According to French journalist Gauthier Andres on Bluesky, Virtuos, the studio players will recognize as the team working with Konami on Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, and also recently helped Bethesda release The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, is undergoing mass layoffs, with 300 developers set to lose their jobs.
In a multi-part thread, Andres claims that sources they have spoken to describe internal struggles within Virtuos, as the studio's leadership is seemingly losing the trust of its staff. They point to issues with the team being overworked on getting Oblivion Remastered to the finish line under Virtuos' making an effort of "over-delivering on quality relative to the budget," seemingly as a way of making the studio stand out in an already crowded industry of support and co-development teams.
Tensions between staff and leaders were compounded by the fact that, per Andres' claims, Virtuos isn't enjoying any royalty payments off the success of Oblivion Remastered, which has risen to be one of the best-selling games of 2025 so far.
Leadership allegedly announced a freeze on raises and a reduction in bonuses this past February, which certainly didn't help the situation, and now, with these layoffs, according to Andres, developers at Virtuos Lyon have gone on strike to protest the cuts, and the impact they'd have to the company's productivity and operating capacity. And, to make matters worse for developer morale, Virtuos leaders have also allegedly begun pushing generative AI tools on employees, who are now allegedly mandated to attend basic training sessions on using AI tools.
According to Andres, 200 of the 300 proposed cuts are happening to a team based in China, while the remaining 100 cuts are impacting developers at its France and US-based studios. Virtuos has yet to make an official statement acknowledging the layoffs at the time of this writing. We'll update this story as more official details are revealed.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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