Blizzard - Just curious how big the team is?

Community General Discussion
41

Activision Blizzard, in its entirety, has an estimated ~9,642 employees, based upon payroll processing figures. Source:

https://www.macroaxis.com/invest/ratio/ATVI--Number_of_Employees

In 2012, Blizzard had laid off ~600 employees from its 4,700 employee base according to a separate earlier Gamasutra count, bringing it down to ~4,100:

https://venturebeat.com/2012/02/29/blizzard-entertainment-lays-off-600-employees-as-world-of-warcraft-shrinks/

There have been several reallocations of resources and significant departures since that time, given the continuing decline in Warcraft populations and challenges capturing gamer market share among its eSports initiatives with HOTS and even Overwatch.

Finally, consider Activision Blizzard’s Quarterly Filings from 11/8:

https://investor.activision.com/financial-information/quarterly-results

Blizzard Entertainment accounts for ~30% of the operating margin of the entire parent company. It’s safe to say that it is on the higher side of ~3,000 - ~4,000 FTEs, but this number is likely to decrease as Activision Blizzard is pressuring Blizzard Entertainment to become more profitable. This ordinarily comes through EBITDA, reducing operating overhead (costs, including employees) while continuing to drive revenues. More on the culture shift at Blizzard in this Kotaku expose:

https://kotaku.com/the-past-present-and-future-of-diablo-1830593195

TL;DR – Somewhere between 3,000 - 4,000 employees, most likely, subject to continuing decreases and voluntary and involuntary employee attrition as Blizzard Entertainment strives to show profitability. Still the largest and most profitable U.S. game developer.

2 Likes
42

Great post and interesting information. A simple ‘like’ doesn’t seem sufficient.

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43

So basically, a lot of personal opinion. If you think Blizzard is going to fire people already, you look at a very small piece of the puzzle…and make it fit into what you already believe.

Don’t forget a key part from the cuts you listed. “About 90 percent of the cuts will come from areas not directly related to game development.”

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44

This falls on the devs to do there part and get off there phones! But right now they seem to be wanting to drive players away to get back at Activision for cutting there bonuses.

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/screenrant.com/blizzard-mobile-games-developers/amp/

There you go.

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46

Wanting to intentionally derail a game they work on and potentially cost themselves jobs is pretty deep into tinfoil hat territory.

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47

There was no personal opinion in anything I posted. I cited both public press releases where Blizzard shares the number of employees they have, and public regulatory filings by Activision Blizzard on the state of their company. There are also well-documented exposes and analyses of culture shifts at Blizzard, which I also linked to, and a well-accepted push for Blizzard to “show greater profitability.” The primary avenue for this, in business, is through EBITDA, which is achieved primarily through a decrease in operating expenses (namely, terminating employees, reducing other forms of overhead, etc.).

There are many legitimate opinion-based discussions around the direction that Blizzard is going in, but I am not making any of them here.

48

Are you saying people didn’t lose jobs over the HoTS situation? If not, please clarify. Referring to your questioning of people getting fired.

And before you go all “citation needed” the eSports division is simply gone and a number of people have been vocal about losing their jobs. The devs may have been lucky enough to move to other games that they felt needed more support but make no mistake, this move by them is life-changing for many people.

49

Would have been better for all if the “esports” people never had a job at Blizzard to begin with. Trying to force esports is dragging blizz down.

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50

We never know , some of the devs could potentially have better job offers elsewhere waiting. But they might be under contract to stay with blizzard until terms are met. Ghostcrawler seems to be doing well after he left. Whose is to say that other devs want to follow him?

51

Perhaps but I would never wish losing a job on anyone. It’s not funny, it’s not something to celebrate and it’s not at all healthy when something like this happens.

And by the way some of this might be to support esports in their other titles. Hopefully you can reconcile with that.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/a69c0t/korean_hots_caster_crying_after_losing_job/

This guy did nothing to deserve what happened.

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What I mean is, would have been better if it was never started because it was never going to succeed in the first place. WoW esports is in the crapper, SCII only has a real following in Korea and OW esports is dying.

Would have been better for the customers AND the people about to lose their jobs if it had never been started.

53

Dang it. I look there was a article on this very subject now can not find. Wow has between all departments 68 people working there. That did not count interns and other personal. only main ones.

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I knew what you meant. Hence the “perhaps” because I’m also not big on esports existing.

The problem with WoW esports is that the game isn’t really meant to be that kind of thing anyway. WoW is a grindy, progressive game and some of the decisions they’ve made in the design have certainly been to promote esports. IMO it actually has ruined PVP and class design too.

I just think it sucks seeing people lose jobs like that. In the end it is all the fault of the company, for making the plunge with HoTS in the first place. People were invested in it, even if the game wasn’t very popular in the esports scene.

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Yea, they were far too behind. If they had snapped it up on the WCIII mod they would have been ahead and it would have worked, but LoL was FAR too popular by the point HotS came out.

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No personal opinion in what you posted?

Then can you give me a solid source for:

This seems to be a main point of your post. That Activision is actively pressing Blizzard to cut costs and pump out more money. None of your articles present any facts to back this up outside of some roundabout circumstantial actions that are open to interpretation…ie…personal opinion.

Almost all of the layoffs you mentioned were on the PR side. And had almost nothing to do with game development.

57

Thanks for linking an article to back up your statement of “some of their best developers on the WoW side went to another project. That says a lot to me.”

Unfortunately…that article never states a single developer was moved from WoW to mobile.

58

Sure. Specifically:

https://kotaku.com/the-past-present-and-future-of-diablo-1830593195

Jason Schreier is a professional journalist with a strong track record of reporting on the gaming industry, and has noted and verified sources within Blizzard Entertainment. In his article, he confirms:

Some of those people also raised questions about Activision’s influence on the beloved video game company.

Specifically:

This year, however, Blizzard employees say that one of the biggest ongoing conversations has been cutting costs. To fans, and even to some people who work or have worked at Blizzard, there’s a concern that something deep within the company’s culture may be changing.

And:

In the spring of 2018, during Blizzard’s annual company-wide “Battle Plan” meeting, chief financial officer Amrita Ahuja spoke to all of the staff, according to two people who were there. In what came as a surprise to many, she told Blizzard that one of the company’s goals for the coming year was to save money.

There was a perception among Blizzard staff that she had come in to clean up the spreadsheets, to save as much money as possible while at the same time bolstering Blizzard’s product output.

The entire article is a good snapshot that, when combined with the decline in Warcraft subscribers, the cancellation of Heroes of the Storm eSports, and the lackluster performance of Overwatch’s professional scene, shows how Activision plans to more deeply integrate the two companies’ bottom line. There’s some good follow-up reporting, if you’re interested, in Forbes about how Activision’s general mediocre year has pushed them to look at Blizzard as a source of strength and growth, and how this is reducing overall Blizzard headcount while nevertheless increasing the relative size of each development team.

The facts are sometimes inconvenient reminders that the video game industry is, nevertheless, a business. But it’s important to remember that Blizzard hasn’t been an independent company since 1994, and since then, has been subject to the influence and investment of its parent company, from Davidson, to Vivendi, to now Activision.

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59

I thank you for the follow up.

While I won’t say I am fully on the “Activision is pressing Blizzard to cut costs” wagon, I can at least say i can see where you are coming from and with this information it doesn’t seem nearly the leap others typically make, and I won’t fault a person for believing so.

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60

Ok! This is awesome.

I will take a look - it should have been so obvious!