{"id":7520,"date":"2019-02-14T07:55:12","date_gmt":"2019-02-14T07:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/overwatch-and-call-of-duty-maker-to-cut-800-jobs\/"},"modified":"2019-02-14T07:55:12","modified_gmt":"2019-02-14T07:55:12","slug":"overwatch-and-call-of-duty-maker-to-cut-800-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/overwatch-and-call-of-duty-maker-to-cut-800-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Overwatch and Call Of Duty maker to cut 800 jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"Overwatch\"Image copyright<\/span>
\n Activision Blizzard<\/span><\/p>\n

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Video games publisher Activision Blizzard has announced it will lay off about 800 people, despite reporting record revenue in 2018.<\/p>\n

The company made $7.5bn (\u00a35.8bn) last year, up from about $7bn in 2017.<\/p>\n

Its chief executive, Bobby Kotick, said the results were “the best in our history” but did not “realise our full potential”.<\/p>\n

Titles published by the Activision Blizzard group include Call Of Duty, Overwatch and Candy Crush Saga.<\/p>\n

The Activision Blizzard group is made up of several games studios including Crash Bandicoot publisher Activision, World Of Warcraft maker Blizzard and mobile gaming giant King.<\/p>\n

It has about 9,600 employees and 8% of them will be laid off. <\/p>\n

Most of the job losses would not be in game development departments, the company said. But many roles related to its e-sports business appear to have been cut.<\/p>\n

King’s Seattle-based mobile game studio Z2Live will be closed entirely, with the loss of 78 jobs.<\/p>\n

In its latest earnings report, Activision Blizzard said Call of Duty had been the best-selling console franchise worldwide for 2018.<\/p>\n

Games produced by Blizzard, which include Overwatch, Hearthstone and World Of Warcraft, had 35 million players monthly.<\/p>\n

And King, behind the hit game Candy Crush Saga, boasted 268 million players monthly.<\/p>\n

However, despite the record revenue, industry analysts had hoped the company would perform even better.<\/p>\n

Many games studios are facing pressure from free-to-play titles such as Epic Games’s global hit Fortnite.<\/p>\n

Fortnite Battle Royale is free to download and play and generates money selling optional outfits and accessories known as skins.<\/p>\n

Rival publisher EA Games has adopted this model for its new game Apex Legends, which it hopes will challenge Fortnite’s dominance.<\/p>\n

The company said Apex Legends had attracted 25 million players in its first week.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source<\/a> by [author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image copyright Activision Blizzard Video games publisher Activision Blizzard has announced it will lay off about 800 people, despite reporting record revenue in 2018. The company made $7.5bn (\u00a35.8bn) last year, up from about $7bn in 2017. Its chief executive, Bobby Kotick, said the results were “the best in our history” but did not “realise … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}