Activision Blizzard News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Microsoft has announced an Xbox Games Showcase and a “Redacted” Direct for June.

Microsoft has revealed the time and date for its upcoming in June. As with last year, Xbox will follow the show with a Direct presentation focusing on a specific title. However, the company is being secretive about which game it will be.

Xbox Series X/S hardware sales have been consistently on the decline for a while now, and it looks like that continued to be the case in the quarter ending March 31 as well, as per Microsoft’s recently released quarterly fiscal report.

Microsoft has suggested that Xbox is starting to reap the rewards of its increased multiplatform focus.

Blizzard Entertainment has announced that has been canceled, although the company does have plans for future live events this year. While there won’t be an in-person or digital BlizzCon event for this year, Blizzard promises the event will return in future years, although it may have a different format.

Microsoft's latest quarterly earnings call with shareholders has revealed that its Activision Blizzard acquisition has bolstered the company's gaming division revenue for Q3, offsetting a number of otherwise negative returns. The Microsoft Activision Blizzard acquisition has endured a series of legal challenges across several countries, but it would seem the Xbox parent company's persistence has more than paid off.

This series of Playable Futures articles considers how the design, technology, people, and theory of video games are informing and influencing the wider world. You can find all previous Playable Futures articles here.

officially acquired in October, closing a massive $68.7 billion deal. With the company now firmly integrated into Microsoft’s corporate structure, some might wonder how the software giant is influencing Blizzard. However, at least for now, it seems that Microsoft isn’t that interested in meddling with the developer’s affairs.

After a decade of story, the Destiny franchise heads into uncharted waters after the launch of this year's The Final Shape expansion. But both Bungie and a prominent leaker have teased what will come next — and when we will hear about it.

World of Warcraft Classic is steadily embarking on its time-travelling trip through WoW of old. The next stop is apocalyptic 2010 expansion Cataclysm, which we now know is due to, uh, re-shatter Azeroth at the end of next month.

Bungie have released a big overview video of Destiny 2's Final Shape expansion, introducing a new, openly overpowered Prismatic subclass, fresh Exotic items and the new Dread enemy faction.

Over 27,000 Call of Duty accounts were banned over the weekend for cheating across Warzone and Modern Warfare 3, according to Activision.

Call of Duty: Vanguard sold over 30m copies.

Saber Interactive founder Matthew Karch has launched a defence of his former employer Embracer Group and its CEO, Lars Wingefors.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly instructed his government to explore developing video game consoles in Russia.

Overwatch 2’s next damage hero Venture is tunnelling into the free-to-play shooter a little early - for a while anyway. Before the new drillin’ DPS makes their official arrival next month, they’ll be available to take for a spin from tomorrow through the weekend.

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Overwatch 2's beleaguered PvE content has reportedly been scrapped.

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In what's quite the shake up for Overwatch 2, Blizzard have announced that starting with Season 10, all of its heroes will be unlocked for all players. And this includes all new heroes going forwards, too, so the next hero Venture will unlock immediately for everyone when the latest season drops. Otherwise, there's changes to unlocking premium skins, earning premium coins, and some tidbits on what we can expect from Season 11.

Destiny 2 developer Bungie has announced Onslaught, a new horde mode for the game. The offering is set to arrive for all players on 9th April, as a core component of Destiny 2's upcoming Into the Light update.

Chris Paulson, a former executive at Activision Blizzard, has joined the team at Skybound Games, a division of The Walking Dead company Skybound Entertainment. Paulson will serve as executive vice president and general manager of games publishing.

It seems only fitting that Ghostbusters has become the movie franchise that refuses to die, returning for a smattering of so-so (at best) reboots and sequels on screen and elsewhere being relegated to another rich vein of nostalgia to be mined for cash. Speaking of, Destiny 2 is getting Ghostbusters cosmetics next week!

Fresh off its dalliance with Mass Effect, Destiny 2 is getting a Ghostbusters collaboration — which'll seemingly manifest in the form of premium cosmetics — next Tuesday, 19th March.

