Wednesday, July 23rd 2025
ZeniMax Workers on Xbox Gaming Layoffs: 'Disgusting' and 'A Betrayal'
ZeniMax is just one of many game studios under the Xbox Gaming umbrella that has fallen victim to a recent round of layoffs in the name of profit. The layoffs, which occurred in early July and seemingly affected over 9,000 employees, according to The Verge, were motivated by Microsoft's desire to "increase agility and effectiveness." However, workers at ZeniMax Media, the game studio behind Elder Scrolls Online, have recently spoken anonymously to Game Developer and said that the layoffs have effectively had the opposite effect. One worker said "Everyone left now has to pick up the pieces as best they can. The morale and general confusion of it all has extended into our general workflow. We used to have very, very reliable people working on things, and they're no longer there." By all accounts, the layoffs have resulted in a severe brain drain and loss of institutional knowledge and experience, and the remaining workers at the studio have been left to pick up the pieces. One employee emphasized that, in some cases, the remaining staff will need to pick up the slack of multiple people who were laid off.
Part of the reason for the outsized effect on the remaining developers is just how chaotically the layoffs were handled, with one employee saying that they were locked out of all their company systems, including email and Slack, for hours before there was any communication from managers or higher-ups about what was going on. The chaotic management of the layoffs and their wide-reaching effects have severely diminished the morale of the workers who are still at ZeniMax, with one worker, Autumn Mitchell, who remains at ZeniMax, saying that "Morale is terrible. It's grotesque. People are stressed. They're crying." She continues to say "I also think we need to bring some people back. I don't see how we get through this work without bringing some people back," further implying that the workload and expectations placed on the workers still at ZeniMax are too much to handle for the remaining workers, especially if there is a standard of quality to be maintained.
Estimates from the staff who spoke to Game Developer say that as much as a third of the ZeniMax staff were affected by the July layoff round. ZeniMax and Xbox Gaming are also only the most recent example of a plague of layoffs that seems to be affecting the gaming and tech industries in the last few years, with the Video Game Layoffs Tracker estimating that at least 3,563 job cuts—excluding the ZeniMax layoffs mentioned here—have been confirmed.
Sources:
Game Developer, Windows Central
Part of the reason for the outsized effect on the remaining developers is just how chaotically the layoffs were handled, with one employee saying that they were locked out of all their company systems, including email and Slack, for hours before there was any communication from managers or higher-ups about what was going on. The chaotic management of the layoffs and their wide-reaching effects have severely diminished the morale of the workers who are still at ZeniMax, with one worker, Autumn Mitchell, who remains at ZeniMax, saying that "Morale is terrible. It's grotesque. People are stressed. They're crying." She continues to say "I also think we need to bring some people back. I don't see how we get through this work without bringing some people back," further implying that the workload and expectations placed on the workers still at ZeniMax are too much to handle for the remaining workers, especially if there is a standard of quality to be maintained.
"Some people were here for 15 years and cut out. Making it so that people have to rush to type a goodbye message into Slack to their colleagues that they've been working with on various projects, that have been making your corporation money for 15 years, is disgusting. It's disgusting. If I could get any message to any executive right now it would be review this process because it's not normal, and it's not okay" -Autumn Mitchell, ZeniMax Media senior QA tester.Another worker still at ZeniMax, Page Branson, said that the day of the layoffs was "one of the worst days at a job I've ever had in my entire life," and that "It was so sad seeing people so distraught and confused and not knowing if they would have a job by the end of the day—or even if the layoffs were done by the end of the day." She continued that the layoffs felt like a "betrayal of trust of the highest magnitude."
Estimates from the staff who spoke to Game Developer say that as much as a third of the ZeniMax staff were affected by the July layoff round. ZeniMax and Xbox Gaming are also only the most recent example of a plague of layoffs that seems to be affecting the gaming and tech industries in the last few years, with the Video Game Layoffs Tracker estimating that at least 3,563 job cuts—excluding the ZeniMax layoffs mentioned here—have been confirmed.
24 Comments on ZeniMax Workers on Xbox Gaming Layoffs: 'Disgusting' and 'A Betrayal'
- ZeniMax Online Studios LLC: developed TES Online. They're not and never have been "behind the Elder Scrolls series, DOOM, and Fallout games" even if they also did some work on Doom 2016 and Fallout 76.
- ZeniMax Media Inc.: owned by Microsoft Gaming and parent company to ZeniMax Online Studios, Id Software (the actual studio behind the Doom series) and Bethesda Softworks
Please fact-check.which in turn is the parent company ofwhich includes Bethesda Game Studios (the actual studio behind TES and Fallout 3 & 4) as a business unit.corporate America never ceases to amaze me - I have over 20 years in IT and if my company did this, and I was still hired, I'd quit as soon as I found another job
2. Fired employees start your own company and make your own games (or whatever).
3. People freaking crying at there job...either relax and tell your boss they can F themselves and just work calm and collected within your means and matching your damn salary.
3.5 Or if that is not an option, find a different job.
2 - With what money? Videogames, especially AA+ titles aren't cheap to produce and the lower you go the more it'll be a hit/miss.
3 - And go find a new job among thousands of freshly layed off people? WTF?!?
Microsoft laid off 1000s of people from all divisions throughout the whole company.
This is just a story because it hit game studios.
ZeniMax Online Studios, the actual game studio, is a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media.
From the top the corporate structure is like this:
- Microsoft
- Microsoft Gaming [1]
- ZeniMax Media
- Arkane Studios [2]
- Bethesda Softworks
- Bethesda Game Studios [1][2]
- id Software [2]
- MachineGames [2]
- ZeniMax Online Studios [2]
- ZeniMax Online Studios Hungary [1][2]
Entries marked [1] are not separate companies but divisions of their respective companies.Entries marked [2] are game studios.
I mistakenly said before Bethesda Game Studios was a subsidiary of Bethesda Softworks. It isn't. BGS is just a business unit (division) within BS.
Bethesda Softworks is a publisher in charge of all ZeniMax subsidiary game studios and also publishes games from studios unrelated to ZeniMax, like Nightdive Studios (System Shock 2 Remaster) which is owned by Atari and Tango Gameworks (Hi-Fi Rush) which was previously owned by ZeniMax Media but is currently a subsidiary of Krafton.
In other words: ZeniMax Media involvement in gaming is limited to owning a bunch of companies that either make them or publish them.
Hope this helps. :)
It would be one thing if the folks with the lowest performance ratings were culled or something, but my experience with any major corpo is these types of layoffs always leave tons of confusion in their wake because the people making the firing decision are far removed from the people actually working.
Good workers that are critical for certain projects get fired, tons of reorg and confusion usually follow, timelines get thrown in the dumpster, etc.
They should have gone on strike then not now (MS would probably back out), instead they made an agreement with Zenimax/MS. Not sure they aren't also to blame, if not for anything else, for being so naive.