Mass layoffs are underway at Virtuos, the studio behind Oblivion Remastered and Metal Gear Solid Delta

Also, it's worth mentioning that service providers that work as externals with timed contracts, (i.e 160 hours per person per month with a 3 month contract), can estimate with a somewhat good accuracy their earnings for the next 2 or 3 quarters.
They tend to fire people when they know they won't have enough work for them for the next quarters.
 
Edit: Wrong thread. Relevant comment instead:

They're a work-for-hire company that often do turnkey ports and various bit of asset work. In reality they're not (yet) actually being replaced by AI. That's stupid; in that level of gamedev, nobody really is (yet).

There's just less work because there are fewer projects for fewer consoles. It's normal that a sinking tide lowers all ships.
 
Last edited:
done-and-done-finished.gif


Job's done, two titles shipped. Thanks all, you're fired.
 
Icymanipulator said:
Their job was finished so they were let go? Normal and nothing to see here.
Click to expand...
Yup. There's no such thing a "jobs for life" in this industry.

The guys who rebuilt my roof don't get to stay here and live with me either. They got their money for the work they did. Now they can build someone else's roof. or not - I don't care because the work they did for me was done.
 
Last edited:
Hopefully they were Virtuous with the let down.


You finish a game, you may not have another project for people so you let them go.
 
Loomy said:
Release a bomb. Layoff. Release a hit, believe it or not, still layoff.

James Franco GIF
Click to expand...


The harsh reality of post post Covid.
Buying/hiring sprees when gaming was booming made people too comfortable.
Bomb or success doesnt matter when the bottom line is you are too expensive to run in your current form.
Lean studios with agreeable(lol) publishing deals are probably looking at these other companies and saying "yo we been like this from the jump, job security is a myth to us"

Have any Independents recorded industry level layoffs?



And no I dont consider Virtuos an independent cuz they are fucking huge.
 
dgrdsv said:
These outstaffing / outsourcing studios are massive as they work on dozens if not hundreds of projects in parallel.
Click to expand...
So it's absolutely normal they free theirselves by excessive workforce at the end of certainw works
They're contractors, there's nothing wrong in this way to work and they know it when they're hired that someday their work will end
 
Last edited:
Sintoid said:
So it's absolutely normal they free theirselves by excessive workforce at the end of certainw works
They're contractors, there's nothing wrong in this way to work and they know it when they're hired that someday their work will end
Click to expand...
Something like that but I imagine that they try to move stuff to a different project instead of letting it go as re-hiring later is more expensive for everyone.
So in this case the fact that they've cut 300 jobs just points us to the fact that the industry as a whole is contracting cause otherwise they'd just move everyone to a new project.
 
dgrdsv said:
Something like that but I imagine that they try to move stuff to a different project instead of letting it go as re-hiring later is more expensive for everyone.
So in this case the fact that they've cut 300 jobs just points us to the fact that the industry as a whole is contracting cause otherwise they'd just move everyone to a new project.
Click to expand...
Surely there's highs and lows in this kind of business. I've been like them and the workplaces that always keep their workforce tend to fail more than those who let go people when not needed (and recall them when there's new stuff to do)
 
Gamer_By_Proxy said:
First time I've ever seen her or posted her . . . know nothing about her.
Click to expand...
She's a grifter. She makes videos as well on "censorship" but then does a paid promotion for Capcom of Onimusha 2 Remastered which is censored to shit, and when people called her out on it she started deleting their youtube comments. And she likes begging for money
 
Last edited:
adamsapple said:
He or she not following up is telling that they had no idea what they're talking about.

But good to see you coming to your colleague's defense. Admirable. (y)
Click to expand...
What exactly does it tell? Might have gone to bed, might not want to engage in your silliness.

At least it's better than what you do and come to the trillion dollar companys defence when you somehow take offense personally . That's not so admirable.

