Xbox’s ‘reset’ layoffs have hit Bethesda hard, with long-term institutional talent shown the door—Zenimax Online Studios, which is part of the same studio family as Bethesda and works on the Elder Scrolls Online, was also particularly dismantled by Xbox, with over 60% of its staff laid off in the past year.
Understandably, Bethesda developers are irate. Partially because in some studios HR forced them to take down tributes to their laid off colleagues, but also because these layoffs seem to—as the Bethesda Game Studios Union (OneBGS) put it earlier this week—be part of a “stressful annual routine” for Microsoft.
And with 1,600 layoffs yet to come, a sword is left dangling over the rest of Xbox’s studios, wondering who’s to come next—prompting OneBGS to action. In a statement (shared here by Kotaku), the union said: “The company wants us to accept this as a done deal and quietly disappear. We won’t let that happen. Our next steps are to mobilize. We need every single member visible and unified.
“To that end, we are announcing our Save Our Devs March across all studios on Wednesday July 15th.”
The objective, it seems, is to make sure that Microsoft understands it can’t just keep doing this without adverse impacts on the developers left, who have the technical power to leave Xbox without one of their flagship studios:
“We need to show management right now that we mean business, so they will properly take care of our fellow co-workers today and think twice before ever attempting something like this again. Stay strong, look out for one another, and we look forward to seeing us all marching together on the 15th.”
The scale and damage of these layoffs is yet to be properly tallied, but we know at this point that they include a near-hollowing out of id Software, the aforementioned ransacking of Zenimax Online Studios, and multiple hits to accessibility leadership.
It’s a waste of talent and legacy, by all accounts, but not one that’s unprecedented, mind. In addition to similar layoffs and project cancellations that occurred last year, Xbox has closed studios that’ve landed major hits before, including Hi-Fi Rush and Prey.
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