For Activision Blizzard, the lights are going out in Germany. The Munich offices of the gaming giant are closed.
For some German employees of Blizzard, last week was their final working day. The “Activision Blizzard Deutschland GmbH” in Ismaning near Munich was dissolved at the end of May. The actual work, meaning the operational business there, was already concluded on March 31, but now the location is definitively closed.
Why was the office closed? The reasoning for the closure was provided quite some time ago. This is mainly because the distribution of games is increasingly taking place in a digital format. It was stated literally:
With the decline of physical sales and the anticipated shift to a purely digital business, a local retail model focused on individual countries no longer meets business requirements.
Or to put it more casually: Managing the increasingly dwindling physical sales in each country individually is simply no longer worthwhile.
This can also be corroborated by numbers, as the magazine GamesWirtschaft reports: In 2018, local revenues were 55 million euros, and by 2020, they had fallen to only 35 million euros – a decline of over 33%.
Was this already foreseeable? Yes. Several months ago, it was announced that the offices in various countries would close. Blizzard has been centralizing all European operations in London for a while now. From there, publishing for the German market will be managed in the future.
The closure has nothing to do with whether games from Activision Blizzard will continue to be offered or advertised in German – it was only about local distribution of the games, such as sales in large electronics chains like MediaMarkt, Saturn, or smaller retailers.
How many employees are affected? A total of 19 employees were working at the Munich office for Blizzard. However, contracts had already been terminated some time ago. Many contracts ended in 2021, and the last ones expired on May 31, 2022, with the closure of the office.
What do you think about this? An economically logical and understandable step? Or once again “another horror story from Blizzard”?
