As the gaming industry grapples with repeated commercial failures, influenced by DEI-driven initiatives, Microsoft has once again announced a significant wave of layoffs.
In an effort to rein in escalating development costs, the company is cutting down its bloated workforce. However, these actions fail to address the core issue: the ongoing struggle to create games that truly resonate with consumers, void of benign propaganda and forced diversity.
Microsoft has announced plans to lay off approximately 650 employees from its gaming division, primarily targeting those in “corporate and supporting functions” within Microsoft Gaming. Earlier this year, the tech giant made headlines by cutting over 1,900 jobs from Activision in January.
Additionally, it has closed several underperforming studios, including Arkane Austin, the team behind Redfall, and Tango Gameworks, the developers of Hi-Fi Rush, which received critical acclaim but struggled commercially.
After shutting down Tango Gameworks, whose game, Hi-Fi Rush, suffered from a lack of marketing support, Microsoft has come under fire for mishandling the title’s release. As a small, single-player first-party game, it was announced and launched on Microsoft’s Game Pass with minimal fanfare.
Game Pass’s revenue model, which rewards developers based on factors like concurrent players, is better suited for live-service games, leaving smaller titles at a severe disadvantage.
Recently, Microsoft announced the dissolution of its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity (DEI) team. Despite this move, the company emphasized its continued commitment to DEI principles, a reassuring stance to gamers that these values would still be embedded within their corporate structure and future products.
Values that are blatantly obvious to witness within the upcoming reboots of franchises like Fable and Perfect Dark, which have faced criticism for character designs featuring hideously ugly, androgynous and masculine appearances.
The video game industry is no longer financially sustainable, with Microsoft’s own Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II and other high-profile titles like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Sony’s Concord, and Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws facing significant commercial struggles.
The correlation between these games is the fact that they were shaped by feminist developers focused on diversity and inclusivity mandates, often seen as an effort to attract funding from hedge fund investors under the thumb of BlackRock.
As a result, these titles frequently feature heavily criticized character designs where female characters in particular are portrayed as being overly masculine, void of femininity, these games also tend to feature progressive story narration and overt LGBT representation.
Modern game development now takes years and costs tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, western studios that are overstaffed by progressive employees are hiring attractive actresses to scan their likeness for character models only to deliberately alter them into unrecognizable, ugly men with tits.
Consumers are growing increasingly frustrated with being subjected to progressive content crafted by activist developers and aggressively promoted by journalists with a clear bias toward material that upholds ESG and DEI principles.
Attractive female characters are criticized by journalists as being “unrealistic” and “sexist.” In today’s game industry, commercial failures are more frequent than ever.
Games like Volition’s Saints Row reboot, featuring a progressive cast of insufferable millennials pretending to be gangsters, combined with heavy censorship have failed miserably in the market. The game’s poor reception ultimately led to the studio’s closure as have many others.
Companies like Microsoft are scrambling to regain control and curb financial losses, yet instead of abandoning forced diversity and inclusivity initiatives, funded by BlackRock and other similar investors, these companies continue to prioritize hiring based on marginalized criteria, such as increasing the number of women, Black, or non-binary employees.
Rather than reassessing these initiatives, Microsoft and other industry giants are simply trimming their bloated workforces by laying off many of these diversity hires to reduce costs and mitigate the damage from looming commercial failures.
In an internal email to Microsoft employees, Phil Spencer, head of gaming, outlined the latest round of layoffs, which are part of Microsoft’s strategy to “align our post-acquisition team structure and manage our business.” According to Game File, a source familiar with the matter stated that these cuts will primarily affect Activision Blizzard. Spencer framed the layoffs within the context of last year’s record-breaking acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
Subject: Changes to Microsoft Gaming
For the past year, our goal has been to minimize disruption while welcoming new teams and enabling them to do their best work. As part of aligning our post-acquisition team structure and managing our business, we have made the decision to eliminate approximately 650 roles across Microsoft Gaming—mostly corporate and supporting functions—to organize our business for long term success.
I know that this is difficult news to hear. We are deeply grateful for the contributions of our colleagues who are learning they are impacted. In the US, we’re supporting them with exit packages that include severance, extended healthcare, and outplacement services to help with their transition; outside the US packages will differ according to location.
With these changes, our corporate and supporting teams and resources are aligned for sustainable future growth, and can better support our studio teams and business units with programs and resources that can scale to meet their needs. Separately, as part of running the business, there are some impacts to other teams as they adapt to shifting priorities and manage the lifecycle and performance of games. No games, devices or experiences are being cancelled and no studios are being closed as part of these adjustments today.
Throughout our team’s history, we have had great moments, and we have had challenging ones. Today is one of the challenging days. I know that going through more changes like this is hard, but even in the most trying times, this team has been able to come together and show one another care and kindness as we work to continue delivering for our players. We appreciate your support as we navigate these changes and we thank you for your compassion and respect for each other.
Phil
In the email, Spencer reassured employees that no “games, devices, or experiences” would be cut as a result of the layoffs. Unfortunately, this means Microsoft plans to continue pushing forward with its upcoming DEI-focused projects, such as the Fable reboot and the newly announced Perfect Dark.
Both titles have already drawn criticism for featuring overtly progressive and inclusive character designs, with main protagonists that many find repulsive. Given the negative reception these games are likely to face, it would be more cost-effective for Microsoft to cancel them now rather than risk greater financial losses upon release.
However, BlackRock’s influence, driven by ideological goals rather than profit, seems to keep such projects on course to their eventual death.
Spencer concludes his email by acknowledging that while the news of layoffs may be “challenging,” he believes Microsoft can “come together and show one another care and kindness.” This sentiment rings hollow, considering the treatment of Tango Gameworks by Xbox Game Studios leadership.
Despite publicly stating that the Xbox brand needed more “smaller games” that could achieve “prestige and awards,” something Hi-Fi Rush accomplished, Microsoft mishandled the title’s release. The game received zero marketing support and was announced and launched simultaneously, with a primary focus on promoting Microsoft’s Game Pass service.
This strategy severely disadvantaged the game, as Game Pass distributes revenue based on concurrent player metrics, an unrealistic expectation for a single-player game to sustain.
These layoffs are part of a broader industry trend seen over the past few years, with companies like Sony, Take-Two, and EA also experiencing similar cutbacks.
Strangely enough, majority of the affected studios are all deeply invested in Environmental Social Governance (ESG) initiatives, which prioritize producing inclusive, diverse games aimed towards a “modern audience” that doesn’t actually exist.
As long as companies like Microsoft, Sony, Square Enix, Ubisoft, and other DEI/ESG proponents continue to push such content, financial struggles will persist. The industry is edging closer to an inevitable crash as these titles fail to resonate with wider audiences.
