Video game maker Activision Blizzard is laying off 400 workers in Irvine, LA – San Bernardino Sun

Video game maker Activision Blizzard Inc. last year acquired software giant Microsoft Corp. It will soon lay off about 400 people in its mobile gaming divisions in Santa Monica and Irvine, eliminating layoffs among staff following the $75.4 billion merger with .

Those layoffs are on top of 1,003 layoffs made by Activision last year, from operations in Novato and Foster City in the Bay Area to its Southern California offices, according to state filings with the Employment Development Department.

Last year Microsoft Corp. Activision Blizzard, which was acquired following a merger with , notified the EDD that 140 jobs would be eliminated at Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine, effective Oct. 11.

The eliminated jobs cover a wide swath of positions at the company’s Irvine operations, according to a letter submitted by Activision Blizzard’s director of human resources, Leslie Campbell. These include accountants, software engineers, the director of human resources for World of Warcraft video games, artists, director of technology game designers, game producers, sound designers, and a game director and vice president.

Campbell was not immediately available for comment on the 393 recently announced layoffs.

“Everything you look at in the WARN system will be part of previously announced discounts,” Activision Blizzard spokesperson Delay Simmons said in an email statement.

Simmons said the company could not share additional details “about which teams are affected and their locations.” He noted media reports regarding two rounds of major layoffs previously announced.

In January, 1,900 layoffs were made across the Microsoft Gaming division’s Activision Blizzard, Xbox and ZeniMax Media units. Earlier this month, Microsoft Gaming announced 650 layoffs.

“The 400 roles you see in the system are part of the latest news and are not new; Roles affected include mostly corporate and supporting roles, with some impacts to gaming teams.”

The letter Activision sent to EDD regarding the latest layoffs was dated September 12.

Blizzard’s biggest video game hit since its founding in 1991 has been World of Warcraft. The merged company also produces other popular games such as Call of Duty and Candy Crush.

Blizzard was a unit of Vivendi from 1995 until 2007, when the game maker merged with Santa Monica-based Activision.

The latest layoffs include software designers, engineers, human resources and product managers who were working on the mobile versions of Call of Duty: Warzone and WoW, as well as a third game based in Irvine, which is experiencing declining sales, according to executive Michael Pachter. He is a director and gaming research analyst at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles.

“You had overlapping teams working on two mobile versions,” Pachter said. “You don’t need two people to design a gun.”

Warcraft Rumble, a mobile action strategy game designed in Irvine and set in the Warcraft universe, has been hit by layoffs and is having trouble gaining momentum in sales, Pachter said.

EDD records also show there will be 143 layoffs at Activision’s Jefferson Boulevard studio in Playa Vista’s Reserve Business Park and 110 layoffs at the company’s Olympic Boulevard studio in Santa Monica.

Layoffs at studios will come in waves; The first for the Irvine and Santa Monica studios will begin Oct. 11, and layoffs in Playa Vista will begin in mid-November.

Layoffs at all three locations must be completed before the end of the year.

The filings with the California Employment Development Department were filed as part of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, commonly referred to as WARN notices. An application is required when an employer lays off more than 50 employees.

Last year’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft was the largest acquisition in video game history and drew scrutiny from regulators around the world, raising concerns that the merger would reduce competition in the gaming industry.