Report: Microsoft Has Laid Off Around 1,000 Employees, Including People at Xbox - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 19 October 2022 / 3,708 Views
Microsoft has laid off around 1,000 employees, according to a report from Insider. The layoffs have hit people at the Xbox division and Microsoft Strategic Missions and Technology division.
Studio Alpha, which was focused on making a cloud-based wargame simulator for the military and commercial customers, has been shut down, according to Studio Alpha principal architect Greg Chapman who tweeted his entire team has been laid off.
"Whelp, it’s been an adventure," said Chapman in a tweet on his account that has since been privated. "Today me and my entire team were laid off. 12 years here at Microsoft, and 25 in game development. Details shortly once the shock wears off."
KC Lemson, who has been at Microsoft since 1998, revealed she got laid off.
"Welp, who’s got two thumbs and just got laid off from Microsoft this morning? 2022 has been quite a year," Lemson tweeted.
Welp, who’s got two thumbs and just got laid off from Microsoft this morning?
— KC Lemson (@kclemson) October 18, 2022
2022 has been quite a year. pic.twitter.com/JfsbwKvKfV
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I know this generates clicks in the news section and there is a need to make Sony in the best light possible but don't forget other news.
Small news
Like Sony paying devs/publishers to keep games off of gamepass.
I will join laughing as well lol.
Inflation + shareholders = layoffs
And from the billions in profit the company as a whole made.
There isn't really anything newsworthy here. This is a mega company making a completely normal, occasional shift in headcount.
More sign of an economic downturn I guess. Shame MS wasn't able to relocate those workers to other sectors I'm sure there were some well skilled people. I would like to know to what extent Xbox have been hit and also the kind of jobs were cut.
The report have a full team of development fired and at least another very senior game developer fired as well.
Yes, but I don't think those are a representative selection of all affected though as those were from Studio Alpha doing military and commercial business which looks more to me as Microsoft terminated this line of business than something else.
For the rest of the layoffs I'm still curious to know what position they've decided to cut.
Yes the team was for the Studio Alpha, but if they are gaming developers and MS is starving for gaming developers wouldn't it make more sense to send them to other teams instead of firing them?
Yes and in fact it was the exact sentiment I shared with the second sentence of my first post. The things is though what we don't know here far exceeds what we know and we could only speculate that's why I also want to know more before forging further opinion on this.
What it they are no good?
So you think they are no good after 30 years of experience and MS took over 10 years with these people working there to realize it and realized it while firing 1k people? Totally believeable.
You believe staff members consistently preform for their entire careers?
And do you believe 1k of them suddenly are performing poorly? And worse, that the company fired on the first poor performance instead of having corrective meetings and the like?
There wasn't 1k at alpha studio though and for what we know they were the only layoffs as a result of closing a business line. As For the others, individual performance is not really looked upon when doing a mass layoffs. You typically target specific jobs position which you could do away with. trying to relocate worker in this context defy the purpose of doing the mass layoffs in the first place.
Yes, I was talking the two points with Azz. And I have pointed before but seems like some want to deny it, that performance and the likely wouldn't justify mass layoff (as it didn't for the Alpha and the senior developers), it was most likely as you said project closure. My point was if they are growing their gaming development new projects show up so they could have been relocated even if needed to train.
They rehire for new projects, and rehiring gives them the flexibility to hire people that can specialise in the new projects.
Do people fail to realize that these staff members sign contracts, once the contract is finished, its either renew or remove. Nothing illigal here. Its just the real world.
Companies also remove underpreformers and extend over achievers.
People act like sackings are unfair. They dont know the staff members being sacked. Some are probably for good reason.
If a person have a temporary contract they aren't laid off when the contract expire they just aren't renewed, so seems like you are the one not realizing something.
You missed the point.
Man, this website turns into GS system wars more and more.
Surprised there are so many comments on a non story.
Just in time for upper management to give themselves Christmas bonuses to celebrate another highly successful year.
I guess 2 Trillion dollars isn't enough to pay employees.
Microsoft is estimated to have 221k employees. So laying off 1k employees is less than 0.5% of their staff. So it's likely this is just a normal thing as priorities change, or projects come to an end.
How do you think they became a 2 trillion dollar company? By giving there money away? Its buisness.
Microsoft with all that cash has the audacity to lay off so many at one single blow?
Hat dayumn what kind of mess have they put themselves in!?
