While the company hasn’t officially announced anything yet, the layoffs do, unfortunately, seem likely. The volatile nature of the games industry is gut-wrenching, as all too often it involves hundreds of workers being put out of work and unable to support their families, leading to the increasingly common sentiment of unionization among games industry workers. With Activision’s poor numbers, these layoffs are almost an inevitability, no matter how disappointing it may be.
Activision had multiple financial failures last year, one of which involved Destiny 2: Forsaken underselling, leading to developer Bungie splitting ways with the publisher- and taking the Destiny license with it. Blizzard, another developer owned by Activision, also had trouble keeping its games afloat. Both Hearthstone and Overwatch faced either stagnating or declining player counts, leading to an additional loss in revenue. Analysts are now predicting that Activision’s sales could decline an additional 2% this year, down to $7.8 billion.
However, Activision wasn’t the only company to have had a bad 2018. Both EA and Take-Two failed to meet expectations last year, though EA did rebound earlier this week thanks to the success of its new free-to-play battle royale game, Apex Legends. While there are many potential causes of poor sales, many people have blamed the success of Fortnite on other companies’ inability to meet projected sales figures.
Hopefully, Activision will manage to keep any potential labor cuts to a minimum, as it’s always sad to see hard-working developers displaced from the industry. While the nature of business means that Activision has a duty to deliver results to its shareholders, it’s equally important to remember the human cost that goes into making a game, whether that game manages to live up to expectations or not.
Source: Bloomberg
