There Is No Plan

“What else is there to say?” It’s a sentiment many in the games industry have shared following the news that Microsoft laid off another 268 employees. This after the company gave its headcount a buzzcut to the tune of 1,600 mere months ago. The dismal news just keeps coming. We knew it would, because Microsoft signaled as much. But even within that framework, it’s time to acknowledge that those who’ve deemed themselves worthy of steering the ship have no meaningful long-term plan—nothing overriding or set in stone. Unfortunately, this isn’t just a Microsoft problem.

Hit particularly hard by the latest round of layoffs was Halo Studios, which has been demoted from heading up a new entry in the Halo canon to support status. Now a team at Activision will take the reins on the series that’s synonymous with Xbox, a whiplash-inducing pivot that would have been considered unthinkable even a few years ago. Will this lead to a game that shares continuity in terms of tone, story, and feel with what came before? Difficult to say, but it’s a tall order.

More crucially, it seems unlikely that many of the same people will be involved in its creation. Some fans who felt that recent series entries lacked the magic of Bungie’s originals have declared this a win; finally, an untested team from a company with a totally different ethos will somehow return Halo to its old glory. Again, this does not read like a recipe for the kind of success lapsed fans are looking for, but I suppose time will tell.

What’s clear is that there was one plan before Asha Sharma took over Xbox, and now there is another. Between those opposing poles, it is possible that there was no long-term plan beyond “cut, cut, cut.” During the week of the first round of layoffs in July, remaining employees at heavily impacted studios like Doom progenitor id Software noted that higher-ups failed to give them clear marching orders. They were forced to stew in uncertainty right after crunching to finish critically acclaimed DLC. Employees have since repeatedly insisted that, despite management’s claims, Microsoft did not understand what it was ripping and tearing into—that it has done irreparable damage to studios with decades of accumulated expertise and domain knowledge. 

Even now, months after the initial layoffs, employees still aren’t certain what lies ahead.

“Things are still very chaotic,” a current id Software employee who was granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly told Aftermath. “While there has been an attempt to communicate to the studios, it is still entirely in bullshit corporate speak. I still don’t believe they have a clear vision for the future. The only concrete thing they have communicated is they want higher profits, and they want it now. Aggressive goals are being set that would have been unrealistic even before the layoffs. … To say the workers within Xbox have a dim view of the future is putting it mildly. We keep thinking morale can’t sink lower but the obvious incompetence of Xbox management somehow keeps driving it down worse.”

This mirrors shifts in strategy that have come to dominate the still-new Sharma era, including others outlined Tuesday. Rare is joining Activision, Turn 10 and Playground are fusing, and—most gallingly, considering their history—Obsidian is being folded into Bethesda to work on Fallout instead of its own original series. As with the previous round of layoffs, details betray Microsoft’s haphazard approach: A Halodeveloper got promoted and laid off in the same week. Gears of War: E-Day‘s story director is out of a job days after celebrating that the game had gone gold. Hellblade developer Ninja Theory, now without a buyer after a brief glimmer of hope, is once again on the chopping block.

All of this betrays a simplistic mindset that does not accurately reflect the reality of game development: People are disposable, studios are interchangeable, and series can be traded like sports teams. Nothing matters more than franchises and their money-printing prowess. Unless, evidently, you are Hideo Kojima, in which case Microsoft suddenly has money to burn. 

The Halo connection is especially noteworthy because, this same week, Bungie—months removed from its own round of mass layoffs, specifically targeting “most” of the Destiny team—declared that Destiny is “foundational” to its future. Again, there evidently was no long-term plan in place here: The company pulled the plug on future Destiny 2 content so suddenly that some employees were taken by surprise, only for Marathon to land with a thud. Now, despite a severe lack of manpower, Bungie is pivoting back to Destiny, at least to some extent. Just as Microsoft has taken to jingling the keys of Fallout and Elder Scrolls to distract from an otherwise dismal state of affairs, Bungie is trotting out the horse it sent to the glue factory in a desperate attempt to regain trust.

What’s missing, in both cases, are two key ingredients: people and time. Nobody up top wants to entrust studios with either of those things anymore. Instead, all they know how to do is panic and pivot. The money is absolutely there, especially in Microsoft’s case, but not for the old-fashioned approach of teams pumping out good games at a manageable scale. There’s always got to be a moonshot, whether it’s Game Pass (and a downright irresponsible studio acquisition spree to support it), massively overspending on Activision Blizzard, or now, AI. Executives cannot or do not want to envision anything more sustainable; all that matters is those sweet, sweet quarterly numbers. 

The end result? A bunch of flailing and thrashing about, especially as their own decisions lead the industry to become even more unstable. That’s not a plan. That’s pure, short-sighted reactivity. You can’t run anything that way and expect it to last, but the C-suite knows only one approach: strip it to the bone and push it to the brink until all that’s left is a shell. Switch out the names and faces of those in charge all you want, but without a willingness to give people time and resources—and even weather a few failures without panicking and changing course—we’ll just keep winding up back here.

Xbox Lays Off More Workers, Combines Studios
Xbox cut 268 additional jobs, and brought Obsidian under Bethesda alongside other changes
AftermathRiley MacLeod