This is about 0.45% of their global staff. So they're probably not in any kind of mess at all.
Imagine believing just because they have the cash, they need to keep people on.
You got a car? Great, now share it with all your workers.
Slowly phasing out Xbox hardware because it's all about the Game Pass.
Xbox is d0med
Did phill spence give them a final salute?
With the company investing so much in buying devs/publishers and the saying that fostering talent and making internal teams organically grow it is odd that they didn't rotate these people to areas that needed them on gaming development. People with almost 30 years of experience being laid off when you are starving for talent is so odd.
The team that was fired was working on projects for the us army, maybe that contract died, the USA didnt need it anymore etc?. This isnt the same as when Sony shut down their Japan Studio that was ya know working on games/developed games.
I fully agree with the sentiment, I would have liked if they had try to relocate those affected. That's said (and speaking on top of my head) I think it is more common for company to setup HR programs to help those affect by layoffs after the layoffs and not actually before as it prevent leaks.
I tried to find how many were working at Alpha studio but could not find the information, so I don't know if it's something that would even be considered here.
HR program for layoffs yes I do agree they can't be communicated before hand. But having a plan to relocate the ones that even if on projects that died are still qualified for other roles I don't see a reason not to. If MS was slimming down gaming development sure it sucks to be laid but would make sense, but while they are growing it doesn't make as much sense. Perhaps the skillset of the gaming devs laid off wasn't a perfect match for the open positions, but I think it would be better to have a transition plan and train these guys for new projects than lay off devs with 20+ year of experience in gaming development and over 10 years of work in the house.
Really? In the middle of buying a company for over 60 Billion dollars? Get your priorities straight MS!
As a manager, it's not always that black and white.
We hire and fire for all sorts of reasons.
Sometimes the workload is unmanageable for current staff so we hire.
A new project spinning up? Let's hire.
Firing can also occur as well.
Closing of a project? Need to let the staff go.
Possible issues (Bullying etc') that requires HR to get involved and let people go? That too.
Under-performance?
Wage budgets exceeded?
There is generally a bigger picture to this kind of thing... And hiring/firing is a normal business cycle, it's only news-worthy here because 1,000 seems like a large number, but in relative context is a relative drop in the Ocean compared to the 221,000 employees Microsoft has.
Until the acquisition is complete, they aren’t allowed to collaborate on anything. And presumably said CoD devs will be working on CoD and also have full teams.
Also unlikely the employees are in the same location. Could be other ends of the country or different continents.
The business I work for is a division of a multinational. At the end of our project cycles, its not inconceivable that I could be laid off regardless of what is going on at sister divisions. I could move to a different office, which is what I did at the end of the last project cycle, but that only worked as the other office was relatively close. I wouldn’t do that if it was hundreds of miles away.
For individual firing all your reasons match, for a 1k layoff it doesn't.
Among hist list of reasons were:
"Closing of a project? Need to let the staff go.
[...]
Under-performance?
Wage budgets exceeded?"
I think those three reasons, at a minimum, could apply to a 1k person layoff.
0.5% of a company doesn't underperform all of a sudden and on the same year.
Sure wage budget and project closures can lead to layoffs, but when the company is growing their gaming department and increasing its wage budget and need of headcount that doesn't make sense to layoff people that are qualified. Again a lot of them have several years in the house so makes zero sense to say they discovered only now that so many were useless.
0.5% of a company doesn't underperform all of a sudden, but contracts are often written for similar periods of time, and it's entirely possible several contracts came up around the same time and collectively weren't removed.
It's a big deal if you're one of those affected, but a small deal otherwise (compared to a lot of the big layoffs happening in tech right now!).
Agree with both points. And you can see I'm not even really commenting on the whole 1000 since yes projects ending and contracts not being renewed is quite within norm, I'm just commenting on they letting go of gaming professionals with good experience while they are trying to increase their gaming footprint, so even contracts and projects ending shouldn't be a problem, it would be possible to move these people to new projects/studios/contracts.
If they did let go of gaming professionals with good experience, then I agree with you that it would be strange not to try to shift them into one of their two-dozen-ish studios, for sure.
The report talked about a full unit that was involved "in gaming" but had to deal with something regarding government project closing, and there were 2 or 3 20+ year old experience developers also being let go.
If it was 1k employees from sectors that were being reduced/closed without skills being useful in other departments I would be sad for the people but wouldn't fault MS at all for making business decision that are necessary.