Now go look at what a previous article said. one where this particular studio is mentioned:

Lunatic_Gamer

News Rumor Business  Thread 'The Xbox Layoffs Are Reportedly Even Worse Than We Thought. Not All Job Cuts Are Being Reported, It's Claimed'

iu


It's being reported that the gaming industry across Europe is in panic, as studios that either had deals with Xbox or were part of outsourcing teams helping on larger Xbox projects are now having to suddenly adapt to losing a great deal of work and funding.

This comes from Ireland-based journalist Lex Luddy, who explained what he had heard from sources across...
  • Like
  • Thoughtful
  • Empathy
  • LOL
  • Fire
  • Triggered

"As Luddy explains, this is because many companies rely on work being outsourced to them by publishers like Xbox. "Look at Iron Galaxy being farmed out for Tony Hawk, or Virtuos being hired to do the Oblivion remake," she says. "Studios like that, who contract work primarily, a lot of them have had huge swaths of work pulled from the schedule, and there's no one to fill it in. As a result, there have been layoffs.""
 
Last edited:
Signalis said:
She's a grifter. She makes videos as well on "censorship" but then does a paid promotion for Capcom of Onimusha 2 Remastered which is censored to shit, and when people called her out on it she started deleting their youtube comments. And she likes begging for money
Click to expand...

I think she's mostly right on this one though. I think feeding the AI and ML beast is all MS cares about these days. That's the jist of what she's saying.
 
Three said:
What exactly does it tell? Might have gone to bed, might not want to engage in your silliness.

At least it's better than what you do and come to the trillion dollar companys defence when you somehow take offense personally . That's not so admirable.
Click to expand...

Oh don't try to be precious, you know exactly what he/she meant with the "Look at Hi Fi Rush, no one is safe" example.

You don't need to run defense PR for someone elses lack of knowledge 🤭

Three said:
Now go look at what a previous article said. one where this particular studio is mentioned:

Lunatic_Gamer

News Rumor Business  Thread 'The Xbox Layoffs Are Reportedly Even Worse Than We Thought. Not All Job Cuts Are Being Reported, It's Claimed'

iu


It's being reported that the gaming industry across Europe is in panic, as studios that either had deals with Xbox or were part of outsourcing teams helping on larger Xbox projects are now having to suddenly adapt to losing a great deal of work and funding.

This comes from Ireland-based journalist Lex Luddy, who explained what he had heard from sources across...
  • Like
  • Thoughtful
  • Empathy
  • LOL
  • Fire
  • Triggered
Click to expand...

Yeah, let's look at it Three :messenger_tears_of_joy:


"The story here really is that these layoffs are way bigger than the number that Microsoft is reporting, because there's a lot more indirect layoffs happening than are being reported," says Luddy (at around the 1:02:00 mark). "It was described to me as people are at panic stations."
As Luddy explains, this is because many companies rely on work being outsourced to them by publishers like Xbox. "Look at Iron Galaxy being farmed out for Tony Hawk, or Virtuos being hired to do the Oblivion remake," she says. "Studios like that, who contract work primarily, a lot of them have had huge swaths of work pulled from the schedule, and there's no one to fill it in. As a result, there have been layoffs."
Click to expand...

Luddy is using Virtuos and Iron Galaxy as an example of third party studios where work is farmed out. Virtuos have already finished their current project with Xbox and they are working on Konami's money for MGS Delta now.

But of course you're never going to blame Konami for this. 🤷‍♂️
 
Last Hearth said:
They probably don't have another project lined up.

I think it's time for games to be organized more like movies. In that each title is it's own production, people sign up with a game project, and knows that when the project it's finished they will need a next gig. This working for a studio who keeps coming up with project for you to do is what leads to a lot of crappy projects.
Click to expand...
I'm thinking people working on next GTA 7 will feel pretty safe. 15 year dev cycle must feel nice.
 
adamsapple said:
Oh don't try to be precious, you know exactly what he/she meant with the "Look at Hi Fi Rush, no one is safe" example.

