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:
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
Senior Tools Engineer Robert Bailey
Environmental Artist Brandon Rush
Associate Sound Designer Andrew Jordan
Senior Sound Designer Daniel Costello
Associate Sound Designer Sebastian Theodoro
DevOps Engineer William Novak
Realtime FX Artist Jacob Wynn
Senior VFX Artist Anelise Mize
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
Narrative Director Bill Slavicsek
Lead Narrative Designer Richard Baker
Writer Designer Alexandria Baker
Writer Designer Ameya Vinayaraj
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
Senior QA Tester Steven Hoyle
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