobs. I’d like to believe that when they say, “It’ll get worse before it gets better,” but if not call of Duty Developers are safe from layoffs, it’s hard to believe things will get better any time soon.