It is reported that Activision Blizzard e-sports department is laying off staff, and the "Watch Vanguard" league may be disbanded.
CTOnews.com, July 19 (Xinhua)-- Activision Blizzard is laying off employees in its e-sports division at a critical moment when the deal between Activision Blizzard and Microsoft is about to be concluded, while preparing for big changes in the "Watch Vanguard" league, according to The Verge.
Earlier today, Blizzard released its second-quarter results, which contained the potential fate of the "watch vanguard" league. In the second quarter, Blizzard revised some terms of its cooperation arrangements with team entities participating in the Watchman Vanguard league, the report said. According to the revised terms, at the end of the season, each team will vote on the updated operating agreement, and if the team does not agree to the new agreement, Blizzard will pay each participating team entity a termination fee of $6 million (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 43.08 million yuan), with a total cost of about $114 million (currently about 819 million yuan).
This means that at the end of the season, the fate of the league will be in the hands of the owners of each detachment. Although it is not known whether the "Watch Vanguard" league will be disbanded, according to the unstable financial and team development in the past few years, the analysis believes that the league will face great challenges.
Last year, e-sports reporter Jacob Wolf said that Activision Blizzard's "Watch Vanguard" and "call of Duty" league had been owed about $400m (currently about 2.872 billion yuan) in franchise fees due to extensive financial pressure caused by the epidemic. The Weekly Vanguard League has waived some franchise fees and waived the fee of up to $35 million (currently about 251 million yuan) that each team has to pay to compete, Sports Business Magazine reported last month.
In addition, the Chengdu Hunters, one of the Chinese teams in the Watchman Vanguard League, has also announced its withdrawal after a number of blizzard games, including Watchman Vanguard and hearthstone Legend, were dropped from China in January. this also further led to the cooling of the Watchkeeping Vanguard league. Therefore, the analysis believes that the "Watch Vanguard" league is likely to cease to exist.
In spite of this, the analysis also pointed out that this does not mean the disappearance of e-sports, the "lookout vanguard". Seam Miller, commissioner of the Watchman Vanguard League, has said that regardless of the outcome of the concession vote, Blizzard will ensure its commitment to the Watchman Vanguard e-sports campaign: "I want to make it particularly clear that Watchman Vanguard is still committed to building a competitive ecosystem in 2024 and beyond, and we are working to create an atmosphere that gives priority to players and spectators to revive enthusiasm for this project."
