Xbox creator Microsoft has laid off hundreds of staff members across multiple departments.
Sources told Insider that less than 1,000 staff were laid off across divisions thought to include Xbox, the forward-looking Microsoft Strategic Missions and Technology organisation, and the office of the Chief Technology Officer.
Studio Alpha – Microsoft’s “serious gaming initiative” that focused on war gaming simulations – is also at risk according to one source, alongside the Mission Expansion cloud government team.
Microsoft’s Mission Engineering team may also be affected, as its lead Zach Kramer sent an email to employees announcing that it would be “deprioritizing work already underway”.
The email continued: “This is hard to do. There are lots of ideas that could potentially have an impact and each of us has worked very hard, but we must make trade-offs as resources are not unlimited and time is the scarcest of them all.
Microsoft veteran KC Lemson was among those affected, announcing on Twitter that she had lost her role as product manager in the CFO’s office. Another laid-off staff member told Insider that they had only been hired one month earlier.
“We must make trade-offs as resources are not unlimited and time is the scarcest of them all.”
“Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities on a regular basis, and make structural adjustments accordingly,” a Microsoft spokesperson said to Insider. “We will continue to invest in our business and hire in key growth areas in the year ahead.”
Microsoft announced in July that it planned to lay off less than 1% of its workforce, which currently sits at around 180,000 people, putting towards 1,800 at risk. It’s unconfirmed if this most recent wave of lay-offs is related to this July announcement, however.
It comes during a testing period for Microsoft as the company attempts to prove that Xbox’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard is good for consumers and the market. The company has faced criticism from various U.S. senators, the city of New York, the U.S. Justice Department, and most recently the UK government.
Activision Blizzard is also steeped in controversy itself, as earlier in October another sexual harassment lawsuit was filed against the company, joining a line of previous allegations that began with the state of California sueing the Call of Duty developer for fostering a “frat boy culture”.
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