Activision has lost 50million monthly active users in the last year

That’s according to Activision Blizzard King’s (ABK) most recent financial results report (from April 25), which says that Activision’s MAUs went from 150million in March of 2021 to 100million in March of 2022. Blizzard’s MAUs went from 27million to 22million in the same time frame, and King’s from 258million to 250million (via PC Gamer).

This means the last 12 months saw MAUs drop from 435million down to 372million for ABK overall.

As explained by Activision in the press release, MAUs are calculated by adding together the year’s users and dividing that by 12 months. An MAU is considered someone who plays a particular game in a given month, and if one person plays two games, that’s two MAUs.

This significant drop in recurring users comes amid an ongoing investigation into claims concerning workplace conditions at Activision Blizzard, and the company’s attempts to quash a labour movement from developers at its Raven Software Studio.

The Raven staff – some of whom formed the Game Workers Alliance union – will vote this month on whether or not their union can actually form, with the results to be announced in May.

To offset the drop in players, Activision seems to be banking on announcements made concerning this year’s Call Of Duty experiences, as it said that this year’s Modern Warfare 2 will be the “most advanced experience” in the entire franchise.

In other news, sceptics believe that Russia planted evidence as part of a staged arrest, due to copies of The Sims 3 seemingly placed instead of SIM cards. The game copies were found with Nazi paraphernalia and other items.