600 Activision Blizzard quality assurance (QA) workers have voted to unionise.

The trailer for Overwatch 2's Cowboy Bebop collaboration looks pretty good when judged in terms of style and costume design. It's even better when judged as it should be: by its music.

Marty O'Donnell, the former Bungie composer best known for his Halo and Destiny soundtracks, has announced his intention to run for US Congress as a Republican candidate.

Destiny 2 is adding a new kind of vehicle — the hoverboard-esque Skimmer — in its next update due on Tuesday, 5th March.

Toys for Bob — the Activision Blizzard studio behind the likes of Skylanders, Crash Bandicoot 4, and the Spyro remasters — has announced it's parting ways with Activision to become an independent company once more. It also says it's «exploring a possible partnership» with Microsoft as development on its new game gets underway.

It hasn’t been a good year for video game developers and publishers, and we’re just now at the end of February! There have been over 7000 job layoffs in the first two months, with 5400+ coming in January, and just this past week, another 1600 have been added to that! This is affecting companies in various ways, and they have to adapt to their new situations if they can. An excellent example of this is Toys For Bob, a small company that Activision Blizzard had bought and recently saw some layoffs. Plus, they decided to forgo having a “formal workplace” and become an entirely work-at-home company.

Electronic Arts has announced a restructuring plan that will see it lay off approximately 5% of its global workforce.

Changes to Overwatch 2’s Competitive system in its most recent Season Nine has seen the ranked mode overtake casual Quick Play as the most popular way to play the hero shooter sequel. Its developers are also looking ahead to further changes in Season 10, including adjustments to grouping restrictions and its experimental Hacked event.

Activision Blizzard has a release date for its upcoming mobile version of Call of Duty: Warzone — March 21. The game has been in limited release since last year, but it’s finally ready for its official debut on Android and iOS devices, the company said in a post on its website.

Former Call of Duty: Black Ops design director David Vonderhaar has established BulletFarm, a new AAA game studio, following his departure from Treyarch last summer.

PlayStation is set to lay off around 900 employees worldwide.

Activision Blizzard is reportedly planning redundancies at its Irish office located in Blackpool, Cork.

Microsoft is reportedly set to slash more than a hundred jobs at Activision Blizzard's Cork office.

The CEO and former star player of Call of Duty League team Optic Texas filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard yesterday, accusing the publisher of wielding an unlawful monopoly over professional Call of Duty leagues and engaging in anti-competitive and extortionate behavior to the detriment of players and teams.

Xbox has confirmed that there are currently 34 million players subscribed to Xbox Game Pass.

Xbox has announced that Diablo 4 will be the first Activision Blizzard game to be added to Game Pass.

Diablo IV is coming to Xbox Game Pass on March 28th, marking the first of the Activision Blizzard titles to make the migration to Xbox's subscription service since the acquisition last year.

Have you been enjoying the storylines in World of Warcraft lately? We have some news for you.

Activision Blizzard is making «major changes» to Overwatch 2 as part of a «revitalisation» of the free-to-play shooter that hopes to «make PvP gameplay more rewarding and fun», as well as «provide greater transparency for players in-game».

When Microsoft entered the gaming console wars in the early 2000s, many people questioned whether the American-born company could draw in players to its system: the Xbox. After all, Sony and Nintendo had experience under their belts, and Sony was busting out the PS2, which would eventually become the best-selling video game system ever. Nintendo was still cranking out incredible 1st and 3rd party titles, which wouldn’t end by any stretch. So, could Microsoft stand on its own two feet and make an impact? The answer was “yes,” but not in the overarching way. After all, they’ve had plenty of bumps along the road.

Microsoft completed its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in October, though life under new ownership has got off to a rough start for the latter. Last month, Microsoft announced that it was cutting 1,900 jobs across its entire gaming division, with Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, and Xbox all set to be impacted.

Activision execs offered Infinity Ward staff a 50 percent pay increase and told staff to «take the money and get over it» after the publisher dramatically fired the developer's founders Jason West and Vince Zampella in 2010.

