Video game developers gathered again in Rockville to protest and keep up the fight against local job cuts under XBOX studios.
Last month, game developers rallied after Microsoft announced mass layoffs at its subsidiaries ZeniMax and Bethesda Game Studios (BGS). On Tuesday, they returned to protest outside the ZeniMax building on Piccard Drive.
BGS makes XBOX games like “Fallout” and “The Elder Scrolls.”
“Game devs ultimately are the most passionate gamers around,” said Dane Olds, lead weapon artist and 20-year veteran with BGS who worked on games like Oblivion, Fallout and Skyrim before being laid off. “They got into this business because they love it, they want to make good games, and they want to make gamers happy, and these layoffs basically just make all that worse.”
Not much has changed for these workers since July’s rally, but the union is still fighting, and these game developers do not plan on backing down.
In a message to employees July 6, Microsoft Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer Amy Coleman said, “In XBOX, we are restructuring to position the business for long-term success. Engineering teams across the company will also evolve their structure and priorities to meet customer needs and innovate for the future.” Coleman said the roles are not being replaced by AI, but at the same time “AI is changing how work gets done.”
“Microsoft, it feels like, only really values the franchises themselves and not the people that contributed to make them how great they are,” said Ben Carnow, a lead character artist at BGS since 2007. Carnow was not laid off, but says he lost coworkers who he has worked with for decades, one of whom was a concept artist who helped make designs for the Fallout TV show — “that is such a huge hit right now,” Carnow said. “The fact that they could lay off him amongst all this is insane to me.”
“We care about the games,” said Stephanie Zachariadis, BGS quest designer and bargaining committee representative for the workers union.Right now, she has been reinstated to paid leave in order to continue union negotiations but is not allowed to do her actual job of being a game designer. Zachariadis said it is of the utmost importance to developers to prevent the video game industry from being destabilized.
