ZeniMax

Microsoft is laying off 1,900 employees from Activision Blizzard, Xbox, and Zenimax teams. That’s roughly eight percent of the company’s workforce in the gaming department, which has around 22,000 employees at the moment. The latest news comes right after Microsoft reached $3 trillion market capitalization, becoming the second company, after Apple, to achieve the milestone. Losing a job is very painful, and our heart goes out to all the people who are being affected by this decision. The Verge has obtained an internal…

Microsoft laid 1,900 employees in its gaming division, according to an internal memo seen by The Verge on Thursday, with a majority of the layoffs hitting its newly acquired Activision Blizzard employees. Some Xbox and ZeniMax employees were also affected, according to the memo. The layoffs come roughly three months after Microsoft closed a $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.Warning! Microsoft Wants ChatGPT to Control Robots NextMicrosoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer welcomed Activision, Blizzard, and King…

We're not even one month into 2024 and it's already been anther brutal year for workers in the video game industry. Microsoft is the latest company to announce a major round of layoffs in its gaming division as it's cutting around 1,900 workers from its Xbox, Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax (aka Bethesda) teams. That brings the total number of video game layoffs this year to around 6,000 already. There were around 9,000 layoff in the industry in all of 2023, according to some estimates."As we move forward in 2024, the…

For several years, some relevant mergers, acquisitions, or studio formations were happening in the video game industry every month. Companies like Microsoft, Sony, and Embracer Group went on shopping sprees, and studios many of us never expected to be acquired, like ZeniMax Media, Bungie, and Gearbox Entertainment, were respectively bought up. These companies seemed dead set on infinite growth, with no plans to stop. That tone changed throughout 2023. Microsoft completed its $69 billion acquisition of Activision…

Microsoft has agreed to union contract language regarding its use of artificial intelligence, which should give workers a voice when challenging how the technology’s deployed, This is the first US instance of collective bargaining in Microsoft’s history and could be a huge step for those employed with the tech giant.This came to pass as part of negotiations with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union and involves contract language that covers a few hundred staffers at which includes well-known subsidiaries…

Game studios and publishers have collectively laid off an estimated 9,000-plus workers this year. Microsoft (which itself has from Xbox teams in 2023) is bucking the trend to a certain extent by hiring dozens of ZeniMax quality assurance contractors as unionized employees.The company agreed at the beginning of this year to a union representing around 300 QA workers at ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda that Microsoft bought in 2021. As part of bargaining talks that have been ongoing since April, Microsoft has…

US officials suing to stop Microsoft Corp.'s $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard Inc. argue the software giant's recent acquisition history suggests it's motivated to rope off blockbuster video games from competitors.Microsoft routinely distributes its video games across multiple consoles, but with the 2020 purchase of gaming conglomerate ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion, the company placed an increased emphasis on exclusive, top tier titles. As the Federal Trade Commission seeks in court to block the Activision…

Xbox boss Phil Spencer revealed that Xbox's highly anticipated RPG Starfield could have been PlayStation exclusive and Microsoft had purchased Zenimax to prevent that from happening.While speaking with the FTC about the Activision Blizzard acquisition (via The Verge) today, we know that Spencer revealed that Sony pays competitors on a routine basis to skip Xbox. So to prevent this from happening, Microsoft felt it needed to purchase Bethesda to prevent it from being a PlayStation exclusive. Spencer had…

Microsoft’s 2020 acquisition of ZeniMax was, at least in part, to stop Sony from paying the company to skip Xbox releases of its games, according to a statement by head of Xbox Phil Spencer during the FTC v. Microsoft hearing. “When we acquired ZeniMax one of the impetus for that is that Sony had done a deal for ‘Deathloop’ and ‘Ghostwire’… to pay Bethesda to not ship those games on Xbox,” said Spencer. “So the discussion about ‘Starfield’ when we heard that ‘Starfield’ was potentially also going to end up…

Starfield, the next major Xbox console-exclusive from the makers of Skyrim and Fallout, was originally planned to release on PlayStation 5, according to the Federal Trade Commission.Documents recently made public as part of the FTC's injunction against Microsoft's planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard state that prior to Microsoft's $7.5 billion acquisition of ZeniMax, both Starfield and Redfall were planned to release on rival Sony's PS5 console.Also, can't recall if they've said this before, but…