Bethesda makes some of the biggest games on the planet. Right now its own developers are standing outside with placards, and it's worth listening to why.
On August 18, Xbox staff held Save Our Devs rallies in nine cities across the US and Canada, organised by the Bethesda studio union (OneBGS) and the Communications Workers of America. The trigger is Microsoft's ongoing Xbox layoffs, which have already cut around 1,600 jobs, with a similar number expected before the middle of 2027.
"This is the place I'm gonna retire at"
Alex Nguyen, a lead character artist at Bethesda, told Kotaku the culture shift is the part that stings. "That was one of the benefits... this is the place I'm gonna retire at," he said of joining the studio. "We didn't have layoffs before, and now all of a sudden we have yearly layoffs."
His worry isn't only headcount. It's what walks out the door with people. "If only five people knew how this thing worked and you let all five of them go, that's a morale killer," Nguyen said. That's the quiet cost of cuts at a studio whose games lean on years of hard-won, undocumented know-how.
Nathan Hahn, a technical producer with four years there, put it plainly: "Every coworker contributes to the success of our company. Without us, Bethesda games aren't Bethesda games."
The bigger picture
This is the same restructuring that saw Xbox shed thousands of roles and back away from several studios this year. Microsoft frames it as getting the business healthy. From the desk of someone who just watched colleagues go, it reads differently, and Hahn was honest about the toll: "Morale for our work at our jobs has never been lower."
He found one bright spot, and it wasn't the company. "Morale for what we can do while working together collectively... that is on the upswing." Make of that what you will. The people making these games would quite like to keep making them.
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