While I don’t quite share some peoples’ enthusiasm for Microsoft’s latest Xbox showcase, I will concede that it was at least a decent showing.
The whole thing was brisk and crammed a lot of announcements into its near two hour runtime and, while I was more intrigued by some of the third-party announcements (like the new Life is Strange and turn-based RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33), there were some pivotal first-party reveals that warranted excitement from Xbox players, such as the long absent Perfect Dark and a new Gears of War. But every time Microsoft had something new to show from one of its teams, all I could think of was, “Man, I hope this team doesn’t get shut down.”
It’s no secret that the games industry, as a whole, feels like it’s collapsing in on itself. We’re only halfway through 2024 and an estimated 10,800 people have lost their jobs across a wide range of studios. What’s especially damning is this is already higher than the number of 2023 industry lay offs: approximately 10,500.
Microsoft may not be the sole contributor to these numbers, but it is one of the most notable examples. At the beginning of 2023, it culled staff at Halo studio 343 Industries and Gears of War studio The Coalition, as well as Bethesda. This past January, it let go roughly 1,900 employees from its gaming division, including ones at Activision Blizzard which it had only recently bought out for $75.4 billion. And then, just last month, it shuttered several of its studios including Tango Gameworks, despite Microsoft deeming its last title, Hi-Fi Rush, a success.
To see Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty, and Xbox president Sarah Bond take to the stage and talk about how amazing and talented their studios feels tonally dissonant. Booty said, “The creativity and talent of game creators are what make our industry unique, and I’m incredibly proud of our games and our teams.” But such praise rings hollow when, again, Tango Gameworks provided the Xbox brand with the creative and unique Hi-Fi Rush. It could very well have gone on to make even more such projects, but that apparently wasn’t good enough for Microsoft.
When I see something like South of Midnight, which boasts its own distinctive visual style and unique Southern Gothic inspirations, how can I have any faith that developer Compulsion Games (who Microsoft acquired in 2018) won’t get gutted or shut down, even if the game sells well or pulls in new Game Pass subscribers?
I can’t imagine how former employees who contributed to Microsoft’s awesome reveals felt seeing them get such glowing responses. Actually, I don’t need to, because some of them admitted in an interview with Aftermath about how bittersweet it all was. Take this quote from Shayna Moon, who was an engine producer on Gears of War: E-Day (easily the highlight of the whole showcase) and was laid off in 2023:
“Seeing the trailer go up and the title get announced made me feel empty inside. It was a reminder that after I got laid off my team kept going without me. I am genuinely happy for the coworkers I was close with while I was there. But I’m still extremely angry about what Microsoft has done these last two years. My layoff in January 2023 was sandwiched between Microsoft executives having a private concert from Sting and then them shelling out $69 billion for the Activision merger.”
The way the showcase played out, you wouldn’t think the industry was on fire. Anyone not in the know tuning in could easily believe everything’s hunky-dory, and that Microsoft hadn’t put hundreds of people out of work barely two months before. Even Geoff Keighley managed to at least acknowledge the state of the industry when opening the Summer Game Fest showcase this year. It was brief and didn’t really touch on the root of the problem, but it was still far more than what Xbox offered. You’d think with how much public outrage there was regarding the shutdowns of Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin, that they’d want to at least appear apologetic or offer any sort of condolences during the showcase. Clearly, announcing a new Gears of War was enough to make people forget or forgive.
Admittedly, Spencer was asked about the recent studio shutdowns during his interview with IGN (one of the only interview he was apparently willing to do during this year’s SGF), but his answer was disappointingly, if unsurprisingly, corporate. All he could say was that it was a tough decision he didn’t enjoy making, and that his priority is to “run a sustainable business inside the company and grow.”
It’s not even a real explanation for why, specifically, the likes of Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin had to go. Not to sound like a broken record, but Hi-Fi Rush was a success in all key metrics according to Xbox’s Aaron Greenberg, and while Arkane’s Redfall most certainly underperformed, it’s reported that the game’s failure wasn’t the impetus for its closure. Instead, it was, according to a Bloomberg report, because Microsoft was being spread too thin across its various studios.
“It’s hard to support nine studios all across the world with a lean central team with an ever-growing plate of things to do. I think we were about to topple over,” said Jill Braff, head of Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media. This feels especially strange, after Xbox spent billions on acquiring Activision Blizzard and its studios.
It doesn’t sound like Microsoft is in dire financial straits, either. Its decision to axe staff at Activision came two weeks after Microsoft briefly overtook Apple as the most valuable company in the world, worth $2.859 trillion (per Reuters). I’m not the first to make this observation, but it feels like leaving the employees holding the bag.
Recently, Obsidian Entertainment’s Carrie Patel and Matt Hansen, director and art director on fantasy RPG Avowed, mentioned they still felt supported by Microsoft and weren’t afraid about their studio’s future even after the closures of Arkane and Tango. That’s all well and good, but how long will that last? Who’s to say Obsidian’s staff won’t face job cuts or even be completely shutdown in the future? You can’t say, “Well, Obsidian makes good games like The Outer Worlds,” because so did Tango Gameworks. Arkane Austin had the 2017 Prey under its belt, and people still praise that game to this day. Yet neither of these studios’ reputations saved them from the chopping block.
I sadly have no perfect conclusion where I lay out what can be done to prevent future job losses or fix any of this. But we mustn’t allow ourselves to be distracted by whatever shiny new toy companies like Microsoft dangle in front of us. It doesn’t matter how good of a showcase Microsoft had this summer, that it’s putting Call of Duty on Game Pass, that it’s got a new Gears of War in the works. None of that changes how these employees have been treated, how talent has been made disposable. Even the best video games are not worth it, if the people who make them can be tossed aside so easily.
