Video game layoffs also look like this

Via public records requests, some long lists of gaming jobs cut by Microsoft, Sony, Warner Bros. and Amazon in the state of Washington.

Some of the gaming jobs cut at Microsoft on July 2, 2025.

Letters sent to officials in Washington state show an alternate way to consider the mass layoffs in the gaming industry over the past 18 months.

Those letters, sent by officials at Microsoft, Sony, Amazon, and Warner Bros., and obtained by Game File mostly through public records requests, offer a more granular view of job cuts that tend to be announced in terms of the numbingly large numbers of workers affected.

On July 2, 2025, for example, Microsoft said it was cutting 4% of its global workforce that day, or some 9,000 people.

Among those cuts, according to a leaked internal memo, was the closure of a game studio in Santa Monica, the cancellation of two announced games and several unannounced projects. Reporters also found out about a cancelled Zenimax Online massively multiplayer game and cuts to Turn 10, Undead Labs and other studios.

Many of Microsoft’s cuts that day—gaming and otherwise—were also referenced in a letter reviewed by Game File that was sent to Washington state’s Employment Security Department. The letter technically was Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN). In it, the tech giant notified officials of cuts specifically in the state:

Microsoft has decided to reorganize and restructure operations resulting in the elimination of 601 positions located at Microsoft’s Puget Sound facilities identified in Attachment A to this letter. Microsoft is also eliminating 229 remote positions located within Puget Sound.

The “Attachment A” cited by Microsoft is 14 pages long, a blunt accounting of lives upended: No names. Just a tall stack of job titles representing 830 Microsoft jobs cut, divided by office locations across Microsoft’s multi-building campus.

Because Game File’s focus is gaming, I reviewed the list with an eye on the video game roles wiped out that day.

In one building that Microsoft uses for its gaming teams, the cuts on July 2, 2025 looked like this:

That’s 81 jobs cuts—game designers, producers, artists, engineers—in a location that at the time included Forza racing studio Turn 10 and Xbox Game Studios leadership, according to two Game File sources familiar with where gaming workers at Microsoft/Xbox are based.

That building appeared to be the gaming-centric location that was hardest hit for jobs that day, but there were others.