Blizzard Entertainment to cut 600 positions, World of Warcraft team untouched

Blizzard Entertainment this morning announced that they would be slashing around 600 positions, globally, from the company. Most of the reductions are not coming from the game development departments and the World of Warcraft team is untouched, apparently, but that’s still a pretty large cut.

Read on for the official announcement.

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that it has conducted a review of its business based on current organizational needs. Following a completion of the review, the company is conducting a global reduction in workforce of approximately 600 employees. The company anticipates approximately 90% of the affected employees will come from departments not related to game development. The World of Warcraft development team will not be impacted.

?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 Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. ?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.?

Blizzard’s current development and publishing schedules will not be impacted. The company will announce specific release plans for Diablo? III in the near future, and it?s continuing to drive aggressively toward beta testing for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria?, Blizzard DOTA, and StarCraft? II: Heart of the Swarm?. Blizzard also remains committed to maintaining its high standards of quality for customer service delivery. In addition, Blizzard is still recruiting and looking to hire qualified developers for a number of open positions. Further details are available at http://jobs.blizzard.com.

For press inquiries, please contact Lisa Jensen in Blizzard Entertainment public relations at ljensen@blizzard.com.

The accounting charges associated with Blizzard’s reduction in workforce are not anticipated to be material to Activision Blizzard, Inc. and were included in the 2012 financial outlook that was provided on February 9, 2012.