game industry layoffs
Supermassive, Ninja Theory, and The Coalition: Inside the 2026 Layoff Wave That's Hitting Studios Right After They Ship
Four days. That is how long Gears of War: E-Day story director Juan Vaca had to celebrate his game going gold before Microsoft's layoff machinery caught up with him. Vaca, who joined The Coalition in...
Gears of War: E-Day Story Director Laid Off Days After Going Gold - What It Means for Xbox
Gears of War: E-Day Went Gold. Four Days Later, Its Story Director Was Gone. On September 17, 2026, Juan Vaca did what every game developer dreams of doing. As story director on Gears of War: E-Day...
Halo Studios' Cinematic Director Was Promoted and Laid Off in the Same Week: Inside Xbox's 268-Person Reset
"Promoted and laid off in the same week is pretty wild." That is how Josh Daniels, until recently the cinematic director at Halo Studios, summarized his own week on LinkedIn. In a single...
Undead Labs Went Independent From Xbox - Then Cut the Devs Building State of Decay 3 Within 24 Hours
Undead Labs Went Independent From Xbox, Then Cut Its Own Developers Within 24 Hours Undead Labs told the world it had escaped Xbox's restructuring by becoming an independent, employee-owned studio....
The Best-Reviewed Star Wars Game in 22 Years Just Launched - Then Its Studio Furloughed 80% of Its Staff
There is a bitter irony unfolding in the gaming world right now. Star Wars: Zero Company , the turn-based tactics game from Bit Reactor and Respawn Entertainment, has just become the highest-scoring...
id Software Loses Half Its Staff, Including idTech Engineers, as Xbox’s ‘Big Reset’ Cleaves the Doom Studio
The same day id Software shipped Doom: The Dark Ages, Revelations DLC, roughly half the studio was laid off, including most of its coders and the legendary idTech engine team. The grim timing...
PlayStation’s Live-Service Fantasy vs. Bungie’s Bloody Reality: CEO Talks Revival While Hundreds Lose Jobs
The Same-Week Contradiction: CEO Optimism Meets Mass Layoffs In late June 2026, Nishino told Famitsu that live-service games are “relatively new” and that PlayStation wants to “revitalize the market”...
Seven Years of Work, One Month of Sales: The Luna Abyss Team Layoff Exposes Indie Gaming’s Brutal Reality
A Cosmic Horror Shooter That Won Critics Over Luna Abyss was never meant to be a corporate product. The studio began life as Bonsai Collective, founded in 2019 by Hollie Emery, Harry Corr, and Benni...