Yesterday, Xbox announced what might be the single most important layoff event in the gaming industry’s history. It’s hard to say; there have been just that many in recent years. Perhaps it’s just one big event. Perhaps it’s just one big nightmare, and I’ve yet to wake up from a world where every day artists who defined our generation are abandoned, nameless, never appreciated, often with little hope to make another game ever again. You know what my first reaction to this news was? “I guess it could’ve been worse.”
Double Fine and Compulsion get to survive in some form, keeping their IPs. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs get to continue making their games as they get purchased by another company. Surely, then, someone will want to buy Arkane, which is in the process of splitting off. No studio is gone, no IP is going to just disappear. It takes a little while for it to set in. The four studios that left Xbox account for around 350 people out of the 3,200 that will be cut before the end of this fiscal year. Everyone else is left without a studio to work at. The studios are left without people to work for them.
After weeks of rumors that all these studios will, or already have, closed down, and that other studios like Obsidian are merely waiting for an announcement of their end, it all felt like some sort of miracle. I can acknowledge the fact that the current management at Xbox has not repeated the mistake that was the Tango Gameworks sale, with Xbox now forever sitting on the rights to Evil Within and Ghostwire: Tokyo, so that the two series can likely never see the light of day again. But the fact that, even for a little bit, I and many others breathed a sigh of relief at Xbox firing thousands is nothing short of terrifying.
We were preconditioned to expect this. We, who follow gaming news. The people who react on social media so that we can then be used as examples at boardroom meetings. Can you even imagine this scenario? You saying you’re happy that a studio you cherished isn’t fully dead may be used by those that fired them as proof that the layoff news went over relatively smoothly. Huge success! Let’s do it again next year!
If you are part of any one community whose games are still a part of Xbox, you are in for a world of shock. Some studios, like id Software, the makers of DOOM (the DOOM: The Dark Ages DLC titled Revelations is releasing today), or ZeniMax Online Studios, which have kept up the work on Elder Scrolls Online, reportedly making $15 million in monthly revenue for over 10 years as of September 2024, are cutting a significant number of staff, per Jason Schreier. Can they continue doing good enough work to not be part of the remaining 1,600 layoffs later this year? Or the possible cuts after that?
You can learn about the people who are already gone from Xbox through LinkedIn and social media. The ones you might have seen are the few that have made a name for themselves. Bethesda’s community manager Jessica C. was responsible for brightening up our days with some of the most memorable jokes for the community to rally around. Zenimax Online Studios’ community manager, Gina Bruno, is gone after 19 years. An irreplaceable part of the Elder Scrolls Online community. But there are so many others. Hundreds of animators, artists, coders, designers, without whom the games Xbox is positioning as their future will have an incredibly difficult time capturing the magic that gave them that audience in the first place. All nameless. That’s how the industry operates.
You don’t have to consider how difficult it was for the new management to step into the position left after Xbox self-admittedly lost what it considered the “worst generation to lose”. You do not have to justify the decisions of those put there specifically to try and come out of this human tragedy, an insurmountable loss for the art, with as clean an image as possible. That is not on you.
You just get to be disappointed and angry. It’s ridiculous to say that we now have to sort of work to be angry at these companies, but it’s true. Each piece of news that we, the media, reported on that was proven false preconditioned someone to expect something worse. That’s why an event of this scale did not feel as monumental as it should and why so many who typically would speak out are holding back. It’s because they don’t feel the passion anymore. I didn’t. I was kind of happy to see these companies free of the chaos that is Xbox. For a minute, I was happy to see people fired. I couldn’t feel more embarrassed, but I hope admitting this helps someone else realize the insanity of it all.
“At least they haven’t closed the studios down.” “It must have been such a difficult decision to make.” “They go to keep their properties, that’s a huge win!” Let’s listen to ourselves a little. Even if you’re just someone who enjoys the works of these developers, understand that we’ve lost a collective millennium of very specific experience, with only a fraction of that possibly being rebuilt on a different scene that’s growing increasingly difficult to survive in. Try to build up some emotions about that. We’re all still reeling from PlayStation announcing the end of physical discs, I know, and maybe that’s another reason why it’s so difficult, but we should try. We can’t be openly celebrating anything about this. Thousands of people who were instrumental to things we love are losing their jobs. That cannot be overshadowed.
