A lot of changes have occurred with Activision lately: first they merged with Blizzard, then they sent away Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend, now they’re basically altering the heck out of the gaming market. The company still wasn’t quite done as it announced today that as a result of the merger deal with Blizzard, the company is planning to sell of the development studio behind World in Conflict: Massive Entertainment. This is part of it’s overall focus on “ improving efficiency across the combined organization”; in addition to “concentrating on businesses where we have leadership positions that are aligned with Activision Publishing’s long-term corporate objectives”.

Despite not being one of those companies that fits in with “ Activision Publishing’s long-term corporate objectives” the team at Massive Entertainment remains confident...or at least their CEO Martin Walfisz does. When he spoke to VG247 last week, he asserted that the company was in a favorable position, stating “it seems like we have plenty of options”. Mr. Walfisz also said: “they (Activision) didn’t want an RTS studio in Europe” and that this sale wasn’t a major setback to them: “to be honest, we would have loved to have worked with Activision, but we’re pretty confident in our capabilities and there are not many studios that can match our quality.”

It’s good to have that kind of certainty during such a chaotic event. Walfisz stated that “Being a part of a merger like this is a strange situation” due to the fact that “the new organization has to look over all of its assets, everything it owns and its strategy for the future. For the past six month’s we’ve been waiting for the merger to go through and to understand whether they see us as a part of their future or not.” And it is definitely a chaotic time for Massive - the company’s current projects, namely the console versions of World in Conflict: Soviet Assault, are being frozen and will no longer be published by Activision. Despite the uncertainty regarding it’s status both current and future, however, Walfisz continued to remain hopeful regarding the company’s future: “I think that right now everyone is in ‘wait and see’ mode and just want to know what the future holds. But Massive has been in tough situations before in the past 12 years, and we’ve always come out stronger. Most of the guys in the company at least have faith in our ability to find a really interesting future.”