A lead character artist told Kotaku that ZeniMax gave teams time to fix bad launches instead of cutting them. Xbox workers rallied in nine cities on Tuesday.
Layoffs at Bethesda were rare until Microsoft bought the company, according to a developer who worked there through both eras.
Alex Nguyen, a lead character artist at Bethesda Game Studios, spoke to Kotaku ahead of Tuesday’s Save Our Devs rallies. He described a studio where people expected to stay.
“That was one of the benefits,” Nguyen said of the pre-acquisition years. “That’s why a lot of people had such long tenure here, and they were like, ‘Yeah, this is the place I’m gonna retire at.’”
What changed after the acquisition
Nguyen pointed to two difficult launches as examples of how problems used to be handled.
Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls Online both arrived badly. Under ZeniMax, he said, developers were given time and support to fix them rather than cut.
“But since we’ve been under Microsoft, it feels like something has changed,” he said. “We didn’t have layoffs before, and now all of a sudden we have yearly layoffs.”
He also disputed how the cuts have been characterized. Microsoft has described the restructuring as removing management layers to streamline development and approvals.
“We’ve seen statements that it’s like a whole bunch of middle management was let go,” Nguyen said. “It’s not middle management.”
The people cut in July included Christiane Meister, a senior character artist with 27 years at Bethesda who designed the khajiit and argonians for Skyrim, and Dane Olds, a lead weapon artist and 20-year veteran who worked on Oblivion, Fallout, and Skyrim.
The Save Our Devs rallies
Workers rallied in nine cities across the US and Canada on August 18, plus a stream on the United Video Game Workers CWA Twitch channel.
The OneBGS union and the Communications Workers of America organized it. In Maryland, developers gathered outside the ZeniMax building on Piccard Drive, returning to the same spot they used in July.
Roughly 1,600 Xbox workers have been cut, with a similar number planned before the middle of next year.
Why union recognition didn’t stop the cuts
This is the part that explains the outcome.
Microsoft and the CWA signed a labor neutrality agreement in June 2022, and recognition spread quickly. OneBGS was recognized in August 2024. Bethesda Game Studios Montreal was certified the same month. Roughly 165 workers at id Software unionized in December 2025.
That agreement contained no enforceable timeline for reaching first contracts.
So when the cuts came, the units with ratified agreements had written protections. ZeniMax Workers United QA, Raven Software QA, and Blizzard Quality Assurance had advance-notice and recall rights on paper. The units that had won recognition but not yet a contract had considerably less.
Recognition arrived. The contract did not.
What Microsoft has said
In a July 6 message to employees, Microsoft executive vice president and chief people officer Amy Coleman wrote that Xbox was restructuring to position the business for long-term success.
Nguyen raised a separate cost that does not appear in restructuring language. When veteran staff leave, the knowledge of how systems actually work leaves with them, and at a studio with 27-year tenures, a lot of that was never written down anywhere.
Nothing has changed for these workers since July. They came back to Piccard Drive anyway.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, subscribe at clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts.
Hat Tips:
Kotaku (August 18, 2026), the original interview with Alex Nguyen and every quote here
Wccftech (August 19, 2026), the union recognition timeline and the gap in first-contract protections
Montgomery Community Media (August 18, 2026), the Maryland rally, Dane Olds’ comments, and Amy Coleman’s July message
PC Gamer (July 8, 2026), Christiane Meister’s 27-year tenure and her work on Skyrim’s beast races