Xbox cuts impacted 158 ZeniMax workers in Texas and 52 Obsidian employees in California [Update: 379 from ZeniMax in Maryland]
Tallies from Monday's layoffs are trickling out, state by state
Deep cuts in Microsoft’s gaming division have eliminated 158 positions in Texas across the ZeniMax group of gaming teams, according to a WARN layoff notice provided by state officials to Game File.
That cut is hitting 96 roles in Richardson, Texas, 40 remote roles for that same office, as well as 22 in Austin.
The Richardson location is the publicly listed address for Doom studio id Software, but also includes workers from other Bethesda groups, Game File understands.
(Yesterday, Aftermath reported that id had lost more than 90 workers.)
The Austin location that’s losing 22 jobs is also part of the Bethesda gaming team.
These cuts are part of the 1,600 layoffs announced by Xbox CEO Asha Sharma on Monday, themselves part of 3,200 jobs Microsoft plans to cut from its gaming division by the end of June 2027. Sharma cited an unhealthy Xbox business for an overall 20% downsizing of the Xbox gaming team.
Most of the discussion of the cuts has involved the spin-off of five studios (accounting for roughly 350-500 people) and the downsizing of Xbox’s platform team. But the cuts have impacted the swathe of Xbox studios, including id, the venerable first-person shooter studio which released an expansion to its most recent Doom game yesterday.
Microsoft has a massive gaming operation, and its big cuts are hitting in a number of states.
A WARN notice in California, received by Game File this morning, indicates that role-playing game specialists Obsidian Entertainment is losing 52 workers. That includes 43 based in Obsidian’s California offices and nine in-state remote workers. Obsidian was purchased by Microsoft in 2018 and last year released three games (Avowed, The Outer Worlds 2 and Grounded 2).
Update - July 9, 7:13am: Maryland has posted layoff counts for studios in their state. At ZeniMax Online Studios, 213 roles cut; at ZeniMax Media Inc (potentially a mix of Bethesda publishing and Bethesda’s central game studio), 166 jobs eliminated.
In addition, on Monday, Washington State displayed a WARN notice from Microsoft that tallied 605 overall jobs (not just gaming) impacted by the day’s company-wide layoffs. Locations for the Washington-based Microsoft roles were redacted this time (not previously). Among the list were some clearly gaming-oriented jobs such as “game design” and “game producers.”
WARN notices are specific to employers and workers in a given state, and so the totals for the aforementioned teams won’t include workers in other states or countries.
The Texas-based ZeniMax layoffs and Obsidian cuts will officially happen on September 4, per the WARN notices.
Of the 158 jobs cut, a ZeniMax official noted in the WARN letter, approximately 146 are represented by a union, the Communication Workers of America. The official said it would negotiate with the union to determine actual termination dates.
Wide range of jobs cut
The WARN notices list job titles, which help give some sense of the range of roles impacted.
For the Texas layoffs, impacting id and Bethesda, the jobs cut include four gameplay designers, one director of engine technology, two principal engine programmers, nine QA testers, 13 senior QA testers, a senior skybox artist and three producers.
For the Obsidian cuts, the roles eliminated include two art directors, a recruiter, a narrative designer, and five area designers.
Below are the anonymized rundowns of impacted roles. The first set spans the ZeniMax Texas cuts. The second is Obsidian.
The amount of people being cut here seems almost senseless. But it's also such a repudiation of the insane gobbling of studios that M'soft did over the last decade. What a bunch of fucks.
ZeniMax is such an awesome studio, and I hate how this will affect ESO, the devs and the community deserve better