Activision Fire 30, To Make Fewer Licensed Games

Activision has promised to stop making terrible games. Well, okay, that's not quite true. But they've said to Kotaku that this year they're planning to release "fewer games based on license properties", which is publisher speak for, "Good lord, that James Bond game was terrible." This coincides with the announcement that the company is laying off 30 employees, thought to affect CODBLOPS developers, Treyarch.

The lay-offs are apparently split between Treyarch and their licensed games developers. Sorry, not "lay-offs", I mean, "aligning its costs with its revenues" and "realigning our structure to better reflect the market opportunities and our slate". You've not been fired, you've been realigned! And to further reassure those who lost their jobs, "Approximately, 30 full-time employees have been impacted globally, which represents approximately one half of one percent of Activision Blizzard's employee population." So, you know, you barely count!

Of course, licensed games don't necessarily mean bad games. I mean, it's a good rule of thumb, but actually Activision's Spider-Man and Transformers games last year were pretty decent. 007 Legends was not, and nor was the utterly hateful Family Guy. 2013 still has a Walking Dead game, a console-only (for reasons I cannot fathom) Deadpool title, and they're jumping on board the resurgence of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with a game of that too. But from the announcement it seems likely that we'll not see many others added to the list, and almost certainly not another Bond game - the last was such a disaster, and there's of course a likely four year gap before the next movie.

And calm yourself - CODBLOPS DLC will not be affected by the human-shedding.