Even before the Xbox layoffs, there was ‘tension’ at Halo Studios

At least five employees of Halo Studios were launched as part of the company’s workers’ layoffs at Microsoft on Wednesday, according to a developer on the science of the situation. About 200 to 300 people are still in the studio.

The Xbox employees in Microsoft received an email from Microsoft Gaming Philcer on Wednesday morning who take the “organizational transformations” that hit the team in the coming days. Halo Studios employees who were demobilized received an additional invitation to attend a meeting with the leaders of the organizations, and after long hours (very long), I started calling the teams. Amid discussions on the separation packages, the reasons stipulated in the shooting with Spencer’s note – “to increase movement of movement and effectiveness.”

The developer told Engadget: “I am angry that Phil’s email has boasted how this year is the most profitable ever for Xbox at the same time as the lever pulls,” the developer told Engadget. “I was not sure of any part of that I was supposed to be proud of it.”

Halo Studios is currently working on multiple games, including Halo’s main batch, a hostess Halo: FinalAnd it rotates quietly below its content content. The mood in the studio is tense, especially when it comes to one project that was recently in the crisis, according to the developer.

“I don’t think anyone is really happy with the quality of the product at the present time,” they said. “There was a lot of tension and Pep talks trying to mobilize people to ship.” The studio recently disturbed that it would reveal what he was working on in the Halo World Championship for this year in October.

The Halo Studios were threatened by the demobilization of workers in 2023, when it was still called 343 Industries, and that overcoming people often over campaign and narration teams, including Halo Joe State. (This is also the reason Halo: Final He had no ongoing story since that time period). Today, Halo Studios employs a mixture of full -time employees and contractors, as the novice producers and quality guarantee roles were generally contracted.

343 industries were criticized by fans to launch Halo: FinalAnd over the years, many former employees have talked about the studio’s dependence on contractors, who usually work with the company for a maximum of 18 months.

The employee who spoke to him said that since 2023, there has been a general shift towards working with contracted studios – instead of individual contractors – in the United States and Europe to accelerate Halo production. This method of which other FPS privileges is developed like Call of Duty and Battlefield.

The employee said: “Xbox generally feels years of curve in developing the game, and leads to a lot of time and lost effort,” the employee said. Meanwhile, the teams of the leaving teams warmly talked about their time in the Halo Studios and the people with whom they worked.

On July 2, Microsoft’s demobilization operations affected 9,000 worldwide employees, including 830 in Washington, where Halo studios are located. The Xbox section bears greatly, canceling the game and closing the studio. A Microsoft spokesman said that the Xbox team did not absorb the majority of workers’ demobilization, but given its relatively small size in the institution, this framework may not accurately reflect the impact.

Under the Xbox, Rare’s logo Everwell And the initiative The perfect darkness The restart was canceled, and the initiative was completely closed. According to the “Forza Motorsport Turn 10 Studios” developer, all its employees were affected, and all Zenimax Online, King, RAVEN, Sledgehammer and Halo Studios studios were affected. Zenimax president Matt Fior comes out 18 years after the studio leadership, and it is reported that the rare veteran designer Greg Miles has also disappeared after decades with his team. For the highest of everything, a romantic snowy storm War.

Microsoft has increasingly focused on artificial intelligence, which is the shift of the price of its share to its highest new levels. At Llamacon’s Meta in April, CEO Satya Nadella said that up to 30 percent of the company’s blog was written by artificial intelligence. Activision admitted in February the use of artificial intelligence in Black OPS 6. It is not clear how important artificial intelligence is to this last round of workers’ demobilization, but the use of Copilot “is no longer optional” within Microsoft.

“They are trying to replace the largest possible number of jobs with artificial intelligence agents.”

News of the Xbox teams specified throughout the day appeared, as the employees shared their experiences on social media and spoke with various publications. Microsoft registered 1900 Xbox employees in January 2024 and 650 other employees in September, and last year, ARKANE Austin Games and Alpha Dog Gameworks (obtained by Krafton) closed. Microsoft has announced $ 25.8 billion in the first three months of 2025, with an annual increase of 8 percent in revenues of Xbox content and services.

Microsoft Engadget told the layoffs that will affect less than four percent of the company’s global workforce. A statement from a Microsoft spokesman reads as follows: “We continue to implement changes in the organizational and factories necessary to put the company and the teams to succeed in a dynamic market.”

If you buy something through a link in this article, we may win the commission.