Blizzard Entertainment has fired several members of the organization Hearthstone development team, citing “organizational changes” at the studio.
The first announcement comes from a now former team member who shared an update about their team LinkedIn page and said they were fired without notice on September 27 after working at the company for almost 19 years (via VGC).
“After 18 and a half years at Blizzard Entertainment, I have been dismissed without notice as of today. Hearthstone The team is apparently being restructured and my role as Tools Engineer is no longer necessary,” Hunter C. wrote.
In the comments of the post, Hunter C. said: “As far as I know, Hearthstone it went well; they had recently shown how well we were doing at a team meeting,” she added.
The layoffs were later confirmed by Activision Blizzard, saying in a rack told Kotaku senior reporter Ethan Gach that 10 people had been affected by structural changes.
“Organizational changes have been made to the Hearthstone team; as a result, a small number of roles have been eliminated,” an Activision Blizzard spokesperson said. “We would like to thank these employees for their many contributions.”
There have been a lot of layoffs at game studios lately. Just two weeks ago, Ascendant Studios laid off nearly half of its staff, less than a month after launching Immortals of Aveum. About 45% of the team was laid off, with the studio citing poor sales as the “painfully difficult, but necessary decision that was not made lightly”.
Crystal Dynamics – which was acquired by Embracer Group last year – also announced a number of layoffs across its team last week, saying it had parted ways with 10 employees “as a result of an internal restructuring.”
Even BioWare, best known for its work on the popular Mass effect And dragon age series, laid off about 50 people last month to “meet the needs of upcoming projects” and make the studio “more flexible and focused.”
This announcement came after Bioware revealed that the development of Star Wars The Old Republic would be moved from the company to external studio Broadsword Online, to focus on the future of dragon age And Mass effect.
For more information, check out our list of the best single player gamesas well as our summary of the best pc games of 2023.