The start of 2024 was marked by numerous layoffs in the video game sector. And despite profits running into the tens of billions of dollars, Microsoft followed the trend with more than 1,900 employees laid off in January and more in the months that followed. Today, we discover that some received their welcome pack well after that even though they are no longer part of the company.
They receive their welcome pack after being laid off by Microsoft
The information is quite funny, but the people concerned are laughing. On the networks, several former Microsoft employees say they received their “welcome pack” even though they were dismissed without warning by the company.
Jorge Murillo, currently Level Designer at Frost Giant Studios, spent over two years at Blizzard before being let go last January. And it was on the social network X, formerly Twitter, that the developer expressed his anger.
I just received a Microsoft “Welcome to the Family” backpack and t-shirt. Go fuck yourself.
In the comments, David Tangney, also a former producer at Blizzard, said he received the same “welcome to the family” pack the same day Xbox announced the closure of Tango Gameworks studio. The bad joke seems to have been distributed to a certain number of people since other dismissed profiles mention the same problem.
On October 13, 2023, and after months of legal battle with the various global anti-trust jurisdictions, Microsoft announced the effective acquisition of Activision Blizzard King. A video, visible below, was published for the occasion to highlight that the different studios were “joining the family”.
But barely three months later, we learned that Microsoft was laying off more than 1,900 employees, mainly in the ranks of Activision Blizzard and to a lesser extent at Xbox and ZeniMax. Microsoft explained that it wanted “align on a strategy and execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support our entire growing business”. Blizzard’s survival game Odyssey was canceled and more layoffs took place in the weeks that followed, before Microsoft announced the closure of four Xbox studios on May 7, 2024.
The fact that Microsoft has bought up huge companies, spending billions of dollars, and then shut down entire parts of their business doesn’t really sit well with the developer community. And even more so since Microsoft closed four Xbox studios, including the one that developed Hi-Fi Rush, a game released in 2023 and which exceeded “all internal expectations” according to Aaron Greenberg, vice president of games marketing Xbox.
From what we know, the atmosphere within Xbox Studios is no longer the same and no one now seems certain of their future within the company. In the comments under Jorge Murillo’s post, another former Blizzard employee says he removed the “Xbox” patch to keep the backpack.
