“It’s Not Normal”: ZeniMax Employees Slam Microsoft’s “Inhumane” Layoffs After 9,000 Jobs Slashed

Microsoft’s latest round of sweeping layoffs has left deep scars across its Xbox studios, and the employees at ZeniMax — home to game icons like Doom and Elder Scrolls — aren’t staying silent. After “hundreds” reportedly lost their jobs at the studio, staff are now speaking out, calling the process cold, chaotic, and outright traumatic.

For a company that just finished celebrating its “record-breaking” success, the timing and tone of the cuts couldn’t feel more out of touch, say employees. The fallout? Confusion, grief, and a brutal hit to morale that some say may take years to mend.

“It Wasn’t Normal. It Wasn’t Okay.”

Autumn Mitchell, a senior QA tester at ZeniMax, didn’t mince words when she described what it felt like to watch her colleagues disappear from the Slack channel in real-time.

She called the process “inhumane.” It wasn’t just the layoffs. It was how it happened.

One moment people were working, collaborating, building games. The next? Locked out of their emails before they even knew they’d been cut.

“It’s disgusting,” she told Game Developer. “This is an acute traumatic event and it needs to be treated like that.”

Slack Messages as Goodbye Letters

Staff say Microsoft didn’t just miss the mark—it never aimed at empathy to begin with. Page Branson, another ZeniMax employee, said there was no real clarity around who was being laid off or how the cuts would unfold.

It led to panic.

People frantically typed goodbye messages in Slack before being booted. Some were locked out without even getting a chance to say farewell.

• “It threw their lives into disarray,” Branson said. “These mass layoffs affect real people and real families.”

And then there was the memo. Xbox head Phil Spencer had sent out an internal note acknowledging the layoffs—but in the same breath, praised the company’s “record” engagement numbers and “strongest-ever” game roadmap.

That message did not land well.

Morale at ZeniMax Has “Decimated”

Branson described the atmosphere post-layoffs as hollow and broken. The people who were let go didn’t just represent warm bodies—they were experienced developers who held years of practical knowledge.

Now, she said, the studio is left scrambling.

“Everyone left now has to pick up the pieces,” she said. “Morale is terrible. It’s grotesque. People are stressed. They’re crying.”

Mitchell put it even more bluntly: “This carcass of workers that remains is somehow supposed to keep shipping award-winning games.”

In just a few days, the culture they’d built was “decimated.”

Union Backing Made a Difference, Workers Say

ZeniMax is one of the few North American game studios with an organized workforce. Both Branson and Mitchell are members of the ZeniMax Workers Union (ZWU-CWA), and they firmly believe that unionization helped blunt the blow.

Without the union’s presence?

“It would be night and day for people,” Branson said.

She believes the layoffs could have been even more chaotic—and possibly worse—if workers hadn’t had outside advocates ready to defend their rights and negotiate on their behalf.

Still, they say even the union couldn’t stop the trauma entirely. “There are no real winners here,” said one employee.

Layoffs Aren’t Just Numbers Anymore

This month’s Microsoft layoffs mark the third major cut since 2023, bringing the total number of roles slashed to over 22,000 across the tech giant. But ZeniMax wasn’t alone. Other studios affected this round include:

• Rare

• The Initiative

• Turn 10

• Raven Software

And the wider games industry is still reeling.

In the same week, Still Wakes the Deep developer The Chinese Room and The Dark Pictures Anthology studio Supermassive Games also announced job losses. Layoffs have now become routine across the sector—spanning AAA juggernauts and indie darlings alike.

But ZeniMax employees are making one thing clear: this isn’t normal, no matter how often it happens.

A Culture of Silence Breaking Apart

The public statements from Mitchell and Branson represent a rare crack in what’s usually a tightly sealed culture inside major game studios. It’s not common to hear this kind of raw, unfiltered emotion—especially so close to the event.

And it’s not just grief they’re expressing. It’s fury.

They’re angry that Microsoft, a $3 trillion tech giant, handled a mass layoff with what they describe as clinical coldness and little consideration for the emotional toll.

Mitchell summed up the feeling best: “If I could get any message to any executive right now it would be: review this process. Because it’s not normal and it’s not okay.”