It's a massacre, Microsoft closes 4 Bethesda studios
After good news, there always comes bad news. At least that's what seems to be happening in the world of video games. For two years, studio closures have been happening one after the other and unfortunately they are similar. But there can't be anything worse than Microsoft's management of Xbox studios (apart from perhaps that of Embracer Group). The firm announced today that it would close the doors of 4 Bethesda studios, some of which are simply emblematic.
1900 and beyond
This comes only a few months after the layoff of 1,900 people across the group following the takeover of Bethesda and Activision Blizzard. And if we thought that the big cleaning was over, obviously that's not the case. IGN, which relays the information, shares an email sent to Xbox Game Studios employees by Matt Booty. It is recorded that the 4 studios affected by the closures (and therefore the layoffs) are Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Studios, Roundhouse Games.
Some of them are better known for having developed Hi-Fi Rush, Redfall, The Evil Within or Ghostwire Tokyo. However, not all developers are lost. Indeed, we can read that the Roundhouse Games teams will migrate to ZeniMax Online Studios as support. Other people and projects, however, did not have the same luck in being drafted.
This is particularly the case of the Arkane Austin teams, the subsidiary which gave life to Redfall. In view of its commercial failure, Microsoft decided to completely stop its development. The only good news in this story is that the impacted online games will not close their servers and that players will be able to continue enjoying them for some time. But what weight does this information have when we learn of the surprise dismissal of dozens of employees?
Investing in the future… by eliminating positions
The reason given by Microsoft is the redirection of financial resources to focus on “high impact titles” And “Bethesda's portfolio of hit games and beloved worlds that you've nurtured for decades.” Although he thanks the teams for each of their recent projects, the email seems rather impersonal to us. This obviously angered the players… but not only that.
Dinga Bakaba, known for leading franchises Dishonored And Deathloop within the Arkane Lyon studio, dared to express himself on his social networks for a moment that he describes as “human”. In reality, this is a tirade denouncing the way developers have been treated for several years. He states thus:
It is good to note that this studio, based in Lyon in France, is not impacted by the measure which only concerns Arkane's Texan studio. At the moment, no one knows what will happen to the laid-off employees, or if they will find work again.
