Microsoft kicks off 2025 with new round of layoffs
The start of 2025 for Microsoft was marked by another wave of layoffs, which affected several areas of the company at once, including the gaming industry, sales and security-related divisions. The first notice employees began receiving notices of layoffs on Tuesday, with corporation representatives stating that the scale of the cuts is “insignificant.” The exact number of those laid off is not yet known. voiced, but, according to insiders, they could affect hundreds of people.
These events are a continuation of a continuous series of reorganizations at Microsoft. Back in January 2024, the company fired 1900 employees from the gaming division after the acquisition of Activision Blizzard was completed. Cuts and studio closures soon followed, peaking in May 2024, when four teams were eliminated at once, including arkane austin и Tango GameworksTango Gameworks was subsequently bought out by Krafton Corporation, which allowed it to retain some of its staff and resume operations under new management.
Now the wave of layoffs has affected not only the game development direction, but also related segments of Microsoft's business, raising the question of further development prospects for specialists. trend to process optimization and staff reduction in the gaming industry became one of the most discussed in 2024: about 16 thousand employees from 160 companies were left without work. Alas, 2025 did not bring relief: in the first two weeks of the year, more than 10 cases of dismissals and closures were recorded, affecting the fate of at least 160 specialists. The real number of victims, according to experts, may be even higher - probably over 200 people.
According to some estimates, amid high-profile deals and large investment capital, the game development industry is continuing to “cleanse” the market of unprofitable or duplicate studios. Microsoft, despite all its efforts to adapt, has not been able to avoid this Reduce staff. Interestingly, some of the lost positions were in the sales and security departments, indicating a large-scale internal restructuring of business priorities. In official statements, the corporation emphasizes that it strives to provide support to laid-off specialists when moving to new jobs, but for many gamers and analysts, this is only confirmation that the wave of global changes in the industry is far from over.