During Activision-Blizzard’s recent earnings report we learn that the company broke records, but it wasn’t enough and put the company in a “transition year” to restructure with an 8% head decrease, which is estimated around 700 employees. This decrease, however, seems to have hit King’s Seattle studio.
According to a recent piece that publication site gamesindustry.biz posted up, we learn that King’s Seattle studio that was formerly known as Z2Live has been shut down.
If you don’t know, Activision-Blizzard acquired King back in 2015. The latter name best known for Candy Crush brought in around $200 million in revenue through mobile titles, which one bringing in the most revenue happens to be that of Paradise Bay — a game where players create their own tropical island, farm resources, and discover new places.
Confirming the King Seattle studio is now a goner, a report from Swedish publication site Breakit.se features Communications Manager Charley Tesch explaining the following information:
“We considered that the right thing for King is to run a studio network in Europe, to give us much greater focus in our game development. The teams in the US have fantastic creative and talented people working with them, but we believe that this decision is the right one to fulfill our long-term strategy.
We make these difficult decisions so that we can grow in a sustainable way. We believe that these changes will enable us to do just that and are convinced of our approach. We make this decision to give us a much stronger focus on developing good gaming concepts throughout our European studio network.”
The above translation comes from gamesindustry.biz, which relays Tesch saying how “the right thing for King” is to run a studio network in Europe to fulfill a “long-term strategy.” In addition, this “difficult decision” will supposedly help them grow in a “sustainable way.” In other words, this decision is said to make the team “stronger” and focus on “developing good gaming concepts” throughout King’s European studio network.
With that said, you now know that King’s Seattle studio was affected by the 8% lay off. Lastly, we’ll see how things pan out for the mobile-based company moving forward.
