Bethesda staff say this week's Xbox layoffs removed more than 50 employees from The Elder Scrolls 6 development team, including veterans who had been with the studio since Morrowind, and the damage to the game's trajectory may be irreversible. The cuts hit "key, high-performing people in the trenches" across every discipline, according to multiple current and former staff who spoke with IGN on condition of anonymity. Programmers, artists, and designers all took losses.
One departed employee was a 27-year Bethesda veteran and lead character artist who worked on Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4.
"Their loss will have a substantial and cascading effect on the game and morale of this studio," one Bethesda staff member told IGN. The layoffs are part of CEO Asha Sharma's plan to cut roughly one-fifth of Xbox's workforce , 1,600 employees this week, with a further 1,600 departures planned across the next year. Sharma told staff in an email that the restructuring is the most "significant" in Xbox history, describing the gaming business as "not healthy."
Xbox plans to focus on its biggest franchises: Halo, Forza, Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls. But staff say the strategy is already undercut by the talent drain.
Bethesda's proprietary tools mean new hires won't be productive quickly, and remaining employees fear they will be asked to train replacement contractors while also covering for missing coworkers.
"There is a fear that we are going to be replaced by cheaper, contracted labor, or we will hire folks to replace them that will need to be onboarded (our tools are proprietary, other devs aren't going to know how they work) resulting in more delays, and we'll need to crunch to make up the time," one Bethesda developer told IGN.
The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced in 2018, some eight years ago. It remains at least two years from release.
Staff say the timeline the team was operating on just weeks ago may no longer be feasible.
Morale has cratered. Employees at Bethesda's Dallas and Rockville offices created makeshift memorials with framed photographs of laid-off workers and bouquets of flowers. At least one display was dismantled by HR.
Outside Bethesda, the broader Xbox cuts have been devastating. id Software lost 136 of 185 full-time employees, according to Game Developer, reducing the Doom and Quake studio to potential "support studio" status.
Obsidian Entertainment laid off a quarter of its staff, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported, and has been reassigned to a new Fallout game. ZeniMax Online Studios shed 213 staff. Arkane Lyon is reportedly in talks to be sold or closed.
Bethesda boss Jill Braff told staff in an email that the layoffs "reflect the realities of our industry and business" and that the company must "return to sustainable growth." Staff are unconvinced. "We were already running a tight ship and are worried about this delaying the game," one employee said. "I think the specter of layoffs is something we will face in perpetuity until we unionize," another staff member told IGN.
