The industry’s coming together to help the hundreds laid off by Activision-Blizzard

People from across the game industry are reaching out to those losing their job in today’s massive round of layoffs at Activision-Blizzard, offering support and collecting job listings to help those affected find new work. Using hashtags like ‘gamedevjobs’ and ‘gamejobs’ on Twitter, studios from DICE and 343 to ZeniMax and Paradox have shared opportunities at their companies.

While the Activision-Blizzard layoffs are focused largely on non-development roles, the cuts are substantial. In a conference call following today’s earning report, the company says it’s letting go of roughly 8% of its headcount – or around 800 people. Kotaku’s Jason Schreier notes that “word is that some of those laid off at Blizzard had been at the company for 10, even 15 years.”

One of those let go was WoW community manager Ythisens, who tweets “As of today I’m no longer an employee of Blizzard. Wasn’t my choice. I wanted to retire here. I was just laid off from my dream job. Probably not best for me to tweet right now but it was an honor being your CM, Warcraft community. I love all of you.”

Since then, people like God of War director Cory Barlog and EA writer Mitch Dyer have been reposting and boosting the reach of job postings so that employers can reach the hundreds affected by the layoffs.

You can see many of those links by browsing the appropriate hashtags on Twitter, and Dyer has a big Google Doc full of links to various employer listings.

Our best wishes are with the people affected by these layoffs. Hopefully resources like these can help these folks get back on their feet soon.