There is an unexpected bright light in the video game industry right now, and it’s coming from Microsoft.
As even the most casual gamer probably knows right now, the industry is currently going through a wave of layoffs. It may seem that the layoffs are coming one week after another. But what’s probably really true is that all these studios are having to drop employees because of the same reason; they were all enjoying unprecedented growth in the quarantine period of the pandemic, and that trend has reversed now. Everyone has to cut costs, and unfortunately, that includes firing employees.
Or is that really everyone? As shared by Idle Sloth on Twitter, and originally verified by fellow Twitter user Romu lus, Zenimax, MachineGames, Playground Games, The Coalition Studio, and Xbox Games Technology Group, are all looking for people to join their studios and divisions. These all fall under the Microsoft Gaming banner.
Notably, none of these include any of the companies or studios at Activision Blizzard King. We had recently reported that Microsoft had to lay off employees in ABK, but as it turned out, those layoffs were planned by ABK before the acquisition. That means, as opposed to the common assumption, the layoffs were not made because of supposed redundancies. It’s likely that ABK decided even after the acquisition, and even if the acquisition fell through, they would have to go through with these layoffs.
But now it’s interesting to look at the openings that these different studios have right now.
Across Bethesda’s parent company Zenimax, Zenimax Online Studios needs a lead gameplay engineer and lead animation engineer, id Software needs a UI programmer and an AI programmer, and Arkane Austin is looking for a lead graphics engineer and lead technical engineers. There are even more job openings for Zenimax worldwide, as MachineGames also pointed out.
Playground Games has a host of job openings at various departments we don’t really have time to focus on here. They include jobs for artists, animators, audio engineers, and gameplay designers. And yes, they also have openings for AI engineers.
The Xbox Technical Group are looking for new people to be a Senior Builds & Automation Engineer, Senior Rendering Engineer, Senior Systems Engineer, and Senior Technical Artist.
The most curious among these now would have to be The Coalition, as the person who made the post deleted it. What’s implied there is that they may have unwittingly shared secrets about The Coalition’s next project in those job postings, so better not to let the public see them.
As you can see, these new jobs are an indication that there is still growth to be found in the industry, and not every company and studio is being forced to shrink themselves because of a smaller business. But then, given that games and game systems are still selling very well, it should be clear that the industry isn’t exactly dealing with a recession or something along those lines.
We do need a better analysis of the situation with all these layoffs than just assuming it is indicative of a worsening US economy, especially when the metrics for the US economy indicate the exact opposite. In any case, it isn’t all doom and gloom for the industry, and we still have a lot to look forward to in video games’ future.
