Blizzard closing office in Versailles, France

Community General Discussion
23

Bobby clearly needs another plane!

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It could be the reason why the Forum Guardians have been absent and quiet lately, their work and minds are elsewhere than here :confused:

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Best of luck to all involved!

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They were told this morning

Video game publisher Activision Blizzard Inc. informed employees in its Versailles, France, office Tuesday morning that the location will be closed, according to three people familiar with the plans.

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What did they do in france office?

400 sounds like ALOT for customer support, response times are several days?

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28

I wonder if they have had a “If we/you do this, we might reverse the results of what will happen” - We had that conversation before our workplaces closed in the finacial crisis, and that didn’t help either :neutral_face:

So, I can imagine if they had that option, then they have been working on other stuff in hopes of keeping the office open :man_shrugging:

Just a thought :thinking: We know we will never know anything anyway

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My understanding is that it was set up as strategic location when they were owned by Vivendi, so to be close to them. It was sort of an all-purpose “HQ” location to deal with Europe-specific Blizzard affairs.

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Company makes big profits but keeps laying off staff that deal with their customer base, particularly in the EU this time.

I can not say anything civil about Blizzard at this point that would not result in me getting a forum vacation.

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I assume they will relocate to the netherlands, denmark or germany. If they want another office to be operating within Europe that is.

Edit: Or ireland for tax reasons.

EU has been second rate to them since basically ever.

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From the article:-

The publisher, one of the world’s largest, is based in California but has offices all across the globe. The Versailles office, which employed around 400 people as of early 2019, handled marketing, customer support, localizing games to different languages and other functions for the titles Activision Blizzard publishes in Europe.

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33

I heard the news not long after bloomberg uploaded their article. My support goes out to everyone involved in this.

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34

ye :stuck_out_tongue: found the article after i posted, haha
ty

but 400??
blue post didnt reflect that it was that many
will some of our blues quit??? :face_with_raised_eyebrow: now there will be 0 bluepost?

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35

Curious, IT is one of the least impacted areas due to COVID
 if anything it’s booming due to all the people staying at home, and there’s closures
 meanwhile people overlooking it are paid millions


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36

The article said that they were considering moving the EU office to London, but that was shelved because of Brexit and Covid.

They do have smaller offices elsewhere, the support is in Cork, they also have offices in the Hague, no idea where else to be honest.

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Thats why i said netherlands, denmark and germany (or ireland edit wise. Ireland is its own thingy anyway) while knowingly leaving out london.

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So Blizzard gear shop in europe will be close too?

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39

No, they outsourced that, it’s run by a company called Fanatics.

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40

Virgin Money just cut 400 jobs today too.
But at least those CEO’s are making bannnnkk!! :dollar: :dollar:

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41

Great to lay off people like this, good vibes.

This is so NOT done, especially during COVID.

All the best to these employees


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It’s most unfortunate. :worried:

It was kind of in the cards, and speculated a bit, since Blizzard’s jobs listings page didn’t contain any positions for Versailles for a long time. That sort of hinted at something ominous lurking. :confused:

It’s sad for all the people who’s livelihoods are being affected by this. The timing also seems the worst. With the current world affairs, job insecurity does not incur much comfort of mind, I think.

For the players it’s going to be a punch in the gut. Blizzard were bold in the early 2000’s for creating a European headquarter. Not many game developers do this, and Blizzard should be commended for their commitment to the European players. Because we’ve had amazing service ever since. Blizzard have been present at various real-life events over the years, be it Dreamhack or Gamescom or what have you. Their presence here on the forums – and the other European forums – has been second to none by comparison of other game developers. Support is the same; Blizzard provides some of the best in the industry.
Some of all that will be lost to us now. And it will be felt. And it sucks.

It does all seem to fall in line with a continuing story over the past few years, a story of Blizzard starting to struggle. The golden days are in the past, the presence is giving way to a future that seems uncertain, and the company seems to be in the process of preparing for what may be harder times.

I liked Blizzard more when everything was going great. This sucks.

And screw Kotick. Business-wise I get it, I do. But it’s hard to have compassion for cynical business decisions driven by $. I get that it’s his job, but still, screw him. :neutral_face:

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