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600 Blizzard Entertainment employees have been forced to update their resumes today after the majoy league studio announced a large-scale staff reduction in order to safeguard the company's financial future. Today, Blizzard confirmed the staff cuts in a formal press release, stating 90% of the fired employees were from departments not related to game development. As for the remaining 10%, the company insisted no one from the World of Warcraft development team was affected.
“Constant evaluation of teams and processes is necessary for the long-term health of any business. Over the last several years, we've grown our organization tremendously and made large investments in our infrastructure in order to better serve our global community. 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,” said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. “Knowing that, it still does not make letting go of some of our team members any easier. We’re grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the people impacted by today’s announcement, we’re proud of the contributions they made here at Blizzard, and we wish them well as they move forward.”
The release went on to state that the job loss will have zero impact on its current slate of projects, which include Diablo III, the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria expansion, Blizzard DOTA, and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. It also noted Blizzard is currently hiring developers, further suggesting that its stable of current designers was left largely unscathed.
That's good news for fans who rely on Blizzard for their entertainment, but bad news overall for the 600 staffers who relied on the company for a paycheck. We wish them well in the job search ahead.
