Blizzard layoffs are reportedly imminent, days

UPDATE 4PM BST: Game Developer has reportedly seen an email Blizzard sent to employees that indicates it - or at least the World of Warcraft department - isn't affected by "today's announcements". An Xbox representative apparently verified the email's legitimacy.

UPDATE 3.30PM BST: Blizzard does not appear to be included in the latest wave of Xbox layoffs, which have seen 268 job losses and studios either closed, drastically downsized, or merged with other studios.

As part of the cuts, British studio Ninja Theory has closed, Halo Studios has been downsized and Halo development handed to Activision, Obsidian has become a part of Bethesda, and Playground and Turn 10 have come together as one studio. Rare is also now a part of Activision.

ORIGINAL STORY 1PM BST: A week after an announcement-laden BlizzCon 2026, and days after what appears to be an enormously popular beta for World of Warcraft: Forever, cuts at Blizzard by Xbox are said to be "imminent".

Word comes from Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, who previously wrote a detailed book about Blizzard's history based on numerous contacts there. Speaking in a recent episode of the 8-4 podcast (via Resetera), Schreier said: "To your point: yes the Blizzard layoffs are coming and imminent."

Schreier was answering a question from former Polygon journalist Mike McWhertor about whether Blizzard announced so many new games at BlizzCon 2026 because Xbox cuts were looming. Blizzard unveiled Diablo 5, a new StarCraft open-world shooter, a new World of Warcraft game, a new Warcraft 3 campaign, and other, smaller things. Some of these games had release dates as far away as 2030, in Diablo 5's case.

Schreier, however, dismissed the notion that this was a cuts-related play, saying he believed Blizzard planned its BlizzCon showing a year in advance. "Pretty sure they were planning on announcing StarCraft there before Asha Sharma even took over," he said.

As for the distant release dates, he said Blizzard always internally planned things far in advance, but just didn't communicate those targets with the public. "This is them saying we are going to actually ship when we say we're going to ship rather than slipping," he said.

"Because one of the major things that has happened to Blizzard over the last few years, and one of the reasons they had so many problems with Activision, is that they promised that Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 were both going to come out in certain timeframes and then both of those games kept slipping, which led to Bobby Kotick cracking the whip, cutting costs there, causing them all sorts of problems. So I think this is them trying to enact some discipline there."

Schreier also believes that newish Blizzard president Johanna Faries has "a lot of autonomy on this stuff", and insisted "this is not a Microsoft thing", when referring to the BlizzCon announcements. Therefore, he added: "I don't think this was because of [impending cuts]. The layoffs started in July, people found out about them in June; all this BlizzCon stuff was prepared way before that."

Schreier's mention of "imminent" Blizzard cuts is amplified by reports from this morning that a second wave of Xbox cuts is expected this week. Microsoft, remember, announced its intention to cut 3200 jobs from the Xbox division earlier this year, immediately cutting 1600 roles and earmarking 1600 to be cut thereafter. Blizzard seemed to emerge unscathed from the first round of layoffs, and was even mentioned as Xbox's "top performing" studio in the aftermath, but it may not have escaped the cuts entirely.

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