Blizzard have reportedly axed 600 positions from their global workforce, they announced earlier today. The layoffs reportedly come as a result of reviews of the company's organizational structure, with the press release stating:

Approximately 90% of the affected employees will come from departments not related to game development. The World of Warcraft development team will not be impacted.

An ex-Blizzard employee who is familiar with the organizational issues explained to Vox Games that the layoffs are predominately from customer service. This is because over the years Blizzard have automated some of these positions, such as the reclaiming of compromised accounts, has now led to increased efficiency of each customer service representative.

Coupled with the decrease in World of Warcraft's subscribers, Blizzard found that their customer service manpower far exceeded demand, The Verge's source stated. Blizzard's president, Mike Morhaime actually posted on the official Battle.net forums stating:

In order to keep making epic game content while serving players effectively, we have to be smart about how we manage our resources. This means we sometimes have to make difficult decisions about how to best maintain the health of the company. We're in the process of making some of those hard decisions now.