It has been confirmed that the Microsoft layoffs have affected their game studios.
To be specific, Bethesda Game Studios, 343 Industries, and The Coalition were affected.
We had named the many studios owned by Microsoft when initially reporting the news yesterday. While it may be possible that some people in those other studios were also affected, Microsoft may have singled out these for their size.
It should be noted that Bethesda Game Studios is the studio itself responsible for making single player Bethesda games. Bethesda Softworks is the publisher side within the company, and Zenimax Online Studios is a distinct studio, responsible for making the online multiplayer Bethesda games, including the most recent release, Fallout 76. All of these studios fall under parent company Zenimax Media Inc, as well as id Software, Arkane Studios. MachineGames, and Tango Gameworks. While Zenimax has retained its independent structure, it does have Microsoft and Xbox Game Studios as its parent organizations.
343 Industries is the studio overseeing the Halo franchise, and had a direct hand in the remasters of the original Halo games, as well as Halo Infinite. They were particularly targeted by these layoffs, with the side responsible for single player games being particularly affected.
Microsoft had stated in their filing to the Securities and Exchange commission yesterday that these job cuts were happening “in response to macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities”.
In an email to employees, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had this to say:
“We will continue to invest in strategic areas for our future, meaning we are allocating both our capital and talent to areas of secular growth and long-term competitiveness for the company, while divesting in other areas. These are the kinds of hard choices we have made throughout our 47-year history to remain a consequential company in this industry that is unforgiving to anyone who doesn’t adapt to platform shifts. As such, we are taking a $1.2 billion charge in Q2 related to severance costs, changes to our hardware portfolio, and the cost of lease consolidation as we create higher density across our workspaces.”
Other divisions that have already been named to be receiving job cuts include the Hololens division, and more broadly, jobs in engineering.
While Hololens actually continues to be active in the metaverse, it is considered not as relevant to gaming as competitors in the VR space, which is itself a niche as it is. Microsoft had also been selling Hololens to the US military, but a rumor going around is they recently cancelled their order for more units.
This will only be the start of the announced job cuts as the company will reveal the full scope across their divisions in the coming days. Given that Microsoft mentioned engineering, their hardware divisions could be affected. This includes their Xbox hardware division, Surface, and PC accessories.
Source: Video Games Chronicle, The Verge
