Bethesda Staff Say Xbox Layoffs Have Put The Elder Scrolls 6 At Risk

Bethesda employees are warning that this week's mass layoffs at Xbox will hit The Elder Scrolls 6 hard, according to multiple current and former staff who spoke to IGN on condition of anonymity. They describe the cuts as removing more than 50 people from Bethesda Game Studios, including what one staffer called "key, high-performing people in the trenches" of TES6's development.

The damage, they say, goes beyond headcount. Staff told IGN the layoffs have crushed morale, raised the odds of punishing crunch down the line, and made it more likely that the game's already distant release will slip further.

The reaction inside the company has been visceral enough that employees have set up informal "Celebrations of Service" memorials in Bethesda's offices in Dallas and Rockville, Maryland — framed photos of laid-off coworkers, flowers, arranged in common areas. Photos of the displays have circulated on social media. At least one has since been taken down on orders from HR.

"Their loss will have a substantial and cascading effect on the game and morale of this studio," one Bethesda staffer told IGN. Another said the losses cut across "every discipline: programmers, artists, and designers," adding that one employee who had been with the company since Morrowind was among those cut.

The Bethesda Game Studios Union has amplified a post on Xbox's Player Voice feedback platform aimed at showing Microsoft how unhappy fans are with the scale of the cuts. The post has racked up 2,588 upvotes, putting it among the top 20 suggestions on a platform Microsoft says it uses to gather feedback on its console business.

A restructuring Xbox calls necessary

The layoffs are part of a broader purge of 1,600 jobs this week, ordered by recently installed Xbox CEO Asha Sharma as what she described internally as the most significant restructuring in Xbox history. In an email to staff, Sharma said Microsoft's gaming business "is not healthy" and framed the cuts as necessary for growth. Roughly one-fifth of Xbox's workforce is being eliminated in the process, with another 1,600 departures expected over the course of the year as the division narrows its focus to marquee franchises like Halo, Forza, Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls.

Bethesda's own leadership has echoed that framing. In a follow-up message to staff, studio head Jill Braff said the changes "reflect the realities of our industry and business — and our responsibility to ensure Bethesda is operating from a more stable foundation." She added that the studio needs to "change course," strengthen its business, and refocus teams around its "strongest franchises" to better serve "our players and Bethesda as a whole." Braff acknowledged that none of this makes the day any easier for those affected.

The fallout extends well past Bethesda's Rockville headquarters. Starfield's future looks shakier now that resources are being redirected toward the company's biggest names. Microsoft is reportedly planning to sell or shut down Arkane Lyon, which could put the fate of Marvel's Blade in limbo. The Elder Scrolls Online studio ZeniMax Online Studios has already signaled changes to its content roadmap after losing staff. Id Software, maker of Doom, has been hit hard too. MachineGames appears to have escaped largely unscathed, with a new Wolfenstein game widely expected. A sequel to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, meanwhile, looks increasingly unlikely.

Fears of contractors replacing veteran developers

For a game as anticipated as The Elder Scrolls 6, the concern isn't just losing people. It's who replaces them.

"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," one developer told IGN, noting that Bethesda's tools are proprietary and unfamiliar to outside hires. "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."

Another staffer put it more bluntly: "We've all been very excited and hyped for TES6 and this has had a crushing effect on morale. We were already running a tight ship and are worried about this delaying the game, though a final release date was not yet chosen as far as we know."

That uncertainty comes on top of reporting this week that The Elder Scrolls 6 remains at least two years from launch, despite being announced roughly eight years ago. Bethesda released Starfield in the interim, but fans have grown increasingly restless waiting for a true Skyrim successor, especially after the franchise skipped an entire console generation without a new mainline entry.

Staff pointed to Bethesda's QA department as a preview of what could be coming for the rest of the studio. Work once done in-house there has already shifted to overseas contractors from the outsourcing firm Keywords. "It seems like the company wants to make up the loss in talent with outsourcers," one staffer said, adding that colleagues are now training the contractors replacing them. "I have no idea how they'll continue updating Fallout 76 without hiring an external studio."

One employee said they'd been told staff from ZeniMax Online Studios would help fill gaps on The Elder Scrolls 6's team, though it's unclear how that would work given that ZOS itself lost 212 employees in the layoffs. The damage runs deep across the wider ZeniMax family: Game Developer has reported that 136 of id Software's 185 full-time employees were let go, and Bloomberg's Jason Schreier has reported that Obsidian Entertainment cut a quarter of its staff. Obsidian has since been assigned to a new Fallout game, which Bethesda is reportedly helping develop.

No sense of security

Even those who kept their jobs describe a workplace shadowed by uncertainty. "I think the specter of layoffs is something we will face in perpetuity until we unionize," one staffer said. Another said survivors of this round were told they're safe from the additional 1,600 cuts planned for later this year, but few find that reassuring.

"The 'survivors' were told they're safe from those next 1,600 but it's not entirely reassuring," one laid-off employee said. "Even if that's true, who's to say there's not another 1,600 next year after that? It's had the chilling effect of realizing you don't get to retire off your work at Xbox. Your time ends when you quit or are laid off, that's it."

For a game that fans have waited nearly a decade to see, the message from inside Bethesda is clear: the people building The Elder Scrolls 6 are no longer confident the studio can protect the conditions needed to finish it without further pain.