Microsoft has announced that they are making cuts to around 3% of its entire workforce. CNBC reported that Microsoft had 228,000 people in its employ as of June 2024, with the aim of reducing management layers across the entirety of their teams. This will affect roughly 6,000 jobs at the company.
A Microsoft spokesman stated:
We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace.
As of now, there is no word on how these cuts will affect the gaming side of their business moving forward. Early last year, Microsoft cut 1,900 staff from the company. Included in this were the studio closures of developer Tango Gameworks, developer of Hi-Fi Rush, as well as Arkane Austin, developer of Redfall. This totaled around 2,550 employees cut from the gaming side of their business, which has seen major restructuring following Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which was completed in 2023. Later, in September of the same year, Microsoft cut an additional 650 positions from its gaming side of business.
Tango Gameworks, which had seen a large amount of praise for the title Hi-Fi Rush, was saved by PUBG publisher Krafton, who reached out to acquire the studio and every developer who was let go. This acquisition was largely made with the success of Hi-Fi Rush in mind, confirming shortly after they had acquired the series and were producing a sequel.
Recently, the dev team behind Overwatch, a Part of Activision Blizzard under Microsoft, has unionized, owing to the large-scale lay-offs of the last few years, including those that saw a large number of Activision Blizzard employees terminated. Microsoft has a labor neutrality agreement with the CWA, not interfering with the formation of unions, but has been accused by groups under them, such as unions formed at Zenimax and Raven Software, of participating in “Bad Faith Bargaining”.
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