 Look, nobody likes losing their job, especially through no fault of their own. It's one thing to be fired for things you did or didn't do, or to be let go because you're underperforming expectations. It's entirely another thing to be let go because the company as a whole is doing slightly worse than they had expected. A common headline over the past week has been in reference to Activision Blizzard, who, in wake of their latest financial report for 2018, have decided to undergo a company-wide restructuring that includes cutting between 8 and 9% of their total workforce, which equates to around 700-plus jobs being lost. A common trend, however, hasn't been that Activision is underperforming and this is a natural reaction to that, but instead been one about this move being about lining investors' pockets. A strange sentiment for a publicly traded company whose entire existence in this world is too well lined investors' pockets. What I mean to say is that's exactly why this company exists. Moves to further those profit margins shouldn't be that surprising. The biggest sticking point is that Activision in 2018 reported a record high in gross revenue. Cutting 700-plus jobs in the wake of having more money coming into your company than ever before seems really counterintuitive. It feels scummy. It feels greedy. It feels even more like this when you consider that Activision themselves already has a reputation for squeezing money from consumers. And the Blizzard side of the company too has seemed a bit out of touch with a mobile Diablo game announced as a major title and an event fans of Blizzard paid money to attend. A complete disconnect with the given audience. Activision reported an income of $7.5 billion, an all-time high for the company. Feels awfully strange to cut jobs now, doesn't it? That's a growing business that should be looking to hire more people, not let people go. A caveat is often missed, however. Just because they had all that money coming in doesn't mean they actually saw fiscal growth overall. Gross revenue is a wonderful piece of information often used at investor meetings to puff out your chest and proclaim massive amounts of success. However, when you dig deeper into the numbers, you notice that Activision Blizzard only had a net profit of $1.8 billion. Yes, that's a hefty sum, but it's significantly less than the reported total revenue. However, that's not the problem. The real culprit, that $1.8 billion in profit is down significantly from 2017, where their total revenue was much lower but their profit margins were higher at $2.21 billion in net profits. AKA, Activision successfully grew their sales but made less money on the back end. This folks is where the job cuts happened. That represents a near 20% decline in operating profits. Thus, it shouldn't be shocking Activision Blizzard cut 8% or so of its workforce. The shocking thing should be that they didn't cut even more of it. I know many have pointed to the CEO of Activision's million dollar salary with $26 million per year in stock bonuses and other executives getting similar benefits and compared this situation to that of Nintendo during the down years of Wii U. Back then, Nintendo was sinking in revenue and actually lost money for the first time ever as a video game maker and instead of cutting jobs, Satura Owada, then president of Nintendo before his untimely death, cut his own salary massively, taking responsibility unto himself and not wanting to cut jobs, which is naturally what occurs when there is less money to go around. However, Nintendo is heavily grained in Japanese culture, where honor is highly praised and while I do think the rest of the industry could use a dose of that honor, reality is that's not how companies operate, typically. You're making 20% less in profits this year compared to last year, typically you're going to cut your workforce. It's a quick and easy way to stop the bleeding. This lets you know that many of the games and projects Activision Blizzard worked on were simply not making the sort of revenue that Activision Blizzard anticipated. This is why the job cuts are all across the board. Blizzard feels like the biggest hit since this is the first time Activision Blizzard has actually significantly touched that side of their company, but profit margins on Blizzard games did take a big dip in 2018 if you actually dig through the revenue report. Job cuts there simply make sense. King as well, the makers of Mobile Hit Candy Crush saw job losses too as many of their newer ventures haven't really panned out. Blizzard restructured the company to beef up the teams of their more profitable IPs, increasing staff of those properties by a total of 20%. But with so many other IPs and projects basically canned, ultimately it meant a lot of people losing jobs. It's even confusing a bit, as they claimed to be adding staff to games like World of Warcraft, meanwhile some World of Warcraft staff were actually let go. It's hard to understand how that happens given what Activision is publicly stating. What this all culminates to, however, should be a bit more understandable. 20% profit loss, 8% job cuts. In my head, I can't find a way of looking at those numbers and thinking this shouldn't have been expected. We shouldn't be shocked. We can be angry of course. 1.8 billion in gross profits is still a ton of money and an argument can be made that you could have kept all 800 of those jobs and just found a better way to cut costs in other ways and still have more games come out to make up the difference. I think in Gamer's Minds, this is where we all uniformly tend to put our feet in the ground. Activision, Blizzard factually has a ton of really successful IP under their belt that many of us have endeared ourselves to for decades. We never want to see massive job loss in this industry at companies making games we love. We feel bad for those that lost their jobs and at the same time panic over what the future of our favorite games is going to become. Will they be more rushed and bug riddled? Will they become more reliant on loot boxes and microtransactions? Will everything be destroyed for the sake of profits? I think these are all fair questions and really extremely valid concerns. I stand with each and every one of you on that front and I share in those worries. But today, I can't get angry over the job losses even as I feel bad for those affected by them. Job loss in layoffs is a reality in the Western market, specifically in the United States. I too have been swept up in massive layoffs at big companies in my past due to overall net profit loss. This is a cause and effect sort of situation. There is less profits, so job cuts occur to get the profit margins back to the levels you are accustomed to. I feel for those affected and can sympathize with the situation, but I can't really be that angry. To be angry is to ignore how this industry, nay, how the business world, works. Some have used this as an opportunity to talk about unionizing and surely this is something that may lead to better pay, better benefits and make it harder to be laid off in cases like this. That is completely true. It may also lead to there being less jobs available, to compensate for having to offer better benefits and better pay, along with having a harder time of letting people go. The market always adjusts regardless of what the situation might be. So is that a positive thing then too? Is the trade off worth it? I can't answer that question. What I can say is this should have been expected. This shouldn't have been shocking. And yes, it sucks. This is the way the world works. But I have complete faith almost all of those 800 people are going to land on their feet. Many have already gotten new jobs already. If their Twitter accounts are to be believed. The real question I have is, are we as gamers maybe a bit too invested in how this industry works? Or are we not invested enough? Should we be angry on behalf of the employees that don't seem to be as angry as we are? Or should we not let something like this bother us because there are bigger fish to fry? I honestly don't know. And I'm genuinely curious to hear your thoughts on it. I am Nathaniel Ruffal-Jance from Nintendo Prime. Be sure to enter our Nintendo Switch giveaway through the Gleam.io link down in the description. We'll announce the winner when we hit 50,000 subscribers. I want to thank all of you guys for tuning in to this op-ed editorial. And please let me know your thoughts on this entire situation down in the comments below. I will catch all of you guys in the next one.