Despite healthy sales, publishers such as Epic Games and Activision Blizzard are making hundreds of employees redundant – which may radically reshape the industry
Why were people laid off by Microsoft? Were they redundant after the acquisition? Were they part of departments that were cut? Like 90% of acquisitions lead to layoffs.
Very true, and Microsoft in particular could have just shouldered the cost of those employees and likely found more work for a lot of them. Some of what I’ve heard from Jeff Grubb in the past week or two is that ABK expanded by 3000 employees in the past two years while interest rates were cheap, so it was unlikely they did so sustainably; and hundreds of those who were laid off were basically the entirety of Microsoft’s physical distribution department, which we’ll probably hear in this upcoming business update no longer exists for Xbox going forward.
Why were people laid off by Microsoft? Were they redundant after the acquisition? Were they part of departments that were cut? Like 90% of acquisitions lead to layoffs.
But Microsoft told the FTC they specifically were not gonna do that after the merger, which is why the FTC is angry at them. https://www.polygon.com/24065269/ftc-microsoft-activision-deal-layoffs-appeal
Very true, and Microsoft in particular could have just shouldered the cost of those employees and likely found more work for a lot of them. Some of what I’ve heard from Jeff Grubb in the past week or two is that ABK expanded by 3000 employees in the past two years while interest rates were cheap, so it was unlikely they did so sustainably; and hundreds of those who were laid off were basically the entirety of Microsoft’s physical distribution department, which we’ll probably hear in this upcoming business update no longer exists for Xbox going forward.