Even Obsidian couldn't escape the Xbox cuts, with losses ranging from a 21-year veteran artist to an engineer who'd only been there 2 months
Overview & Key Takeaways
No news was not, in fact, good news.
Curiously absent from today's mass layoff announcement at Microsoft was legendary RPG studio Obsidian Entertainment, which thus far had navigated Xbox's 2020s layoff waves unscathed. Not anymore: An indeterminate number of developers has been laid off from the company, according to social media posts from current and former employees. I have reached out to Obsidian for comment, and will update this story if I hear back.
Rebs Gaming on Twitter documented four developers who shared their own experiences on LinkedIn, and I was shocked to see artist Daniel Alpert among those laid off. Alpert has been with the company for 21 years, with credits on Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas' DLC, Alpha Protocol, and most recently The Outer Worlds 2. On the opposite end of the spectrum, engineer Wenzheng Huang had only just started at the company in May.
In addition to Huang, Alpert, area designer Tyler McCombs, and communications producer Geoffrey Fogle, writer Jay Turner has shared that he was laid off from Obsidian. Turner's only credit with Obsidian was Avowed, but his industry experience stretches back to the golden age of BioWare: Turner is credited on Jade Empire, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 2, and many more games.
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Pentiment artist Soojin Paek, Avowed narrative designers A.K. Fedeau and Katie Tenney, as well as Avowed area designer Bre Seale also number among those affected by today's layoffs. That brings the total count to nine at the time of writing. Both Turner and Obsidian narrative lead Kate Dollarhyde (who remains at the company) characterize the layoffs as significant in scope.
As a company of over 100 employees (285 in 2025), Obsidian is obligated by the WARN Act to provide advance notice of layoffs in excess of 50 employees. The California WARN Act Tracker does not show Obsidian as having reported its layoffs, putting today's count at between nine and 49 people.
Numerically a drop in the bucket compared to the 1,600 laid off across the entirety of Xbox, with 1,600 more in the next 12 months, but every one of those figures is a life that's been upturned. What's more, Obsidian is a legendary RPG studio, one with four games in our 2025 Top 100 list (Pentiment, Knights of the Old Republic 2, Deadfire, and New Vegas). In recent years, the studio has gone from strength to strength with the heartbreaking Pentiment, breakout Grounded series, as well as the criminally underrated Avowed and Outer Worlds 2.
Obsidian followed Xbox's presumed previous mandate, to release a high volume of quality games to support Game Pass, to a T, pushing a pace largely unheard of in the modern industry: Five games in five years, from 2020 to 2025. Its developers have been punished in spite of that success.
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With Xbox floundering and 1,600 more layoffs expected at the gaming division in the next 12 months, I've never been less secure in Obsidian's future—and let me tell you, I'm rooting for its 100-year plan. Obsidian reached its 25th anniversary despite almost going under multiple times in its history.
It would be criminal to lose the studio in the coming years because Xbox was not profitable enough, and Satya Nadella needs to fish more change out of the couch cushions to throw at AI datacenters and Copilot, the fourth most popular chatbot that lies to you.
