Microsoft Layoffs Signal Video Game Industry Brain Drain

The consequences of the Xbox layoffs are still trickling out, with news of canceled games and closed studios only the vaguest outline of the full effects. Among those caught in Microsoft’s latest bad decision are people with a combined over 60 years at the company, and even more years in games. 

Here’s just a handful that are known so far. Zenimax Online Studios president and Elder Scrolls Online director Matt Firor announced he was leaving the company after “more than 18 years.” Firor has been at Zenimax Online since its founding in 2007, long before it fell into Microsoft’s clutches in 2021. Before Zenimax, he was one of the founders of Mythic Entertainment and has game credits going back to the 90s.

Turn 10 design director Jon Knoles announced on LinkedIn that he’d been caught in the layoffs, after 15 years at Xbox working on Forza games. Knoles has been in game development since 1989, and told Jedi News that “I landed my first game development job at Taito Software Inc., working on [1991’s] Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for the 8-bit Nintendo system.” Knoles went on to work on so many Star Wars games, spending nearly 15 years at LucasArts, among other studios.

At Rare, which saw its in-development game Everwild canceled yesterday, VGC reports that Gregg Mayles is leaving the studio after 35 years. Mayles was working on Everwild, but his career at Rare started with games like Donkey Kong Country, Battletoads, and Banjo-Kazooie. He served as creative director on Sea of Thieves, where a song in the game’s soundtrack is named after him. VGC also reports that executive producer Louise O’Connor will be leaving the studio; O’Connor, who was also working on Everwild, has been with Rare since 1999.

The experience and talent Microsoft has just discarded is staggering, and these are only some of the people we know about so far. When Phil Spencer writes in his layoff justification that “we would not be where we are today without the time, energy, and creativity of those whose roles are impacted,” the people he’s speaking of weren’t just foundational to Microsoft, but to some of gaming’s earliest characters, studios, and systems. But in order for Xbox to “protect what is thriving and concentrate effort on areas with the greatest potential, while delivering on the expectations the company has for our business,” those people now have to be pushed out from the industry they helped create. 

From a hard-hearted business perspective, it makes sense to lose experienced people; they cost a lot of money! They cost a lot of money because they have a lot of experience, experience that doesn’t just contribute to the projects they’re on, but to their less experienced colleagues. This helps those colleagues, in turn, become the kind of experienced game developers Microsoft is willing to be rid of to make the line go up. Microsoft’s broader cuts have focused on axing managers in a claim toward “efficiency,” but how efficient is it to brain drain your company?

These days, early-career and experienced game developers alike can’t keep their jobs, and up-and-coming developers can’t enter the industry if there’s no jobs available. Game development isn’t alone in this; we’re seeing similar things happen in TV and journalism, among other fields. What happens to these industries when basically no one can work in them? How does Microsoft, or any company, plan to make the games it claims its layoffs are in service of when no one is left to make them? Where do laid-off people go, and what happens when newcomers are competing for a handful of jobs against people with decades of experience? This whole thing sucks.