Earlier in 2026, when Microsoft announced the Xbox Reset that saw 1,600 employees lose their jobs immediately, with 1,600 more on the chopping block for later, and several game studios either cut loose or shut-down entirely, Arkane Lyon was mentioned as one of the studios at risk of closure. Now, according to a report by Le Monde, it seems as though the Dishonored and Deathloop studio has until November 13 to find a buyer before Microsoft will officially shut it down. Arkane has already been forced to cancel the Blade game it was working on, as a result of the recent layoffs, and if no agreement is reached before the projected date, 217 jobs are at risk.

According to a French union delegate representing employees at the studio, the search for a buyer has not gone well. French businesses with more than 1,000 employees are legally mandated to look for a buyer for any business they wish to close for at least three months, and that obligatory search ends on November 13. The union says it has asked for an extension on that deadline and in order to buy more time in the negotiations over the employee redundancy plan, in the hopes that the studio and its workers would be saved, although the negotiations with Microsoft have not gone well.

Microsoft is putting a hard cap on Xbox Cloud Gaming for the first time, ending years of unlimited streaming for Game Pass subscribers. Starting in November, Game Pass Essential will include 5 hours of cloud streaming a month, Premium gets 10 hours, and Ultimate tops out at 15 hours. Once subscribers burn through their allotment, they'll need to pay for extra hours through the Xbox Store to keep going. Xbox says the change should only affect around 4% of subscribers, so casual streamers likely won't notice much. Heavy users are a different story, particularly anyone leaning on cloud streaming as their main way to play.

Xbox hasn't announced pricing for extra hours yet, saying more details will come before the change goes live. The company did admit outright that "the practical result is a higher cost" for some players. Contrary to how generous this might look on paper, Xbox's own ceiling is notably tighter than NVIDIA GeForce Now's 100-hour monthly cap on its top tier. Microsoft points to rising cloud infrastructure costs as the reason, though it's hard not to read this as part of the division's overall push toward profitability after a rough stretch of layoffs.