We are implementing changes across the company to enhance our continued growth while smartly managing costs. While difficult, we are confident that it will make us more competitive, innovative and productive.

Though the layoffs have been confirmed, the announcement still hasn’t made it clear how major the cuts will be. It is also not yet known where the cuts will be made within the company.

According to a Deadspin report, the number of layoffs is rumored to be “in the hundreds,” with 400 employees seeming to be the over/under. The report cites unnamed sources as stating a majority of the layoffs so far have come from “technology” positions. Disney has reportedly put pressure on ESPN to meet its profit margin, encouraging all divisons at the station to cut back on costs. ESPN’s profit margins have reportedly lowered recently due to the station buying the rights to several major live sporting events, including NFL games.

The Deadspin article features snippets from recently-departed employees who offer the following insight:

I was laid off from ESPN today after 9 and a half years. Completely out of the blue, no warning at all. I was told it was 10% across the board, which would be roughly 400. I was told the reason was they needed to make their profit margin and they chose to do that via layoff of staff… we were told that the layoffs ARE tied to the profit margin that ESPN needs to meet and the fact they haven’t met that number. Your comments about them buying all of these live rights and now needed to reduce overhead costs is dead on.

As an example, here are two of the “live rights” deals being discussed in these emails to Deadspin:

- ESPN spends $825 million over 11 years to gain exclusive rights to the US Open (tennis, not golf).

- ESPN extended its partnership with SEC until 2034, which gives ESPN ownership of the upcoming SEC Network. While the terms of the contract were undisclosed, the two entities will split the SEC Network profits evenly.

Are these two business acquisitions/partnerships the reason why these layoffs are happening in Bristol, Connecticut? It’s hard to come up with any other conclusion, although, Disney (ESPN’s parent company) has been laying off employees as well. Maybe ESPN is trying to keep with their owners.

Storyboard launched last May. Here’s an overview:

Here’s what Tumblr had to say about its demise on its Staff blog:

A year ago, Tumblr did something unprecedented — we created an editorial team of experienced journalists and editors assigned to cover Tumblr as a living, breathing community. The team’s mandate was to tell the stories of Tumblr creators in a truly thoughtful way — focusing on the people, their work, and their stories. The result of this ambitious experiment was Storyboard.

What we’ve accomplished with Storyboard has run its course for now, and our editorial team will be closing up shop and moving on. I want to personally thank them for their great work. And please join us in wishing them well.

Tumblr itself topped 100 million blogs last month. A recent survey indicated that it tops Facebook in usage among teens.

According to a Reuters report, Disney will be expanding its layoffs to its studio and consumer products divisions. According to Reuters’ unnamed “two people with knowledge of the matter,” the layoffs will begin within two weeks and will primarily affect marketing and home video units, though the “animation wing” will also be affected.

It is unclear whether Pixar Animation Studios will be affected by the layoffs. Walt Disney Studios just announced this week that Pixar is creating a sequel to Finding Nemo due out in 2015, titled Finding Dory.

Reuters’ sources stated that Disney began conducting an internal review last year to identify jobs that have become superfluous due to technological improvements or recent acquisitions.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has begun laying off 1,200 employees at its Motorola Mobility hardware division. The cuts are a result of Motorola’s inability to return to profitability as the smartphone maker attempts to compete against the likes of Samsung and Apple.

The email announcing the layoffs said that the company “is optimistic about the new products in our pipeline,” but says that high costs and operating in non-competitive markets has led to a situation where the newly christened subsidiary of Google just isn’t making money. The layoffs will affect employees in the U.S., China and India.

The new round of layoffs is apparently a continuation of the layoffs announced last summer that affected over 4,000 employees at Motorola shortly after Google bought the company for $12.5 billion. Since then, the company has struggled to create a smartphone that could be certified as a hit.

Despite its struggles, Google is still trying to get the most out of its purchase. The company is reportedly working closely with Motorola on something called the “X Phone.” The rumored device is said to be “a real breakthrough” and will go on sale in July. It’s unknown if Google will announce the phone at May’s Google I/O, but it very well could be if the device is chosen to house the next version of Android.

Impossible was formed only six months ago, on August 9, 2012. The employees at the company were largely from Big Huge Games, a developer that itself was shut down in the wake of the 38 Studios failure. Impossible’s studio director, Sean Dunn, was the former studio general manager at Big Huge and was once a creative director with THQ. As recently as January 29 Dunn had tweeted about how “awesome it is to be part of the Epic Games family.”

Impossible had been working on Infinity Blade: Dungeons, a prequel to the popular Infinity Blade games for iOS. The project has now been put on hold.

At the time it was founded, Impossible had 36 employees at its Hunt Valley, Maryland office. Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic, has stated that Impossible employees with be given three moths of severance pay. In addition, Epic is releasing its rights to the Impossible Studios name and logo so that the developers can make a go of things on their own.

