Some big news coming out this evening that will affect all Blizzard staff based in Paris. It’s come to light this afternoon that the Activision Blizzard offices in Versailles are to close down completely.
The opening of the French-based HQ in Europe was a big deal for Blizzard happening at a time when World of Warcraft was dominating the market. Last year the Blizzard workforce was scaled back in the US with 209 employees let go.
According to today’s reports, following restructuring at the French office in Versailles, employees had been told that around 134 of the 400 positions would go. It seems that more drastic action has now been taken by Activision Blizzard and the whole operation is being shuttered.
It also appears that there may have been plans to relocate staff to London but with the pandemic still rife and Brexit coming into full force in January next year, those plans have been shelved.
It’s not clear now how many of the staff will lose their jobs or how many will be moved to other offices. All staff based in Paris will find out more next week.
The French office looked after localisation, EU community relations, support, as well as marketing for Blizzard products. It’s unknown at this point how this closure will affect the EU community. Much of the EU player base was served through this office, including community relations.
It certainly appears that the influence of Activision on Blizzard’s own operations has become greater over time. There have been some big changes over the past few years at Activision Blizzard with the departure of Morhaime and staff redundancies it does make you wonder what’s happening behind closed doors at an operational level.
