Blizzard to shed 600 employees

Mega-developer Blizzard Entertainemnt has announced that it will be conducting a global reduction in its workforce, costing approximately 600 employees of their jobs.

Only a rough 10% of that figure is expected to be from departments related to game development. Well, that makes it okay then…

Mike Morhaime - Blizzard CEO

“Constant evaluation of teams and processes is necessary for the long-term health of any business,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and Blizzard co-founder. “Knowing that, it still does not make letting go of some of our team members any easier.”

Morhaime has assured fans that Blizzard remains committed to shipping multiple games this year and that their development teams remain largely unaffected by this announcement.

“We’re continuing to develop, iterate, and polish Blizzard DOTA, Diablo III, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, as well as other, unannounced projects,” he wrote on the Blizzard forum.

This comes after announcements at the end of last year that World of Warcraft had been haemorrhaging about 2 million subscribers.