The Vancouver Sun is reporting that video game company Radical Entertainment will be laying off about 100 employees, which is almost half its staff. The decision was made by the company’s owner, Activision Blizzard, to reduce the number of titles Radical produces.

“Activision Blizzard is committed to making the best games possible and has elected at this time to reduce the number of titles that Radical is developing from four games to two,” Leah Rubin, Radical’s vice-president of human resources, in an email. “Therefore, we will be proportionately reducing the size of our studio.”

Activision Blizzard said it would go ahead with five games including Radical’s Crash Bandicoot, and Prototype, a new game created by Radical that will debut in 2009. The reductions come in the wake of an ownership change last month that saw France-based Vivendi, which owns Radical, and American video software company Activision, join forces as Activision Blizzard.

Activision has revealed some very shocking information today, they have announced that they’ll be droping several of Vivendi’s titles. The downside of this announcement is that other Vivendi Games (namely Ghostbusters: The Video Game, Brütal Legend, WET, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena and World in Conflict: Soviet Assault) are not being kept by Activision.

“The only franchises that Activision Publishing will release are based on Crash Bandicoot, Ice Age and Spyro, as well as Prototype, and one other game that has not yet been announced,” said an Activision representative. “We are reviewing our options regarding those titles that we will not be publishing.”

[Activision Drops Several Vivendi Games via IGN]