Bethesda Game Studios union workers have announced plans to protest the recent mass layoffs impacting Microsoft’s Xbox division, telling members, “The company wants us to accept this as a done deal and quietly disappear. We won’t let that happen.”
Earlier this week, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced 3,200 job cuts impacting some of the most recognisable studios in the games industry. 1,600 of those cuts were effective immediately, with the remaining layoffs due to occur before the end of Microsoft’s current financial year. Activision, Mojang, Blizzard, and numerous other development teams under the Xbox Game Studios umbrella have all been impacted to varying degrees, and Bethesda/ZeniMax has also been heavily hit.
In the aftermath of Sharma’s announcement, Bethesda Game Studios union workers have announced plans to fight back. Over 240 Bethesda employees unionised in 2024, under the OneBGS banner, and the union’s mobilising committee has now confirmed a “Save Our Devs” rally will be held at ZeniMax offices in Rockville, Austin, Dallas, and Montreal on 15th July, in protest of Xbox’s recent layoffs.
“Microsoft and ZeniMax leadership have made the devastating decision to slash over 440 positions across [Bethesda Game Studios, ZeniMax Online Studios, id Software, ZeniMax Workers United (Quality Assurance), and ZeniMax corporate],” the mobilising committee wrote in an email to members seen by Game Developer. “Because we organised and certified our unions, we have hard-won legal rights and protections that non-unionised studios simply do not have.”
“The company wants us to accept this as a done deal and quietly disappear,” the email continued. “We won’t let that happen. Our next steps are to mobilise. We need every single member visible and unified.
“Microsoft and BGS are trying to frame these 35 cuts as an ‘entrepreneurial change in the scope of business,’ claiming they are transitioning from a ‘studio-based business model to a franchise-based model’ to dodge their legal obligation to bargain the decision with us. We completely reject this corporate wordplay. Changing a title on a PowerPoint slide does not erase our legal right to a say in our working conditions.”
While we push that legal fight forward, Microsoft is still legally required right now to sit down with us for ‘Effects Bargaining’. This means we have the right to negotiate exactly how these layoffs impact our people, and we are heading to the table to fight for every single affected worker. We are going to be demanding preferential transfers to force Microsoft to place affected BGS workers into open roles across Xbox and Microsoft first, stronger severance and extended healthcare to ensure no one is financially abandoned, as well as recall rights to ensure our laid-off members are the first ones hired back when BGS expands.”
As such, the union is encouraging members to stand in solidarity, according to Game Developer, to show management “we mean business” and to ensure Microsoft “[thinks] twice before ever attempting something like this again.”
Following news of Xbox’s sweeping job cuts, multiple current and former employees have spoken out about their impact. Bethesda team members have talked of plummeting morale at the studio and said the loss of key figures will have a “substantial and cascading effect” on the long in-development Elder Scrolls 6 – one of Microsoft’s most important upcoming games. Over at Doom and Quake developer id Software, meanwhile, the layoffs have been described as a “bloodbath”, with so few employees seemingly left at the legendary studio it’s reportedly been relegated to “support studio size”.
Amid all this, it’s been revealed Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, fresh off 3,200 layoffs, will co-lead the US Federal Reserve’s Productivity and Jobs task force on employment.
