Welcome!

1,600 Xbox employees were hit directly by the recent Microsoft layoffs, with an additional 1,600 from Xbox still planned for a total of 3,200 employees. This has included/will include those under the ZeniMax umbrella, including Bethesda, ZOS, id, and Arkane.

Jeff Gardiner claims that 35 were let go from Bethesda, and 95 from id.

According to ZOS Senior Content Designer Katherine Souze, this included "half" of the team in the Elder Scrolls Online content team, although she has since deleted the original post. We know this has included some very public facing people, including Lead Dungeon Director Mike Finnigan and Community Manager Gina Bruno.

Over this entire era of layoffs in the games industry, there has been a regularity to it that has become predictable. Across the industry, teams have been devastated if their project failed with the studio often shutting down. But successes can see the same thing happen.

Perhaps the only positive thing that can be said is that no studios seemed to have been closed for once. Studios were released and returned to independence or sold instead of just being shut down.

As gamers, we haven't really felt like this practice and atmosphere in the games industry has been producing more and better games from the AAA space.

If the new CEO of Xbox is right and the involved restructuring of their management leads to more good games that come out quicker, that will be fantastic. But the past waves of layoffs haven't managed to do that at all, there's no reason to think they'll suddenly work this time. The safe bet is that these layoffs are just not going to stop.

A list of people we know who have been laid off at ZOS and Bethesda:

ZOS

Community Manager Gina Bruno

Lead Dungeon Director Mike Finnigan

Writer Designer Andrew Siañez-De La O

Writer Designer Julianna Comstock

Senior Writer Designer Jeff Grubb

Project Art Director Marc Hudgins

Senior Concept Artist Christina Cornett

Senior Animator Ami DeLullo

Animator Evan Van Biert

Senior Tools Engineer Robert Bailey

QA Tester Page Branson

Producer Ethan Koltz

Environmental Artist Brandon Rush

Associate Sound Designer Andrew Jordan

Senior Sound Designer Daniel Costello

Associate Sound Designer Sebastian Theodoro

QA Tester Trevor Bream

DevOps Engineer William Novak

Realtime FX Artist Jacob Wynn

Senior VFX Artist Anelise Mize

Lead Designer Ed Stark

Senior Encounter Designer Morgan Goin

Encounter Designer Erinn Fecteau

Senior Encounter Designer James Audet

Tools Product Owner Sydney Thibeault

Senior Software Engineer Dustin Thurston

Live Game Lead Gregory Roth

Content Manager Milo Webb

QA Manager Erik Marby

Narrative Director Bill Slavicsek

Lead Narrative Designer Richard Baker

Writer Designer Alexandria Baker

Writer Designer Ameya Vinayaraj

Bethesda

Community Manager Jessica Clark

Game Designer Simon Préfontaine

GRC Engineer Wayne Saunders

Associate Quest Designer Griffin DeClaire

Quest Designer Stephanie Zachariadis

Systems Designer Jean Paul Salman

Gameplay Engineer Anne Barrett

Monetization Designer Kevin Benavides

Lead Systems Designer Jacob Naasz

Senior Build and Release Programmer Anthony Ford

Lead Quest Designer Joshua Moretto

For people who have reached out to me, thank you. I am okay and still on ESO, but a lot of my friends and coworkers who I have spent many many years of my life basically growing alongside of, are not as of today.

Elder Scrolls Online:

Jori O'tan / Amaecella Rielle.

Nuae Benagu / Lets-Bodies-Hit-Floor.

Caius Artoria / Hasid at-O'tan.

Caeren the Forgotten / Abanraji.

Peaceful Psijics on Artaeum for my mental comfort.

Ritemaster Iachesis with his Bosmer apprentice (she's my OC, I needed more ginger Bosmers in my life).

Maybe she passed an exam, protected someone (or just survived any sh*t in Tamriel), so she could use some support and care from a person she trusts.

Darien in the Crystal Tower *cries*

Cambio Zammes, Rooster in Exile (an assistant Launderer and Fence who doesn’t charge a fee!)

I have mentioned Boga like all of two times here but she's a Leyawiin healer that got convinced into the Worm Cult during their recruitment push in the 2nd Era. Basically they told her they could help her become an extremely powerful healer that could defeat death, etc etc, typical false advertising. Obviously, that wasn't the case, and she quickly regretted joining. She ended up trying to bail after a few months, was caught, then tossed into the sacrifice pile at the start of ESO. She's soul shriven by the time she gets out of Coldharbour and is super fucking over it. She lost her medical license for this shit man. And also died. She's going to torch her old office to the ground with everybody still inside.