Activision Blizzard's Crash Bandicoot and Spyro studio Toys for Bob lose 86 employees as a result of layoffs.

Crash Bandicoot developer Toys for Bob and Call of Duty studio Sledgehammer Games have reportedly lost around 40 per cent and 30 per cent of their staff, respectively.

Microsoft recently announced widespread layoffs, confirming that it was cutting 1,900 jobs across its entire gaming division– which, following the company’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, also includes Blizzard Entertainment. The layoffs have also gone hand-in-hand with the cancellation of Blizzard’s long-in-development survival game, codenamed Odyssey, which was officially confirmed to be in development in 2022, and a new report published by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has shed more light on what brought about the highly anticipated project’s cancellation.

Microsoft will let go of 1,900 employees at Activision Blizzard and Xbox this week, it said on Thursday, the latest cuts in the technology sector that has extended massive layoffs over the past years into 2024.

Following its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft is reportedly reducing of 1,900 employees from its workforce. While he didn’t confirm being part of the same, Blizzard Entertainment president Mike Ybarra has revealed that he is also departing the company.

2023 was a brutal year for the games industry with its never-ending wave of layoffs, but 2024 is somehow turning out to be significantly worse. Less than a month into the year, the industry has already seen thousands of jobs being cut, and another significant number has now been added to that total, with IGN reporting that Microsoft’s gaming division is cutting 1,900 jobs out of its total workforce of about 22,000.

Microsoft has announced that it’s cutting 1,900 jobs from its gaming division’s workforce of around 22,000, with the massive round of layoffs set to impact employees across Xbox, Activision Blizzad, and ZeniMax. Given the scale of the layoffs, the full extent of their impact likely won’t become perfectly clear immediately, but it looks like game cancellations will also be involved.

Back in 2022, Blizzard announced that they were working on a survival game set in an "all-new universe". Not much more was known about the game except that the studio were actively ramping up recruitment, seemingly after having been working on the project since 2017.

Reikon Games, the studio behind 2017 action game Ruiner, has reportedly laid off around 80% of its staff.

Microsoft layoffs: The company is laying off about 1,900 employees in its gaming division, according to an internal company memo, just over three months since the tech giant completed its post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, appearing to acknowledge the layoffs. “It's an incredibly hard day and my energy and support will be focused on all those amazing individuals impacted – this is in no way a reflection on your amazing work,” Ybarra wrote — later adding that his time leading Blizzard “was an absolute honor.”

Microsoft is the latest big tech and gaming company to announce a sweeping wave of layoffs across the company, with around 8% of Microsoft’s Gaming group to be affected. That might not seem too awful, but with around 22,000 employees across Xbox, Activision Blizzard King and ZeniMax, it will add up to around 1,900 redundancies.

No matter what industry you work in, there is always a chance for layoffs. In many ways, it’s one of the biggest things people fear. After all, they could be happy and think they have a long-term solution to their money problems one day, and then the next day comes, and they’re told it’s their last day at work due to “corporate changes,” or “cost-saving moves” or some words of the like. One might feel that the Video Game Industry, with its various successful studios and titles, would be immune from this. But as the website Video Game Layoffs has noted, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

This morning, there were some big headlines when Microsoft reportedly cut down 1,900 jobs within their gaming division. That was surprising but also disheartening news as we continue this layoff trend. 2023 saw several jobs being cut and studios closing down. It’s not looking much better as we head into 2024, as again, a whopping 1,900 jobs will soon be vacant. This comes right after Microsoft acquired the Activision Blizzard deal. For $69 billion dollars, Microsoft added a massive catalog of games into their collection along with new resources for future game productions. But already, these layoffs are seeing the effects on game cancellations. One of which is reportedly Odyssey.

Given that Microsoft have spent considerable time and effort becoming the biggest cock-of-the-walk possible, it does, I suppose, make sense that their layoffs are correspondingly massive. In an internal memo obtained by The Verge, Phil Spencer is very sad to reveal to the staff that, in order to grow, the combined powers of Microsoft's 22k-strong Gaming Division have to be denuded to the tune of 1,900 human beings. That amounts to about 8% of the division.

