ZeniMax employees have spoken out following Microsoft’s mass layoffs impacting over 9000 employees at the company, calling the process – which reportedly saw “hundreds” of colleagues at the studio lose their jobs – “inhumane”.
“It’s not okay. It wasn’t normal,” senior QA tester Autumn Mitchell told Game Developer. “I don’t care how many times [Microsoft lays off people] to try and make it seem normal – it’s not. The way they do it is inhumane. I don’t care how much they say that it’s dignified or they want to do it in a respectful way – it’s not.”
This month’s mass layoffs – which impacted numerous Xbox studios including Rare, Turn 10, The Initiative, and Raven Software – were accompanied by multiple project cancellations, and marked the third round of significant job cuts at the company since 2023.
One source, speaking to Game Developer, described the chaos accompanying Microsoft’s latest layoffs, claiming staff had been frozen out of company communications – including Slack and email – before HR had even made contact, causing “widespread confusion and panic”. Another employee, Page Branson, told the publication Microsoft had “failed to effectively clarify who would be impacted by the layoffs”, leaving colleagues “distraught and confused”.