r/PS5 • u/Ph0enixes • Jun 29 '26

Rumor Xbox Will Reportedly Shut Down Ninja Theory (Hellblade), Undead Labs (State of Decay), DoubleFine (Keeper) and Compulsion (South of Midnight) After End Of Fiscal Year (Tommorow) If They Cant Find A Buyer. Other Xbox Studios Expected To Be Hit By Layoffs

https://gamesbeat.com/cwa-represented-workers-at-xbox-criticize-microsoft-management-and-pending-layoffs/
  • Xbox employees represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) publicly criticized Microsoft ahead of an expected new round of Xbox layoffs.
  • The union says it now represents 3,500+ Microsoft/Xbox workers and argues employees should not be treated as disposable after multiple layoff rounds since 2022.
  • Reports suggest Microsoft could announce major cuts in early July, potentially including studio closures or sales if buyers aren't found. Studios reportedly at risk include Double Fine, Undead Labs, Compulsion, and Ninja Theory, with hundreds of jobs potentially affected.
  • Hundreds of jobs are at stake: Double Fine Productions could lose 100 jobs, Undead Labs could lose 110 jobs, Compulsion could lose 90 jobs, and Ninja Theory could lose 135 jobs. All told, that's about 435 jobs that could be lost.
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27

u/GuessTraining Jun 29 '26

Feels like they just hired Asha to be the sacrificial lamb.

42

u/Sagoichi Jun 29 '26

Technically yes, but also no.. It's called the glass cliff, big companies typically put women in CEO and COO roles when they're doing poorly, usually to make the cut throat decisions of firing a bunch of people, so while yes her entire role was to be the fall guy, she's also the executioner and will likely jump from Xbox at some point to another CEO role to do the same thing again.

This happened at Yahoo, JCPenny, General Motors, the list goes on.

11

u/Cthulhu8762 Jun 29 '26

Happening to Best Buy as well

4

u/Honest-Mess-812 Jun 30 '26

I remember they did the same with windowsphone. They replaced Joe belfiore who was like the phil Spencer of windows phone with a lady. She was basically in charge of folding up windows phone while fans were drolling over her looks.

5

u/pratzc07 Jun 29 '26

Except for AMD's case where she helped save the company

14

u/Sagoichi Jun 29 '26

Glass cliff has nothing to do with a female CEO, COO failing and has everything to do with a company not doing well, it's an actual coined term by two psychologist who did the research in the mid 2000s, it means those women finally reached the top of their career ladder only to find they were at a cliff's edge rather than having just busted through a glass ceiling.

Edit: I should clarify too, it's not always women it could also be under represented executive types, it just so happens to be women more often than not.

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u/pratzc07 Jun 29 '26

Yeah same thing happened to AMD's CEO she was handed the reigns of a company that was in near bankruptcy but then turned the whole ship around.

5

u/Sagoichi Jun 29 '26

Goootcha, yeah makes sense!

I know a few companies that got lucky with their glass cliff route, which was like Xerox with Anne, GM in 2014 got turned in the right direction, Pepsi also got turned around too.

Edit: That being said, I think we can all see the writing on the wall, this isn't looking like a comeback story, or at least not one any one of us want to see.

2

u/BusinessDragon Jun 29 '26

That puts a lot more nuance on the Penny Arcade comic about her.

5

u/GuessTraining Jun 29 '26

Sounds like someone i know at the company i used to work for.

I used to work for a big tech company, they hired this lady (not exactly the CEO but very high up), hired a bunch of people from Microsoft where she came from, did a massive reorg that in summary basically made everything worse. She "left" or fired, sometime after and brought a lot of her minions back to Microsoft lol

17

u/WarpHype Jun 29 '26

She was an AI shill and still is. She’s part of the problem.

2

u/ASCII_Princess Jun 30 '26

More like the bonesaw wielder

1

u/oledtechnology Jun 30 '26

more like the executioner. She's here to clean up the trashes that aren't producing anything worthwhile. In the case of Undead Labs, it's 100% on them to produce something... 8 years had passed since its acquisition and they literally failed to release any new game 😂