Microsoft’s layoffs have littered the gaming landscape with canceled projects, studio closures, and veteran leaders are leaving their companies. A couple of days ago, it was revealed that the OS/game publisher and console maker is laying off an additional 9,000 staff, bringing its two-year tally to around 27,000, and the repercussion is being immediately noticed. While many who lost their jobs were in Washington state, it’s now become apparent that they a far from the only ones to be affected, with studios abroad being affected. At this point, it might be easier to identify what has survived than what hasn’t, given the growing lists of abandoned games and closures.
Romero Games
DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D creator John Romero had initially announced that his Romero Games studio had lost its funding following the layoff announcement. Ireland-based Romero Games had been developing a first-person shooter using the UE5 engine, and initially, it was hoped that the studio might find another publishing partner. However, an anonymous employee spoke with The Journal, stating that the entire staff had been laid off. The studio has approximately 100 employees who had no previous heads up of Microsoft’s plans and were totally shocked, as they had been told they were making great progress and hit every milestone on time.
“We’re trying to find other ways of funding the project,” said the employee. “But for now, it’s completely closed, and the studio is closed.”
Rare
Rare had been working on Everwild, which is among the projects now no longer in development. Veteran game developer Gregg Mayles, who has been working in the industry for more than 35 years, is (per VGC) leaving the company, which Microsoft acquired in 2002. Mayles had worked on numerous Nintendo 64 titles before joining Rare. In addition, executive producer Louise O’Connor, who also previously worked on making games for the Nintendo 64, will also be leaving the company based in Britain.
ZeniMax Online Studios
The Elder Scrolls Online developer will be losing its leader following an announcement (via IGN) from studio boss Matt Firor, who stated he’ll be leaving the company after more than 18 years of service. It was also revealed that an unannounced MMO sci-fi game, codenamed “Blackbird”, that had been in development since 2018, had been cancelled. Staff were caught off guard as the studio had begun scaling up its team, but now all have been laid off.
The Initiative
California-based The Initiative was closed. The studio, billed as Microsoft’s “AAAA” studio and comprised of veterans from Crystal Dynamics, Naughty Dog, Rockstar, and more, had been working on a Perfect Dark reboot, which had been shown at an Xbox showcase last summer. Recently, some had claimed the footage revealed then was fake, but senior game designer Adam McDonald pointed (via IGN) out that it was indeed footage from a playable section of the game, but the game was still in progress, so some things shown were not representative and were not final or completely real.
“There’s some fake stuff in it, and the real gameplay systems shown off worked just enough to look good in this video. We were rapidly making real design decisions so as to not knowingly lie to players about what the game will be. The parkour is all real, the hacking/deception is mostly real. The combat is ‘real’ in that someone had to really do all that stuff in the video, but it’s set up to be played exactly that way and didn’t play well if you played it a different way.”
King Division
Microsoft’s King Division, which is based in Stockholm, is said (per Bloomberg) will be laying off around 10%, or roughly 200, of its staff. This developer is most famous for Candy Crush.
Turn 10 and Raven Software
The Forza Motorsport developer has reportedly had to let go of around half of its staff. Turn 10 was acquired in 2018 by Microsoft, and according to one ex-employee, the studio is no longer developing anything for the franchise and has been left in a merely supportive state for the last game that was released in 2023.
Details remain scarce, but it has been confirmed that the Call of Duty developer is among those affected the Microsoft’s round of layoffs. Insider Gaming’s Jason Schreier posted on social media that it, too, was included in the job cuts, while also confirming what had happened at Turn 10.
“Many of Xbox’s subsidiaries are getting hit by the layoffs this morning, including Call of Duty studios such as Raven. Big cuts at Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10 – nearly 50% of staff, per source.”