More cuts are reportedly on the way at Xbox, with some staff at ZeniMax offering voluntary severance agreements this week. This news is a Bloomberg Xbox says more cuts are on the way for employees across the organization, the report said.
The potential layoffs follow Xbox’s decision to close four Bethesda studios earlier this week, including Hi-Fi Rush team Tango Gameworks and Redfall developer Arcane Austin. In respect of staff who have been granted voluntary separation agreements, Bloomberg Producers, quality assurance testers and other staff at ZeniMax report receiving them.
Tango Gameworks and Arcane Austin were on hiatus this week because they were in the process of pitching new projects and hiring additional staff for said projects, the publication reported. The conference was held this week. Xbox and ZeniMax chose to close these studios, both early in the process of creating a new game, rather than closing a studio deep into development projects.
Elsewhere Bloomberg’s The report, detailing an internal town hall held at Xbox this week following studio closures, described Booty as spreading its studios too thinly like “peanut butter on bread” and that leaders across the company felt understaffed. Xbox closed three studios and ZeniMax online studios absorbed Roundhouse Games to free up resources. Braff said during the meeting, “It’s hard to support nine studios around the world with a lean central team, I think we’re doing an ever-growing number of things.”
The studio closings follow 1,900 layoffs at Xbox, Activision Blizzard, and ZeniMax in January, and more than 10,000 layoffs in the games industry alone.
(Source: Bloomberg)
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