Activision Blizzard will be closing its French office based in Versailles, according to Bloomberg. Employees were reportedly informed today, Oct. 6, about the office closing.
Blizzard has been acquired by many groups since it was founded, but in 1998, the studio ended up as a part of French media conglomerate Vivendi Games. After this acquisition, Blizzard released major titles such as StarCraft, Diablo II, and World of Warcraft. The French office carries a lot of the studio’s history.
About 400 people worked in the Versailles office as of early 2019, according to Kotaku. It was responsible for marketing, customer support, localizing games to different languages, and other functions for the games Activision Blizzard publishes in Europe.
The company didn’t disclose how many employees will be fired or if they’ll have a chance to relocate to another office. Staff members reportedly were told that they’ll receive more information on the matter next week.
“Over the past year we have been exploring how we might best integrate our capabilities across the business, enabling us to better leverage talent, expertise and scale as we adapt to the needs of a fast-paced, highly-competitive, digitally focused industry,” a spokesperson for Santa Monica, California-based Activision Blizzard told Bloomberg.
The French office already saw job cuts last year. Activision Blizzard told the Versailles staff that it was laying off 134 of 400 employees in February 2019 but left the staff waiting for months while it negotiated with the government over severance.
Activision Blizzard hasn’t announced when the office will be officially closed. It might not close until next year since there’s still a job opening for human resources coordinator with a fixed-term contract until May 2021.
