The number of developers at Activision has increased by 25% in just one year | Xbox One

Yesterday, Activision Blizzard was in the center of the news in relation to the transaction concluded with Microsoft and the investigations of the commissions verifying the feasibility of the acquisition from a competitive point of view. The Activision Blizzard King group is clearly one of the most influential in the video game industry and despite the complicated cases observed over the past year, ABK continues to hire.

Workforce up by 25% at ABK

It was at the beginning of August that the Activision Blizzard group publicly unveiled its financial results for the second quarter of 2022 on his website. As usual, there is no shortage of information or figures and the most curious among you can discover all this freely.

What caught our attention was the opening of the press release marked by a statement from the very controversial Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard:

“The Proletariat and Peltarion acquisitions completed in the last quarter strengthen our development resources, including our artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. Even in a tough economic environment, with so many companies announcing hiring freezes and layoffs, our development headcount was up 25% year-over-year at the end of the second quarter. Our talented teams plan to release exciting new content for Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Overwatch later this year. Of course, we look forward to closing our pending transaction with Microsoft as soon as possible, which will be for cash and at $95 per share. »

It is a 25% increase in the number of developers that is mentioned by Kotick, a relatively large number that must be correlated with the takeovers of the Proletariat studio specializing in multiplayer and Peltarion, specializing in AI. With the recent release of Diablo Immortals, but also the arrival of Overwatch 2 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare II for the month of October, ABK will need these additional staff.

Sony said yesterday that ABK was a group with unique and important capabilities in the video game industry and only time will tell if new IPs are potentially in preparation within the group. Despite the staff reinforcements and the positive progress of the transaction, Activision Blizzard experienced a drop in its turnover for the third consecutive quarter, i.e. a total drop of 28% over one year.