Following the end of Overwatch League, Blizzard has unveiled new plans for its competitive Overwatch esports circuit.

Activision Blizzard has updated Call of Duty's code of conduct to combat player harassment and provided more insight into its voice moderation system.

The original Destiny arrived 10 years ago this year — and finally, Bungie will let players modify their character's face.

If you want to change your Destiny 2 wizard's appearance, the only current method is to stash your wizard's gear in your vault, create a whole new wizard with a new look (after deleting the old to free a character slot, if needed), grab your old wizard's gear, then optionally replay any story bits to catch up. The MMOFPS has no barber, no surgeon, it's new character or nothing. After six years (longer, if you count the first game), Bungie are finally planning to change this. An upcoming update will introduce the ability to change your character's look—within limits. For drastic changes, you would still need a new wizard.

Blizzard has unveiled the name and details about Diablo 4‘s next season. Titled Season of the Construct, the third season of Diablo 4 will pit players against a new threat deep beneath the sands of Kehjistan. Check out the latest trailer for Diablo 4: Season of the Construct below.

Last week, Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller caused controversy among players by revealing major gameply changes that'll see tank and damage heroes receive a «modified, tuned-down version of the Support self-healing passive» in Season 9 — and Keller has now admitted it was a «mistake» to make the announcement «out of context».

Overwatch 2 is going to receive some changes designed to make teamwork easier, and to make bad teamwork less frustrating. The latter is more interesting, because one of Blizzard's proposed solution is giving Tank and Damage heroes "a modified, tuned-down version of the Support self-healing passive", which would make them less reliant on Support players to heal everyone.

An unnamed former Activision executive is taking the Call of Duty publisher to court in California, accusing the company of age discrimination and violating the state's whistleblower protection law. Said executive is a 57-year-old who worked at the company from 2014; apparently, he and six other men aged 47 or older were cut from a team of 200, as part of broader Activision Blizzard restructuring efforts last August.

A former Activision Blizzard executive has filed a discrimination claim with the company, alleging it of discriminating against «old white guys».

A former Activision executive has sued the publisher in California state court accusing the company of age discrimination and violating the state's whistleblower protection law, as reported by Law360.

Bobby Kotick was a controversial figure during his long tenure as the CEO of Activision Blizzard, and controversy, it seems, is continuing to follow him in the aftermath of his recent departure. More specifically, developers who formerly worked at Activision Blizzard studios have been speaking out on Kotick’s leadership adversely impacted the games they worked on.

Bobby Kotick’s last day at renowned gaming megacorporation Activision Blizzard was Friday, December 29th, 2023. He leaves with a $15 million… departure salary? In casual terms, it’s a “golden parachute.” He’s 60 years old. He’ll be fine. 

«Bobby [Kotick]'s decisions made our games worse,» a former Call of Duty programmer said on social media the same day Kotick completed his final day as CEO at Activision Blizzard.

Long-time Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick is leaving the company following its acquisition by Microsoft in October. Kotick will depart on 29th December, with Microsoft largely keeping the company’s core leadership intact outside of this.

Long-time Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick is leaving the company following its acquisition by Microsoft in October. Kotick will depart on 29th December, with Microsoft largely keeping the company’s leadership intact outside of this.

Microsoft announced that Activision Blizzard CEO is finally stepping down, effective December 29. He is not the only high-profile departure, though Microsoft intends to leave most of the company’s management in place.  

Microsoft has announced that Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, will be stepping down on December 29th. Instead of a replacement, Blizzard president Mike Ybarra and Activision publishing president Rob Kostich will report to Microsoft Gaming game content and studios president Matt Booty, per The Verge. Activision Blizzard vice chair Thomas Tippl is also leaving in March 2024 but reports to Booty till then.

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Controversial Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick will depart the company on 29th December, it's been announced.

‘Tis the season to be an Overwatch 2 player, as the latest Winter Wonderland event will soon be underway! This latest event brings not only fun new arcade games but also loot boxes filled to the brim with items sure to bring the holiday spirit to the players.