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Activision Blizzard closes French office

Activision Blizzard closes French office

US publishing giant Activision Blizzard is closing its French office.

That's according to Bloomberg, which reports that the firm has told employees at its Versailles outpost that this is being closed. This location employed in the region of 400 people as of the start of 2019, when Activision Blizzard announced huge layoffs in its workforce.

The firm initially had plans to move half of the staff from the Versailles office to London, but this has been halted by Brexit and the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Employees have been told they'll be receiving more information in the next week or so.

“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,” an Activision Blizzard spokesperson said.

In February 2019, Activision Blizzard boss Robert Kotick announced that it was slashing eight per cent of its global workforce, roughly 800 people around the world. At the time, 134 roles were eliminated at the Versailles office, but employees were able to fight the cuts thanks to the protections afforded by French labour laws. By June, local unions had argued that the jobs being axed were vital as Activision Blizzard tried to move these roles to Ireland.

PCGamesInsider.biz reported on where Activision Blizzard had made its job cuts, including which departments were affected by the 209 roles slashed in its US business.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.