At Activision Blizzard, some employees have been laid off again. This time, it seems mainly to have affected the Hearthstone team.
That there is quite a turnover of employees at Blizzard is now widely known. Especially after the major sexism scandal, there have been many changes. But even now, in the years that followed, there seems to be waves of layoffs happening repeatedly. This time, the Hearthstone team is losing some staff.
Who was laid off? Not all affected are known, but a few have been publicly mentioned through Linkedin. Hunter Curren was laid off, who last worked as a Tools Engineer in the Hearthstone team. He had been with Blizzard for over 18 years. Another layoff affected Joe Belousek, who was also part of the Hearthstone team for the last two years (via linkedin).
Why were they laid off? This is not quite clear. On LinkedIn, the affected employees say that their layoffs came more or less out of the blue and thus without prior notice. Curren writes that the Hearthstone team appears to be “undergoing restructuring” and that the previous roles likely have no place in it anymore.
One suspicion is that the layoffs are taking place because Hearthstone is not doing very well. This problem could have been exacerbated especially by the loss of the Chinese market at the end of last year. Hearthstone was particularly strong in the Asian region and likely generated the majority of its revenue there.
Layoffs in the shadow of Metzen’s return: The news of the layoffs comes almost simultaneously with the announcement from the World of Warcraft team that Chris Metzen has taken on a fixed role in the team again as Executive Creative Director.
Even though the reports are not necessarily related, it does give the situation an unpleasant aftertaste that, in the shadow of the glorious hiring of Chris Metzen, other employees have to leave. For some, it seems that Blizzard wants to hide the layoffs behind a “Hey, look, Chris Metzen is back!”.
It is currently unknown if developers from other teams are also affected by the layoffs.
