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Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£35.99Subscribe now Essential Hardware Abiotic Factor Dune: Awakening PC Gaming Show Recommended reading Gaming Industry 'There has to be a better way than this': Game developers call Microsoft's latest layoffs 'a colossal waste of talent' from a publisher that seems like it's in 'a death spiral' Gaming Industry 'A future has been stolen from many of us and our community will never experience an amazing game': Microsoft MMO devs respond to cancelation of project Phil Spencer reportedly loved Gaming Industry Xbox bet that Game Pass would be the future of gaming, and we're all paying for it Gaming Industry Before cancelling ZeniMax's Destiny-style MMO shooter, Xbox executives reportedly enjoyed early demos so much that the controller had to be pulled from Phil Spencer's hands Gaming Industry EA Japan exec laments Microsoft's crushing layoffs, and the demands shareholders make for 'short-term results from large-scale investments' Gaming Industry CWA union derides Microsoft layoffs when ‘the company is prospering’: 'We are living through a moment of profound corporate consolidation and disruption' Gaming Industry Microsoft's 200 laid-off King devs are reportedly being replaced by AI they helped build, while its 'absolute 's***show' HR department looks away and whistles Gaming Industry The Elder Scrolls Online ESO devs at ZeniMax reel from Microsoft's 'hollow' layoff emails, with some wondering how a 'carcass of workers' is 'supposed to keep shipping award-winning games' Harvey Randall 23 July 2025 "I don't care how many times they do it to try and make it seem normal—it's not." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: ZeniMax Online Studios) It's with precious little pleasure that I sit here and try to find a new way to say 'the games industry has had a rough couple of years' without cannibalising my own work—if you've been following along, you already know the score. Mass layoffs, studio closures, and (most recently) a whopping 9,000 layoffs at Microsoft, despite CEO Phil Spencer boasting about how strong the company is looking. The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) developer ZeniMax formed a part of these layoffs, alongside a cancelled MMO that was apparently so good nobody could put it down: All sacrificed at the altar of growth. Per an exhaustive interview with Game Developer, the actual process was quick and callous, alleges an anonymous ZeniMax employee: "No Slack, email, nothing is working. We have an off-work Discord, but it's all people freaking out with no real verifiable info." Another describes the feeling as not dissimilar to being "run over by a truck." Related Articles 'There has to be a better way than this': Game developers call Microsoft's latest layoffs 'a colossal waste of talent' from a publisher that seems like it's in 'a death spiral' 'A future has been stolen from many of us and our community will never experience an amazing game': Microsoft MMO devs respond to cancelation of project Phil Spencer reportedly loved Xbox bet that Game Pass would be the future of gaming, and we're all paying for it It's understandable that developers want to remain anonymous in the wake of layoffs like these, but what I find notable here is that some were happy to be named—including Page Branson, who has very few kind words for the actions of Microsoft writ large, dubbing it a "betrayal of trust of the highest magnitude". Autumn Mitchell, a member of ZeniMax's union alongside Branson, adds: "It's not okay. It wasn't normal. I don't care how many times they do it to try and make it seem normal—it's not. The way they do it is inhumane. I don't care how much they say that it's dignified or they want to do it in a respectful way—it's not." Workers with up to 15 years of experience were laid off, quickly shuttered out of Slack channels without so much as a chance to say goodbye: "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." Mitchell, in particular, says if they had a chance to talk to Spencer directly, they'd "get on my knees and beg" him to "please talk to people and ask them what this is like on the ground level before sending out the blast emails that you do … You are too far away to have any idea how—maybe not intentionally—how hollow those emails are." The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Microsoft has, over the past few years, quickly earned itself an EA-like reputation for being a company that swallows up promising studios and spits them out once it's done chewing. Here's a quick timeline: January 2024: After a $68.7 billion acquisition of Blizzard, over 1,900 employees are laid off and Blizzard's survival project is cancelled. May 2024: Hi-Fi Rush studio Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin are shuttered. (They started eyeing up more acquisitions after this). July 2025: 9,000 more layoffs, and alongside ZeniMax's apparently-quite good MMO game, Perfect Dark and Rare's Everwild were cancelled, and Romero Games was dropped. I don't know about you, but if I were a game dev and my studio was acquired by Microsoft, I'd meet that news with dread rather than excitement. Whether that'd be more dread than the usual is up for debate. Branson more-or-less has the same gut feeling, telling Game Developer: "I don't know what [Microsoft] can do at this point to win back trust from the consumers and some of their employees …I continue to think back to Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin—watching that happen is now