Original story: Curiously absent from today's mass layoff announcement at Microsoft was legendary RPG studio Obsidian Entertainment, which thus far had navigated Xbox's 2020s layoff waves unscathed. Not anymore: An indeterminate number of developers has been laid off from the company, according to social media posts from current and former employees. I have reached out to Obsidian for comment, and will update this story if I hear back.
Rebs Gaming on Twitter documented four developers who shared their own experiences on LinkedIn, and I was shocked to see artist Daniel Alpert among those laid off. Alpert has been with the company for 21 years, with credits on Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas' DLC, Alpha Protocol, and most recently The Outer Worlds 2. On the opposite end of the spectrum, engineer Wenzheng Huang had only just started at the company in May.
