Blizzard announced today that it will be reducing its global workforce this year by about 600 employees, with only 10% of them coming from the game development departments.
With Diablo 3 being released in the 2nd quarter, and no other major project anywhere near release, it’s not very surprising to hear Blizzard is downsizing. Sure there’s Mists of Pandaria and the first Starcraft 2 expansion coming soon, but those do not require the resources that a brand new game like D3 requires; so I’m sure a majority of the cuts are due to the imminent D3 launch.
Along with the launch of D3, Blizzard will also be launching the new BattleNet, which also probably has a role in the cuts.
With only 10% or so of the cuts coming from game development, that begs to wonder whether Blizzard support will be hit hard by the cut? Does this mean longer phone waits and responses to game issues? I’m willing to bet yes.
Of course, a company’s gotta do what’s best for them and their share-holders, so if that mean cutting staff (or merging), so be it.