Microsoft confirmed that it’s laying off as many as 9,100 employees, or about four per cent of its workforce, in yet another round of cuts this year.
Employees in Microsoft’s Xbox division, known as Microsoft Gaming, are being hit hard by these layoffs, although exact numbers and divisions are not yet known, according to a report by Seattle Times.
Xbox leader Phil Spencer said, in a message to the team, “To position Gaming for enduring success and allow us to focus on strategic growth areas, we will end or decrease work in certain areas of the business and follow Microsoft’s lead in removing layers of management to increase agility and effectiveness.”
Bloomberg reported that the now-Microsoft-owned King division that makes Candy Crush is cutting about 10pc of employees, or 200 people, while other European units like Zenimax have also confirmed they are cutting jobs. A report from VGC says that UK-based developer Rare has also been affected, and that the long-in-development title Everwild, announced in 2019, has been cancelled as a result.
These major layoffs come less than two months after Microsoft announced it was cutting more than 6,000 employees, followed by an additional 305 reductions in early June. Microsoft employees have faced a series of layoffs over the past year, including a round of performance-based cuts that have seriously hit morale, according to multiple Microsoft employees.
Microsoft laid off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees in January 2024, followed by several game studios closures and job losses in May, and 1,000 job losses from its HoloLens and Azure cloud teams in June. Microsoft also laid off 650 more Xbox employees in September, as part of a restructuring related to the company’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
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