You don't need to run defense PR for someone elses lack of knowledge 🤭
Click to expand...
Who is running defensive PR? Me or you?
adamsapple said:
Yeah, let's look at it Three :messenger_tears_of_joy:




Luddy is using Virtuos and Iron Galaxy as an example of third party studios where work is farmed out. Virtuos have already finished their current project with Xbox and they are working on Konami's money for MGS Delta now.

But of course you're never going to blame Konami for this. 🤷‍♂️
Click to expand...
Blame Konami for what? Why are you deflecting. Did konami go into cost cutting mode and cancel projects?

He mentioned MS layoffs specifically are worse than anticipated because there's a lot more indirect layoffs happening than are being reported due to work being pulled from their schedule.

"Studios like that, who contract work primarily, a lot of them have had huge swaths of work pulled from the schedule"

This could have been bug fixes and support for games already released. It could have been planned new projects. This has nothing to do with konami unless you think they pulled work from the schedule too but obviously you have no source for that. There is one linking it to MS cuts though.
 
Last edited:
Three said:
Who is running defensive PR? Me or you?
Click to expand...

Easy, you. (y)

I corrected someone mistakenly attributing it to the wrong company. You felt the need to jump in and bat for their defense, pointlessly, mind you.


Three said:
This could have been bug fixes and support for games already released. It could have been planned new projects. This has nothing to do with konami unless you think they pulled work from the schedule too but obviously you have no source for that. There is one linking it to MS cuts though.
Click to expand...

Linking? It uses two names as examples of studios which usually get farmed-out work. To my recollection, Iron Galaxy hasn't had any recent layoffs.

Their push towards generative AI is probably the major reason for these layoffs.

Several witnesses also confirm that Virtuos is cautiously and gradually approaching the issue of generative AI. "In just one year, we've gone from a few group-level presentations to basic but mandatory training sessions for employees."
Click to expand...
 
SneakersSO said:
@Moridianae is pretty warm. I'm not going to pretend to know the business rationalization that was used to decide which teams were cut or closed this week, but what I can tell you is that teams that had projects that are due in the short term were clearly having their potential layoffs mitigated as those ports and projects make their way out in the coming year. This is why you didn't really see folks at Coalition or Playground get affected all that much, although some of those teams are affected in ways that I might just dive into in another post down the line.

But like I have been saying - the layoffs aren't done. This is the 5th round of layoffs at the wider MS since Jan. 2024, and each round came not long before a major end to a fiscal quarter or year. Behind the scenes, an absolute truck-load of projects were cancelled this week that folks had no idea about, and many of those projects were things that were further out than 12-14 months, although some did have the prospect of launching sooner via early access or what have you. Suffice it to say, as long as the larger MS is navigating the waters of the very unstable AI market, they are going to be cutting into other sectors to try and shore up the risk in their very much over-leveraged AI stake, which means that in future quarters or End-of-Year fiscal reports, they are going to need more sacrifices. The only IPs that are in anyway safe are the big names, the billion-dollar IPs. The World of Warcrafts, the Minecrafts, the Call of Duties, the Forza Horizons, the Overwatches, the Elder Scrolls or Fallouts. Anything that doesn't fall into that sort of category, whether its an IP or a studio, is basically not going to be safe as long as MS is in this position.

Even if MS comes out the other end of their AI position, I personally feel that, long-term, Xbox was always intending to cut the fat as it were. They are a 3rd party publisher now. These are literally the sorts of moves you saw ABK do for over a decade before the purchase. This is what Ubisoft and EA have also done. Without a console they need to differentiate, there is no necessity to having these smaller projects or teams, never mind the fact that project management is their absolute worst trait at Microsoft. One of the first projects they canned after the ABK deal went through was the promising new IP survival game from Blizzard, despite in the late fall of 2023 SPencer doing this big show of having literally every new ABK team do a pitch for a new dream project.


