Blizzard Entertainment gold logo on black background

Blizzard Entertainment

2019eventclassic

Published August 16, 2026

Blizzard Entertainment is the Irvine, California video game publisher behind Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo whose name became a running gamer-culture punchline after parent Activision Blizzard announced 775 layoffs on the same day it reported record 2018 revenue in February 2019.

gaming warcraft memes backfire memes 2019 memes corporate villain memes

Overview

Blizzard Entertainment is a video game developer and publisher headquartered in Irvine, California, known for the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises3. Online, the studio's name is tied to a specific gamer-culture flashpoint: the February 2019 layoff announcement from parent Activision Blizzard1.

The cuts were reported alongside record 2018 revenue of $7.5 billion, up from $7.02 billion the year before, which turned "record profits, mass layoffs" into the shorthand framing across gaming Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube reaction channels1. CEO Bobby Kotick's face was pasted onto image macros and became the visual center of the backlash4.

Origin & Background

Platform
Gaming press (Variety / CNET) with viral spread on Twitter and Reddit
Key People
Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, Frank Pearce
Date
2019

The company was set up in February 1991 as Silicon & Synapse by Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce, and it first made ports of other studios' games for new systems3. It was renamed Blizzard Entertainment in 1994 after software distributor Davidson & Associates bought it for $6.75 million3.

The meme-forward moment came on February 12th, 2019, when Variety reported that Activision Blizzard was cutting about 775 jobs, roughly 8% of a 9,600-person staff, while Kotick promised to raise development spending on Call of Duty, Overwatch, Warcraft, and Diablo by 20 percent1. CNET published the same day, framing the cuts against the "best financial results in the company's history"2.

How It Spread

On the day of the announcement, Kotaku editor Jason Schreier tweeted that "Blizzard employees are crying and hugging in the parking lot," a line that ricocheted across gaming Twitter and set the emotional register for the story5.

The next day, Redditor StaurtGT posted "Activision-Blizzard's Management = SCUM" to /r/gaming with a captioned image of Bobby Kotick pointing at the record-earnings contradiction; the thread pulled in more than 96,600 points and around 4,700 comments in 24 hours4. That post pushed the layoff story from gaming press into general Reddit meme circulation and pinned Kotick as the face of the backlash.

YouTube commentators kept the story running through the week, with TheQuartering and Boogie2988 both publishing reaction videos on the layoffs3. Coverage kept looping back to the split between Activision's $2.38 billion quarterly revenue and the severance package that folded job placement, health coverage and profit-sharing bonuses together for the cut staff2.

▶

Watch Video

X

How to Use This Meme

The Blizzard Entertainment layoff meme is typically invoked whenever a large game publisher announces mass job cuts after reporting strong earnings. Common conventions include pairing a Bobby Kotick photo with a caption that quotes the record-revenue figure, or replying to any corporate earnings-plus-layoffs headline with "crying and hugging in the parking lot" as a callback to Jason Schreier's 2019 tweet5.

Frequently Asked Questions