Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is reportedly betting heavily on major Bethesda Game Studios franchises like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, yet it is exactly the studios behind The Elder Scrolls that are among the most affected by the recent layoffs.
ZeniMax Online Studios, maker of The Elder Scrolls Online, was forced to cut 213 employees, forcing the team to revise its announced roadmap for the game. But even BGS itself was gutted. The Union already mentioned via social media that dozens were removed, making the road to the launch of The Elder Scrolls VI even harder. Today, IGN published a report citing sources from the studio who are very concerned about the massively anticipated sequel to 2011's Skyrim.
Many veterans were removed, such as Christiane Meister, a Lead Character Artist who spent 27 years of her career at BGS and worked on Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4. The fear, as you'll read in the quotes below, is that such experienced developers will be replaced by cheaper, less experienced workers who will inevitably delay The Elder Scrolls VI even further as they acclimate to the studio's proprietary tools and unique workload.
- Their loss will have a substantial and cascading effect on The Elder Scrolls VI and morale of this studio.
- It's been a mix of every discipline: programmers, artists, and designers. One person who's been at the company since Morrowind was cut.
- There is a fear that we are going to be replaced by cheaper, contracted labor, or we will hire folks to replace them that will need to be onboarded (our tools are proprietary, other devs aren't going to know how they work), resulting in more delays, and we'll need to crunch to make up the time.
- We've all been very excited and hyped for The Elder Scrolls VI, and this has had a crushing effect on morale. We were already running a tight ship and are worried about this delaying the game (though a final release date was not yet chosen as far as we know).
- It seems like the company wants to make up the loss in talent with outsourcers. I've heard from my colleagues that they're already being asked to train new contractors. I have no idea how they'll continue updating Fallout 76 without hiring an external studio.
It would have been understandable if Sharma redirected talent from experienced studios within the Xbox portfolio to teams like Bethesda Game Studios without laying off the experienced folks. That, at least, would have made sense. The Elder Scrolls VI is already said to be at least two years out; following these layoffs, we could be looking at 2030 or something like that.
All in all, Xbox's strategy remains confusing and perplexing to the public, much to the chagrin of fans of the brand and the many games that fall under it. In other news, Xbox has mandated that Obsidian start working on a new Fallout game, but it also cut 25% of that studio's staff and had them cancel Avowed 2.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
