Lie Within The Cosmos: Refraction retweetledi
1,600 Xbox employees were hit directly by the recent Microsoft layoffs, with an additional 1,600 from Xbox still planned for a total of 3,200 employees. This has included/will include those under the ZeniMax umbrella, including Bethesda, ZOS, id, and Arkane.
Jeff Gardiner claims that 35 were let go from Bethesda, and 95 from id.
According to ZOS Senior Content Designer Katherine Souze, this included "half" of the team in the Elder Scrolls Online content team, although she has since deleted the original post. We know this has included some very public facing people, including Lead Dungeon Director Mike Finnigan and Community Manager Gina Bruno.
Over this entire era of layoffs in the games industry, there has been a regularity to it that has become predictable. Across the industry, teams have been devastated if their project failed with the studio often shutting down. But successes can see the same thing happen.
Perhaps the only positive thing that can be said is that no studios seemed to have been closed for once. Studios were released and returned to independence or sold instead of just being shut down.
As gamers, we haven't really felt like this practice and atmosphere in the games industry has been producing more and better games from the AAA space.
If the new CEO of Xbox is right and the involved restructuring of their management leads to more good games that come out quicker, that will be fantastic. But the past waves of layoffs haven't managed to do that at all, there's no reason to think they'll suddenly work this time. The safe bet is that these layoffs are just not going to stop.
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