This can't be good. -_-
This was 0.54% of the company's employees. It's a non story.
The layoffs STILL suck..
For sure they do, no one wants to see someone lose their job. But this at least seems to be a routine changing of priorities, not big layoffs as an over-reaction to economic trends.
Hopefully they find new jobs ASAP.
Interesting. I suppose it depends on how you define "Microsoft". Are you looking just at people who work for Microsoft directly? How about people who work for them directly through wholly-owned subsidiaries? What about contractors? I imagine coming up with an exact number would be very hard, and reasonable people could even disagree on what that number is. :)
The 2nd largest company and one of the absolutely most profitable companies in the world, and they can’t keep these employees around until we have less crippling inflation? I invest in MSFT, but I’ll take lower profits in exchange for financial security for those 1,000 people.
Does anyone know if they at least gave them severance packages for an extended period?
Same company that said they understand how inflation is hurting people and wouldn't raise the price of their console (but will charge 70 for an old remaster).
Which remaster are you referring to?
Skyrim on Switch.
Interesting that they'd charge $70 for it. Is it its first time on Switch? Does it have a bunch of DLC? I have yet to see Microsoft charge $70 for a base game, or a re-release. If this is its first time on Switch, and if it contains extra content beyond the base game, those would presumably be the justifications. Agreed that it's an 11 year old game, so it'll be interesting to see how consumers respond to that.
Sure there would be justification for it (and complains) just as there are for the PS5 games. The point is that it isn't just Sony 1st party titles (new or remakes or remasters) that have been released for 70 USD.
https://www.glitched.online/skyrim-anniversary-edition-on-nintendo-switch-costs-70/#:~:text=Bethesda%20is%20now%20the%20first,game%20and%20a%20bit%20more.
https://kotaku.com/elder-scrolls-skyrim-nintendo-switch-anniversary-1849599263
And it isn't even a remake, and Skyrim had already been released on Switch like 4 years ago, it is just the anniversary edition.
Honestly, it's all theoretical for me. I don't think I've ever paid the equivalent of $70 USD for a game unless it was a special deluxe edition (and rarely, even then). Paying $70 USD for the standard version of any game, or for a re-release, doesn't compute IMO.
I don't agree with $70 games, but I'm certain this was a Bethesda decision, not a MS decision. Believe it or not, Bethesda/Zenimax still makes the vast majority of their own decisions, especially with legacy titles like Skyrim.
So MS decides where the titles launch but Bethesda decides prices?
Bethesda decided both of those things. Bethesda Softworks is the publisher, not Xbox.
So for Starfield and ES6 that were being made for PS5 they scrapped it as their decision as publishers not MS?
Those are not legacy titles. MS was very clear when it came to legacy titles vs new games.
Isn't Bethesda a division of Xbox Game Studios now? I doubt Bethesda has the ability to charge $70 over Microsoft's objections.
Skyrim on Switch.
How many companies do you run or own Don?
Atleast they are still putting their customers first and not just raising prices to cover there own costs they easily recoup.
Ya Don, like how many corporations have you run?
How can't you see that the right thing to do at Sony would've been to fire everyone at PS Studios to keep the PS5 at $499?
Like who cares about the staff at Sony anyway?
See MS gets it. You're obviously not aware of their tried and true moto.
"Just deal with it", they say.
Now go and buy a last gen console and worry about what actually matters, like next gen backwards compatibility....
What an odd reply. Do you have a job? Than you would understand that cutting staff is normal.
Ffs do you play video games or just thinking about those contracted workers that have to find more work elsewhere..
Yes, and I also understand that price adjustments are normal as well, but some people, disagree.
So why are some normal business practices acceptable and others not?
Why can a multi trillion dollar corporation boast about how they're going to eat inflationary costs for the good of the consumer, and get praise, only to then lay off a bunch of employees, some long time, who provide those products and services to those same consumers, and have it also be acceptable?
Must be nice to be able to do no wrong.
What do you think Don?
I think I rather keep my job (since I don't have an option to say "I don't want to be fired") than price of superfluous good (which I can choose not to buy at that price and wait for price drops).
So you would rather pay more for some employees you dont even know?
Guess if your rent/mortgage went up, you wouldnt complain either because you are supporting the Banks/landlord.
