Activision Says Just How Many Staff Work On Call Of Duty

Major publisher Activision Blizzard has suffered huge financial losses over the past year following numerous allegations of sexual misconduct and the death of a female worker, reportedly the result of sexual harassment and bullying at the company.

The reports of a toxic work environment has had a knock on effect on purchases of its major titles, including the Call Of Duty franchise, which has seen a reduction in players and earnings every quarter since the lawsuits began. At the last financial earnings call, Activision reported a loss of 60 million monthly players for the world’s most popular franchise. There are also rumours that CEO Bobby Kotick has tried to rush the $69 billion acquisition of the publisher by Microsoft in order to prevent further complications arising from the litigation. 

Activision Blizzard is hoping to mitigate the lawsuit by releasing the long awaited Overwatch 2. You can see gameplay for it in the video below.

A report by TweakTown has found that the company has moved almost a third of all its staff onto developing its most popular franchise. The publisher recently announced that two new entries would be added to the franchise this year. The first would be a sequel to its most popular entry, the 2019 remake of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare, and the second a sequel to the free-to-play Call Of Duty: Warzone. 

Of the 9,800 people currently employed at Activision Blizzard over 3,000 (31%) are currently working on the first person shooter franchise. This includes the two upcoming games as well as the latest releases, the original Warzone title and Call Of Duty: Vanguard. 

This figure of almost 10,000 employees includes the company’s other large studios such as Blizzard which owns World Of Warcraft, and King, its most profitable division, which works on mobile games such as Candy Crush.