Activision-Blizzard Shuts Down French Office Despite Another Record Year

With everyone hating so much on Ubisoft -- for good reason -- it's easy to forget that Activision-Blizzard is also one of the scummiest companies in the world right now. And in a bid to reclaim that particular crown, they just announced that they're shutting down their French office.

Their French office was mostly responsible for marketing, localization, press, and customer support for Activision-Blizzard's European audience, but it still employed about 400 people. Now, closing an office doesn't have to mean those employees lose their jobs: in fact, the original plan was to move a sizable portion of those employees to a new office in London. However, COVID-19 and the UK leaving the EU have shuttered those plans, which means the fate of these employees are currently up in the air -- and given Activision-Blizzard's history, not promising.

So far, this is the only thing we've heard from the company, thanks to Bloomberg:

“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,”

Not exactly clear, but when has Activision-Blizzard ever been transparent with either their staff or the press?

Just like the time they laid off 800 employees, this downsizing is also happening in a time of record growth and profit for the company, something they've been happy to brag about instead of revealing more information about the fates of these 400 employees. This is also the year that shareholders tried to get Bobby Kotick, one of the most overpaid CEOs in the world, to stop taking "multiple bites of the apple", only to have them get shut down.

So yeah. Not a great look for Activision-Blizzard, but they've got your money so who cares?