Microsoft will lay off 1,900 employees from its video game division this week, as the specialized media IGN and The Verge have been able to find out through sources close to the company.
These layoffs represent a cut of 8 percent of Microsoft’s workforce dedicated to video game development, which employed around 22,000 employees worldwide.
In an internal message sent by the head of the company’s video game division, Phil Spencer, it is detailed that the teams most affected by these layoffs will be Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax and Xbox.
Precisely, the news comes three months after the American giant obtained the green light to finalize the purchase of the video game publisher Activision Blizzard for 68.7 billion dollars (about 65.104 million euros), the largest acquisition in the history of entertainment.
“As we move towards 2024, Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard leadership are committed to aligning on a strategy and execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the entirety of our growing business,” says Phil Spencer in the internal communication. “Together, we have set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and made sure we are all aligned on the best growth opportunities,” he adds.
As Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier has reported, right now many workers on the affected teams still do not know if they have been impacted by the layoffs.
The layoffs coincide with other staff cuts in the video game industry that have taken place during these first weeks of the year, for example, they will affect Riot Games, the League of Legends company, which will lay off 530 workers.
According to data from the Video Games Layoffs website, counting the Microsoft layoffs that have been known today, this 2024 there are already 5,670 layoffs, 54 percent of those that occurred in all of 2023, a year that was already complicated for the sector due to staff cuts.
Among the causes of this wave of layoffs in the video game industry are the consequences of the pandemic, a period in which many companies increased their workforce due to the boom in digital entertainment consumption. It can also be explained by the saturation of a market in which there are many launches, but only a few capture the majority of the income.
