[mortoc]

There's a good chance that Blizzard was spared a lot of this round of layoffs because they're in labor contract negotiations right now.

[mrandish]

MSFT is radically restructuring the entire XBox business. That's not a scenario where unionization is going to preserve jobs in the long-run and this is just the first cut. They've said many more layoffs will be coming over the next 12 months.