the second worst day of my career." Echoing other industry statements about the sheer, utter waste of institutional knowledge, Branson continues: "We used to have very, very reliable people working on things and they're no longer there. They were integral. I feel like they were numbers on a sheet that got cut, but the real application of what they were doing was integral to making everything run correctly." Mitchell puts it very well: "This carcass of workers that remains is somehow supposed to keep shipping award-winning games. I don't really know [how that works] … Microsoft just took everything that could have been great about the culture and collaboration and decimated it. "Morale is terrible. It's grotesque. People are stressed. They're crying. For a lot of us, those were some of our best friends. They're our roommates. In my case it was my partner—my partner and I worked together and he was laid off. And I'm not a unique story." All this despite the fact that ZeniMax's QA team had recently unionised—something I'd wager gives both Mitchell and Branson confidence to make these sorts of statements with their names attached: "We just ratified our first contract. It was a real moment of celebration for us, but we only had about two weeks to celebrate it. In that regard, it's hard not to feel like 'damn, we just went through all of that and now a third of us aren't going to see this thing in action.'" The question of the hour, it seems, is whether Microsoft—or the industry—will learn anything from this constant march towards leaner/agile/flexible/streamlined corporate structures. Or maybe it'll just keep fumbling interviews and suggesting people use AI to soothe the ache. I live in doubt of the former and grim expectation of the latter. Best MMOs: Most massive Best strategy games: Number crunching Best open world games: Unlimited exploration Best survival games: Live craft love Best horror games: Fight or flight Harvey Randall Social Links Navigation Staff Writer Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many. 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'There has to be a better way than this': Game developers call Microsoft's latest layoffs 'a colossal waste of talent' from a publisher that seems like it's in 'a death spiral' 'A future has been stolen from many of us and our community will never experience an amazing game': Microsoft MMO devs respond to cancelation of project Phil Spencer reportedly loved Xbox bet that Game Pass would be the future of gaming, and we're all paying for it Before cancelling ZeniMax's Destiny-style MMO shooter, Xbox executives reportedly enjoyed early demos so much that the controller had to be pulled from Phil Spencer's hands EA Japan exec laments Microsoft's crushing layoffs, and the demands shareholders make for 'short-term results from large-scale investments' CWA union derides Microsoft layoffs when ‘the company is prospering’: 'We are living through a moment of profound corporate consolidation and disruption' Latest in Gaming Industry Stop Killing Games is facing a complaint in the EU that uses nonsense logic to accuse the movement's founder of failing to disclose financial contributions he never made: 'It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you' 'The hunting genre was because of Wal-Mart:' Doom dev John Romero says the entire category was created to appease one Texan executive John Romero says indies are the future of game development: 'These people are the ones that make triple-A studios go, 'Wait a minute, we need to start doing this'' Bloodlines 2 studio The Chinese Room has bought its own independence, but also laid off employees in the process Stop Killing Games' EU initiative hits 1.4 million signatures—and if at least 1 million are valid, it's off to the European Commission 'Dangerous on a whole new level'—while Steam's policy change is new, the shadow of credit card meddling has been looming for a while, with Nier: Automata's Yoko Taro sounding the alarm last year Latest in News This keyboard looks like it's been plucked straight from Half-Life 1 with how well it replicates low-res classic game textures YouTuber dreams up and builds lockpicking robot that can feel the pins in the tumbler and it almost even works Razer raised my hopes with this Kanto starter based Pokemon collection then released some of the ugliest peripherals I've ever seen Razer's latest Cobra HyperSpeed mouse is also the cheapest one yet to work with the HyperFlux mouse powering mat Guy with 35,000 hours in Ark: Survival Evolved gives it a negative Steam review: 'How do I get a refund!!' 6 years of hushed development later, Riot's League of Legends fighting game has finally resurfaced and it's going to be playable very soon HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES LATEST GAME REVIEWS Best PCIe 5.0 SSD for gaming in 2025: the only Gen 5 drives I will allow in my PC Best graphics cards in 2025: I've tested pretty much every AMD and Nvidia GPU of the past 20 years and these are today's top cards Best gaming laptop in 2025: I've put the best of this new generation head-to-head and we have a winner Best gaming chair in 2025: I've tested a ton of gaming chairs and these are the seats I'd suggest for any PC gamer Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads Wuchang: Fallen Feathers review Abiotic Factor review Alienware Area-51 review Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 ARGB review Netgear Nighthawk RS600 review PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. 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