The growth group behind Blizzard’s now-cancelled survival sport, reportedly called Odyssey, is seemingly among the many groups dramatically impacted by the layoffs at Microsoft right now.
In line with a number of former group members posting on Twitter, the group is among the many 1,900 workers impacted by the mass layoffs at Microsoft’s gaming division, which comes after the corporate’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard and the departure of CEO Bobby Kotick final 12 months. Mike Ybarra, who introduced his resolution to go away his place as President of Blizzard Leisure, beforehand mentioned that Odyssey’s growth group doubled in 2022, with plans to develop additional. Now, the sport will not be solely cancelled, however seemingly a good portion of the group that had been working on it for six years has been let go. IGN has reached out to Xbox for clarification on how a lot of the group was impacted.
Several developers from the project took to Twitter/X to express their grief over the lack of their jobs and ask anybody for any leads on the positions they labored in previous to the layoffs.
Activision Blizzard and Xbox are the newest firms to be hit by mass layoffs within the video games business, including as much as over 4,000 layoffs within the first month of 2024 alone, and as much as 10,000 layoffs final 12 months. Three days in the past, Riot Video games laid off 530 individuals, or 11% of its world workforce. Two weeks earlier, Twitch lower 500 workers, with CEO Dan Clancy later admitting that the corporate will not be worthwhile, regardless of paying streamers over $1 billion final 12 months.
Cristina Alexander is a contract author for IGN. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she wears her love for Sonic the Hedgehog on her sleeve like an enormous deal. Comply with her on Twitter @SonicPrincess15.