It’s been a hard couple of months to work in gaming, with large developers across the country laying off large portions of their companies. The latest swath of firings came earlier this week when Microsoft, which announced a $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard a little over a year ago, laid off 10,000 workers. Many of those workers were under Phil Spencer’s Microsoft Gaming, and the executive has now put out a letter giving his thoughts.
In a company-wide email that was shared with Kotaku, Spencer commented on the layoffs.
“The Gaming Leadership Team had to make decisions that we felt set us up for the long-term success of our products and business, but the individual results of those decisions are real.”
Spencer also said that over the next couple of weeks, the company will offer many opportunities to connect and answer any questions. Thankfully, Spencer will provide monthly updates on the company, although that’s likely little consolation to those who want to know why they were let go as they can’t attend these meetings.
These layoffs affected a large number of Microsoft Gaming’s studios, including Starfield developer Bethesda and Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries.
There was a time when many credited Microsoft buying up gaming studios as a sign that the developers would have continued support they couldn’t get alone. As Xbox begins to cut off large pieces of its developers, however, it’s a wonder if this wide net of acquisitions on the behalf of Microsoft is a good thing at all.
