It was announced today that, Amrita Ahuja, Blizzard’s current CFO, would be leaving the company to join up with Square, the mobile payment processor. Ahuja replaces former Square CFO Sarah Friar who announced she was leaving the CFO post in October. That departure saw a major drop, nearly 30%, in the stock price for Square. This recent announcement saw a slight rebounding in the trading price for Square stock, so that’s good news.
Blizzard has announced that the replacement for this position has not been found yet, but the company is working quickly to resolve the gap. And don’t be concerned for the future of the company, as these kinds of executive shuffles are exceedingly common in the corporate world. Although it might become alarming if more departures continue to happen. Activision’s CFO Spencer Neumann left his position for a job at Netflix just this last week.
And on the back of various controversial announcements and missteps for Activision-Blizzard, it’s easy to see why some gamers might be concerned about what the next few months or years might hold. The announcement of Diablo Immortal was a huge PR disaster for the company. The infamous and reviled mobile game reveal angered gamers everywhere. And even worse, it sent to stock price for the publisher/developer tumbling. Over the course of just one week in early November 2018, the stock price fell from $68.99 to a low of $51.60. And things aren’t looking any better, with a current trading price of $46.00.
The problems kept on mounting when the gaming giant announced that they would be removing a significant portion of development support from Heroes of the Storm. Blizzard also announced the cancellation of their esports tournaments, Heroes Global Championship and Heroes of the Dorm. The game is still supported, but has undeniably entered a sunset period.
So whatever the future holds for this particular gaming giant, there’s definitely an uphill battle in their future as they fight to regain consumer confidence.
