OneBGS, the Bethesda Game Studios Union, which is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America union, has confirmed plans to protest outside of the Bethesda offices in Montreal, Rockville, Maryland, and Austin on July 15th. These protests will follow the 440 union member jobs that were cut from the company as part of Xbox’s devastating round of downsizing. This includes 100 layoffs from Doom developer Id Software, and more than 200 layoffs at The Elder Scrolls Online developer Zenimax Online.
In a statement released by OneBGS, via Kotaku, the goal here is to show Xbox management that “We mean business.” They continued, stating:
The company wants us to accept this as a done deal and quietly disappear. We won’t let that happen. Our next steps are to mobilize. We need every single member visible and unified. To that end, we are announcing our Save Our Devs March across all studios on Wednesday, July 15th.
We need to show management right now that we mean business, so they will properly take care of our fellow co-workers today and think twice before ever attempting something like this again. Stay strong, look out for one another, and we look forward to seeing us all marching together on the 15th.
In an email to GameDeveloper, OneBGS stated that Microsoft had a legal obligation to sit down with the union before any terminations for ‘Effects Bargaining’. The union stated, “This means we have the right to negotiate exactly how these layoffs impact our people, and we are heading to the table to fight for every single affected worker.”
On this, they stated:
We are going to be demanding preferential transfers to force Microsoft to place affected BGS workers into open roles across Xbox and Microsoft first, stronger severance and extended healthcare to ensure no one is financially abandoned, as well as recall rights to ensure our laid-off members are the first ones hired back when BGS expands.
Currently, only a portion of the announced layoffs that are planned at Xbox have actually occurred up to this point, with 1,600 having already been implemented, and another 1,600 yet to occur. According to internal statements, Bethesda is set to undergo a major overhaul, with franchises like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, and Wolfenstein taking priority. Xbox, for its part, has stated that none of its previously announced titles will be cancelled because of the layoffs, though they will have signifigant ramifications.
The Elder Scrolls VI, which was announced 8 years ago, is estimated to be at least 2 years away from release. A multitude of staff members at the studio have stated that these layoffs will have a “substantial and cascading effect” on the development of the game as time goes on. What these effects will be remains to be seen.
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