Below is Sweeney’s statement, in full:

We’re closing Impossible Studios.

When former members of Big Huge Games approached Epic last year, we saw the opportunity to help a great group of people while putting them to work on a project that needed a team. It was a bold initiative and the Impossible folks made a gallant effort, but ultimately it wasn’t working out for Epic.

In addition to providing Impossible Studios employees with 3 months of severance pay, we’ll be giving the team the opportunity to form a new company with the Impossible Studios name and the awesome Impossibear logo.

This means that Infinity Blade: Dungeons is now on hold as we figure out the future of the project.

-Tim Sweeney, Founder, Epic Games

At the same time that Blockbuster U.K. has entered administration (bankruptcy) and announced 160 of its stores across the U.K. will be closing, Blockbuster in the U.S. is having similar difficulties. Dish Network, the parent company for Blockbuster, announced this week that 300 Blockbuster video rental stores across the U.S. will close up shop in the coming weeks. The company told the Denver Post that around 3,000 employees will lose their jobs.

These new closings are on top of the 500 stores that Dish shut down last year. The company stated that only around 500 Blockbuster stores remain. This is down from the 4,000 U.S. stores the company had at the beginning of 2010, the same year it entered bankruptcy. The specific stores that will be closing have not been unveiled, but consumers who still live around a Blockbuster (and who still want DVDs or Blu-Rays) might want to watch for closeout sales.

A Dish company spokesperson told the Post that the company is currently evaluating Blockbuster stores on a case-by-case basis, and that underperforming stores will be closed. The company is also evaluating whether or not to sell smartphones and wireless service at Blockbuster stores, a sign of the times if there ever was one.

StumbleUpon’s Mike Mayzel tells WebProNews, “StumbleUpon is restructuring to enable the company to become more streamlined, focused and to better execute against its goals in 2013. As a result of these changes, the company will be profitable and will operate more quickly and efficiently and experiment more aggressively. We continue to grow and remain focused on providing the best discovery experience on the Web.”

According to the TechCrunch report, the company’s revenu has grown by 300% over the last three years. In recent months it has pushed out some major new products, like a big overhaul of its website, and new apps for iOS, Android and Windows 8, all complete with new discoverability features that really do make StumbleUpon itself more of a destination in addition to sending users all around the web.

As far as that referral traffic goes, a report in November indicated that it was sending less traffic to sites, which StumbleUpon assured us was actually wrong, and that traffic was increasing.

Mayzel says the restructuring affects all areas of the company, including engineering, product and marketing.

Eurocom issued a statement to Eurogamer, revealing that the company was not able to secure new development contracts in time to pay its employees. From the statement:

Since 2008, there has been a steep decline in the sales of Console and PC games, which has led to a severe contraction in the number of new games being commissioned from global publishers of entertainment software. The company has also faced intense competition from developers in countries with lower costs or those subsidised with generous games tax credits…

…The Directors of Eurocom would like to offer their heartfelt thanks to all their staff that have been made redundant at this difficult time, and show their appreciation of all of their hard work in consistently delivering exceptional games.

“Exceptional” may be a bit hyperbolic. In its 24 years, Eurocom was best known for porting games to various consoles, as well as developing numerous movie and brand tie-in games. Most recently the company developed the GoldenEye 007 remakes for consoles, Disney Universe, and 007 Legends.

Eurocom is correct that video game development is becoming a much more competitive industry. No matter how many tax credits studios in Sweden or Poland get, however, the game quality will always play a central role in the success of developers.

The post points to another post from June, when President David Marcus discussed consolidating PayPal’s product groups into a central global product organization led by Hill Ferguson, who was previously in charge of PayPal’s mobile division. In that post, Marcus told readers to expect to see more results of the changes over the next few months.

Some of those changes are being felt today.

“Unfortunately, making the right decisions on behalf of our customers meant we had to make some very tough decisions inside our company,” Macrus wrote in today’s post. “This morning we informed approximately 325 full time employees, primarily in our product and technology organizations, that their roles are being eliminated. We also are ending contracts with approximately 120 contractors globally.”

“While PayPal is strong and performing well, making decisions that impact our employees was hard,” Marcus adds. “So this is a difficult day at PayPal. These are good people, good friends and colleagues, who have played a role in creating PayPal’s strong global leadership position today. We appreciate all the contributions that they have made. And they are being treated with fairness and dignity, consistent with our culture and values.”

PayPal parent eBay reported its Q3 earnings earlier this month, including a 15% year-over-year increase in revenue and strong performance from PayPal, which on its own saw a 23% year-over-year revenue increase (and a 14% year-over-year increase in active registered accounts, putting the number at 117.4 million).