MS is the type of corporate entity that is hyper aware of where the lionshare of revenue comes from in each of their core departments, and they know how to scale up & down based on what is the Minimum-Viable-Product (MVP) for each of these departments to still retain their profitability. So, for example - they aren't going to radically touch things like the CoD pipeline or Mojang, or the WoW team over at Blizzard. Even with something like Betheda Game Studios, as long as Fallout and Elder Scrolls can be the massive hits that they are with releases, then they will be left alone going forward.

This stands in contrast to say, 343i/Halo Studios. This is a team that has weathered multiple layoff rounds now in a very short amount of time, all while they were switching over to Unreal and trying to navigate a kind of insane development pipeline restructure that they needed to implement both because MS forced it on them and because the cuts necessitated it unless Halo dev cease to exist at this point. This management-death-by-a-thousand-cuts wouldn't be happening with Halo if Halo still had the market performance and impact that it had even when Halo 4 dropped.

It isn't a guinea pig like test though, because this is how Microsoft leadership has basically operated since the 90s. This is who they are at their core. They don't develop and deploy compelling products - they use capital they gained from another market to come into an established or growing market, buy out all competition which forces the remaining folks in said industry to work with them, reduce those competitive forces in the sector until theres barely anyone left who can offer a viable alternative, then basically crash out their position as the enormity of the financial stake they put in to do said maneuver catches up with them. You can literally look at how they've approached the tech market for 35+ years and observe this.

This was the primary concern folks had when Microsoft first entered gaming, because everyone at the time knew just how absolutely destructive Microsoft can be in a market segment or industry. And really, this sort of 'build-up/cut-down' cycle isn't even new for Xbox - a decade ago, we were weathering articles from Spencer about how they had to 'learn a lesson from the Lionhead closure', but even the height of the 360's growth in the first half of its lifecycle was driven primarily by 3rd party deals, whereas loads of teams they either founded or bought in the lead up were slowly axed and cut. This isn't new behavior for them, not just as a larger entity, but even at Xbox. Buying up talent to starve out their competitors to then cut those positions is literally the core business of Microsoft.
Click to expand...
Jim Carrey Movie GIF

if adamsapple adamsapple thinks all the bullshit happening at Xbox after buying 1/3 of the industry ain't gonna have an impact across the board...he delulu
 
adamsapple said:
Easy, you. (y)

I corrected someone mistakenly attributing it to the wrong company. You felt the need to jump in and bat for their defense, pointlessly, mind you.




Linking? It uses two names as examples of studios which usually get farmed-out work. To my recollection, Iron Galaxy hasn't had any recent layoffs.

Their push towards generative AI is probably the major reason for these layoffs.
Click to expand...
Whatever helps you sleep at night bud. He gave direct examples of studios that it affects silly. It's not hard to understand.

The fact that Iron Galaxy have had no reported layoffs doesn't mean anything for what's happening at Virtuos. Maybe Iron Galaxy simply continued to keep them, move them to other projects, or maybe in time they will layoff the people who they couldn't fill their schedules with something else. Doesn't disprove the direct link given of pulled work causing panic and leading to layoffs.

Also hilarious that you are using there are no reports of Iron Galaxy as an argument when the whole point of that thread and thread title was: "Not All Job Cuts Are Being Reported, It's Claimed"

And now when you get the report for Virtuos you fight it as you normally do.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Metal Gear Solid Delta Opening Intro Cinematic
2
90
1K
Liopleurodon replied
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater: Special Guest.... Bomberman Trailer
3
132
Danny Dudekisser replied
Metal Gear Solid Delta Releases August 28th, 2025
2 3 4
169
10K
Luipadre replied
Metal Gear Solid Delta Will Let You “Peep” on Eva Confirmed
NSFW  2
59
4K
Breakfast at Noon replied
If Metal Gear Solid 'Delta' is a collection of remakes, what will the next one will be called?
2
54
3K
begotten replied
Top Bottom