Pretty sure Don was saying that wealthier people can pay the higher product price now, which they have been doing, while they themselves wait a bit for the price to come down, so people could keep their gaming jobs.
Seems like a well rounded heart felt approach.
Maybe MS needs another Don, a better Don, in charge again?
Except when the games price doesnt come down or could protential wait years for discounted pricing. Also game prices rising also means you still pay more after the discount.
You know what also supporters the developers? MTs and Lootboxes.
Except Nintendo I don't know a single company that titles release doesn't drop price a few months after launch, so I have 0 problem with waiting for price drops. And yes I prefer to pay a little more (or wait) for a product than seeing massive layoff (and I'm libertarian).
But just as always you pretend you don't get the point. MS do virtue signaling when holding the price of a superfluous good (well sales aren't that important for them as subs right now anyway), expend 70B USD on a purchase for games that are already on their system, but you say they can't rearranje and keep the gaming devs they are firing because of inflation, that is precious.
Even funnier, when Sony raises price because of inflation and currency rates you go there parading and shouting greed, when MS fucks the life of 1k people you almost applaud saying it is a sensible decision. Sorry Azz, that is just dumb.
I don't know about you guys, but my favorite games are definitely the one's that give you next to nothing, and either make you play all day just to get a useful item, or just pay an arm and a leg extra for those items so you can be competitive and stand a chance.
Who wants reasonable progression when you could just pay more and more to get it right away?
Why make games like Sony and Nin do? One price for the full experience. The reason you wouldn't want to do that is because Sony and Nin close down their own studios daily because they don't make any money on their games because that formula doesn't work.
What works are games like Halo Infinite. Games that everybody can't stop playing and buying MTX, keeping XB employees on the payroll.
No Don, layoffs happen regardless of inflation.
You are honestly paying more for nothing and are accepting it on the chin like a good little gamer.
Some of us see passed the corporate greed. I am a customer, not a gaming industry employee. You are a consumer and just consumes anything they do and defend it.
I care for my wallet because these Corporations dont care about me or you Don. The sooner you realize that, the better. You pretend to care so much for these people you know nothing about, than go donate to them if you care so much. You wont.
MS laying off staff does not affect me. Raising prices for zero reason does. Its unfortunate about the employees but its expected across any buisness.
Don, do you also not realize greed when you see it?
Sony didn't get to be a hundred billion dollar company through charity.
Just like how MS didn't get to be a multi trillion dollar company by being greedy.
The race to the top is won by giving everything away. Duh.
The sooner you understand that console hardware and games simply grow on trees, the sooner you will understand how unnecessary employees are...
Erm because WE are the consumers. What a company does behind the scenes is no ones buisness but theirs. Layoffs happen. Out with the Old, in with the New.
So if MS turns XB into digital mobile only, you'd be totally cool with that?
No more console, no more AAA, just Game Pass mobile games?
XB gamers would be fine with that or wouldn't care at all?
Aslong as the games are good, i could care less on the platform.
One of my favourite games is a VR title.
So you're a massive Sony fan then? Great games, PSVR.
I should've known. It's so obvious now.
Odd conclusion you made there.
Oddly logical. How else could it make any sense?
VR is good when it isn't on PS, same as other games. How can that not be logical?
Since we've been talking about XB, PS, and Nin, all console gaming, and since PS is the only one with VR, I don't know how else it could make sense.
Unless Azz doesn't care about consoles at all and would be fine without them, which would be quite an odd take as per our conversation here, past conversations, and in general on a site like this.
Mate.. i game on PC 90% of the time and own a VR headset for PC. My favourite VR game isnt on PSVR, my second favourite VR game isnt on PSVR.
I dont care about consoles asmuch as many like to believe on this site.
Hard concept to grasp for some.
Well that is a bit odd for this site. You're a rarer minority here then.
Seems like you have a soft spot for the entire XB ecosystem though.
Either way if you truly don't really care about consoles, which I wasn't aware of, that would've changed much of the conversation.
I'll keep that in mind the next time we converse.
I own an Xbox but if they stop making consoles in general, i could care less.
I only comment on the hypocritical nature and negatively based on articles. In other words, ill point out crap.
I am also negative towards Xbox if they do crap that affects me. Xbox has been in peoples good books lately, so it hard to comment on negatively when there is barely any.
Sony on the other hand have been in the spotlight for the wrong reasons.
Inflation is not a companies problem. Its buisness not an age care.
correct
Essay Pro