It’s a tragedy within a tragedy. The big news this week was Microsoft laying off 1,900 workers in its video game division, including a number from various studios it’s recently acquired including Activision-Blizzard and Bethesda.
The layoffs at Blizzard were part of Microsoft’s decision to cancel its unannounced survival game—a title that Blizzard had been developing for over six years, since before the pandemic. Announced in 2022, the game had yet to be named, we never got to see a trailer, but it would have been the first new IP from Blizzard since Overwatch, which launched way back in May of 2016.
The above image was one of just two pieces of concept art released to show off the game. The other is this:
A lot of the game’s (now former) developers have spoken excitedly—if vaguely—about the title since its announcement. Obviously, the team making the game will be a bit biased, but it was hard not to catch a bit of the hype when reading social media posts about how different and beautiful it was. While I’m not a huge survival game aficionado, I certainly would have loved to see what Blizzard did with the genre. It’s a real shame that one of Microsoft’s first decisions after finally acquiring Activision-Blizzard for $69 billion is to layoff 9% of its gaming workers and cancel one of its most exciting projects.
Then again, Microsoft is known for cancelling lots of promising upcoming games despite desperately needing more exclusives to pad out its Xbox offerings. I’m still a bit bitter about the cancellation of Platinum’s Scalebound in 2017. While a new Fable game is in the works, Fable Legends will never see the light of day. I suspect there is more to the story—a game in development for over six years must have had some issues—but it’s still disappointing.
Microsoft’s layoffs are part of a larger industry trend. Riot Games, the studio behind League of Legends and Valorant is cutting 530 employees or roughly 11% of its staff; Amazon-owned Twitch laid off over 500 employees, about 35% of its workforce; and Unity is slashing a quarter of its staff and shedding 1,800 jobs, just months after the company laid off 265 employees in late 2023.
