‘We did not have layoffs earlier than, and now unexpectedly now we have yearly layoffs’: Bethesda artist says ‘one thing has modified’ underneath Microsoft

Last week, the Communications Workers of America and the Bethesda Game Studios OneBGS union took half within the Save Our Devs rally throughout the United States and Canada (and on Twitch) “to call out layoffs and corporate greed across the industry and to demand fair first contracts across Microsoft’s gaming studios.” Speaking to Kotaku, Bethesda artist Alex Nguyen talked about how issues modified after Bethesda was acquired by the tech big.

“Since we’ve been under Microsoft… it feels like something has changed. We didn’t have layoffs before, and now all of a sudden we have yearly layoffs,” he informed Kotaku, saying groups had been feeling the consequences of cuts which eroded institutional information. “If only five people knew how this thing worked and you let all five of them go, that’s a morale killer because it’s like we already knew this, and now we have to learn it again.”

According to that article, Nguyen identified that fixer-uppers like Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online do not get an opportunity to bloom into profitable fan favorites with out ample labor and time. He additionally famous that there was a shared sense of long-term dedication among the many workers at Zenimax and Bethesda—a dedication being smothered by Microsoft’s present company techniques.

“That’s why a lot of people had such a long tenure here,” Nguyen told Kotaku. “And they were like, ‘yeah, this is the place I’m gonna retire at,’ or ‘this is the place where I’m gonna finish out,’ or ‘I love being here because I want to stay in the industry for a long time.’ That was basically one of the benefits of being at Bethesda or a Zenimax studio in general.”

Last yr, ex-Xbox head Phil Spencer mentioned that “nurturing and protecting creative teams that want to go take risks” was of the utmost importance less than two years after Xbox’s acquisition of Blizzard called for 1,900 layoffs. Current Xbox head Asha Sharma has sung a similar tune so far, suggesting that Xbox ought to be entertaining over a billion people each day while also announcing the “reset” necessitating 3,200 job cuts in the very same blog post. It’s plain to see why employees would possibly balk at situations that proceed to lift the bar for achievement whereas increasingly builders lose their livelihoods.

Aw dang we cropped out my favourite signal from the Minnesota rally

— @mouseatreides.bsky.social (@mouseatreides.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-08-23T16:43:09.232Z