Video games are always big business, but especially in a year when most of the world's population is trying to stay at home as much as possible. Last week Activision-Blizzard revealed its financial results for the period between July and September, and it went better than expected—the company made over $1.95B in revenue, up from $1.2B for the same quarter 2019.
The biggest driver for that success is a staggering $1.2B in microtransactions, which mostly came from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone. The monthly active users for both grew over ten-fold during the year, according to the report, with sales from microtransactions across PC and consoles growing four times from last year. Of a total of 30 million active players across all Activision Blizzard titles, 111 million come from the Call of Duty franchise, with Modern Warfare holding the title of COD game with the highest first-year sales. The only game beating COD in monthly active users is Candy Crush, which the publisher also owns since their acquisition of developer King back in 2016.
Overall, Activision Blizzard expects to make $8.1B overall in 2020, which will be hard to hear for anyone recently laid off in the closure of the Versailles, France offices, shortly after which it was announced that Activision Blizzard would need to hire 2000 people to cover upcoming production demands.
