In March 2021, Microsoft completed the acquisition of Zenimax Media (Bethesda). Since then, the company’s layoffs have changed significantly, and work has become less comfortable. Bethesda lead artist Alex Nguyen talked about this in an interview my city.
Nguyen said that before Microsoft acquired ZeniMax, large-scale layoffs were rare, and now employees face large-scale layoffs every year. According to him, many experts previously wanted to work in Bethesda until retirement, but now they have to constantly worry about their positions. Nguyen noted that even after the launch issues of Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls Online, developers still had time to fix bugs without having to make massive cuts. And after merging with Xbox “Spending cuts suddenly start every year”.
Meanwhile, Alex Nguyen said Bethesda’s layoffs mean losing experts with a wealth of experience. If a team of 5 people understands the functionality of a certain system, firing all 5 people will result in a cumulative loss of knowledge and the need to retrain employees.
These statements were made in the context of the “Save Our Developers” event, which took place on August 18 in nine cities across the United States and Canada. The event was organized by the OneBGS union, which represents employees at Bethesda Game Studios. Attendees spoke out against a new round of layoffs in Microsoft’s gaming division.
Let me remind you that in July Microsoft began a large-scale restart of Xbox. In the next year, the game team will lay off at least 3,200 people, of which 1,600 employees have already received layoff notices. Bethesda Game Studios technical producer Nathan Khan also said in an interview with Kotaku that the union proposed its own layoff plan to Microsoft as early as February, but did not receive a response before the layoffs were implemented. The Communications Workers of America subsequently filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing Microsoft of violating its bargaining obligations.