New From Blizzard Entertainment: World of Workforce Reductions

Blizzard Entertainment, creator of the Diablo, StarCraft and Warcraft video game franchises, sacked hundreds of employees today, trimming the company down to better fit “current organizational needs.”

Some 600 workers lost their jobs, most of them in divisions not related to game development. Blizzard says the World of Warcraft development team will not be impacted, despite continued subscriber losses. WoW lost well over a million and a half players last year.

Ugly news, but Blizzard president and co-founder Mike Morhaime said in a post to the WoW forums that the company needs to better manage its resources to continue to drive its gaming business. Which is exactly what it plans to do.

“We remain committed to shipping multiple games this year,” Morhaime said. “Our development teams in particular remain largely unaffected by today’s announcement. We’re continuing to develop, iterate, and polish Blizzard DOTA, Diablo III, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, as well as other, unannounced projects.”