Esports

400 Blizzard Employees Don’t Know if They are Being Laid Off

February 15, 2019 News

While video game media titan Activision Blizzard, Inc. is planning on laying off 8% of their massive workforce, a total 400 employees at one of the company’s offices are still unsure if they are being cut. Back in 2007, Activision revealed that it would merge with Vivendi Games. As Vivendi Games is a holding company to Blizzard Entertainment, the company of Activision Blizzard, Inc. was quickly forged. Well, during the recent fiscal fourth quarter results conference call, CEO Bobby Kotick revealed that the company would be laying off numerous employees following a demand to “reduce complexity and duplication.” “We’re staffing up production on our incubation efforts faster, and increasing our investment in live services, in our tools, in our Battle.net platform, and in new areas like our fast growing esports and advertising efforts, but all with an intense focus on excellence, so we never disappoint our players.” Kotick said. “Our…

Activision Blizzard Lays off Hundreds of Workers, Despite Record high Revenues

February 13, 2019 News

Video game titans Blizzard and Activision joined forces way back in 2007. That being said, it would appear that the merged gaming company is now making some changes Despite record high revenue for the year of 2018, the company will now be laying off over 700 employees. Back in 2007, Activision announced that the company would merge its assets with that of Vivendi Games. Among other things, Vivendi Games is a holding company to Blizzard Entertainment. Consequently, Activision Blizzard, Inc. was born. During the recent Activision Blizzard fourth quarter results conference call, CEO Bobby Kotick confirmed that the company would be performing lay offs following a desire to “reduce complexity and duplication.” Kotick’s full statement concerning the matter may be viewed below. “We’re staffing up production on our incubation efforts faster, and increasing our investment in live services, in our tools, in our Battle.net platform, and in new areas like…

Guide: How to Train the Best Pokemon in 2023

May 8, 2023 Guides

“I want to be the very best, like no one ever was.” A line every Pokemon fan is familiar with from the original show’s first song lyrics. In order to be the best, though, you need the most powerful Pokemon. As much as weaker Pokemon may be our favorites, sometimes they just don’t cut it. A constant recurring theme in Pokemon that it’s not how strong the Pokemon is, but how much their trainer cares about them, that wins a battle. As any Magikarp can attest, that’s not entirely true, but from a different perspective, it’s not entirely wrong either… Even the Pokemon most famous for being powerful can be outshined by weaker species of Pokemon by the way that they are raised. In that sense, putting more care into how you raise your Pokemon really does matter compared to just going by how strong a Pokemon inherently is. So…

Can Video Games be Used as a Training Tool?

January 30, 2019 Editorials

Recently I heard of a story about Formula 1 Racing. There was some race between an accomplished F1 racer and an Esports racer on a real-life track. If I’m betting money on this race, I’m throwing it all on the tried and true driver, the one who has raced in the physical world. I would have lost all of my money. The Esports driver won, beating the actual driver with years of experience by 0.6 seconds – unbelievable. The training from his video game sim was so realistic; he was able to drive a real F1 car better than a serious competitor in the racing realm. How else can video games be used as training? This may sound like something from a sci-fi movie, but video games may be the key to the future. Think about how advanced video games have become. They may be able to help us in all sorts…

Farming Simulator Now Has Its Own Pro League… Seriously

November 4, 2023 News

Farming Simulator, just as it sounds, allows players to garner some virtual experience down in the fields. While a game all about mimicking manual labor may sound niche, don’t be fooled. Farming Simulator 19 launched near the end of 2018 and sold a massive 1 million copies within just 10 days. Needless to say, the not so niche game about planting crops and driving tractors has a cult following unlike almost any other. Well, Farming Simulator developers Giants Software have since announced an Esports league in Europe that will feature a massive 250.000€ grand prize. Giants Software CEO Christian Ammann recently offered a few words to Gamasutra on the matter. “Competitive farming is something people enjoy for years now, but it hasn’t been done in eSports so far,” Ammann said. “We have lots of eSports enthusiasts in our company who can’t wait to show the world that farming can indeed be…

Activision Blizzard is Being Weird

January 5, 2019 News

Activision Blizzard is just outright being weird. It started many years ago when Activision bought Blizzard. At that point everyone declared Blizzard dead and that profits will rule the kingdom. That wasn’t… true you could say? Blizzard, under Mike Morhaime one of the co-founders of Blizzard, continued to prosper and be the one game launcher (Blizzard App, previously Battle.net) that no one complained about, Then 2018 hit and like many things, Activision Blizzard got weird. Mike Morhaime left the company, the CFO was poached twice and they basically began mothballing their very popular game Heroes of the Storm. All the while they spent most of the year being besieged by positive press about their profits. Then, there was BlizzCon where they announced the Diablo: Immortal game to basically people pausing and going what. Why did this happen? There is a lot to it, with many moving parts. If I had…