Microsoft Lays Off Blizzard Staff Citing Overlaps

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As reported on CNBC yesterday, Phil Spencer sent out a memo to Blizzard staff that 1900 employees are being laid off. In the memo, Phil cites the need for this was due to an overlap of roles and an attempt to make the corporation as a whole more cost effective. These layoffs equate to a 9% reduction in force out of Microsoft’s game development team of 22,000. These layoffs come the same week Riot Games also laid off around 500 workers. Notable departures from Blizzard include President Mike Ybarra and co-founder Allen Adham.

It is hard to say how this is going to impact the future of Blizzard games, but with a co-founder leaving that doesn’t spell a promising future. However, the past few years at Blizzard have been fairly tumultuous with sexual harassment lawsuits and cancelled/failed projects. The quality of the games has been suffering coincidentally.

Mike Ybarra, an ex-Microsoft management and developing team leader, became President of Blizzard in February 2022. He had 22 years of experience with Microsoft being involved all the way back in the Xbox 360 console era.¹ Allen Adham was a co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment who was the lead designer for World of Warcraft and was involved in the design process for Warcraft, Warcraft 2, and StarCraft.² Losing Allen Adham will be a major loss of game development talent for the company.