If a team makes a game that gets great reviews and doesn't sell, that's a biz failing but the silver lining is you caught lighting in a bottle -- protect that team! It's worth its weight in gold. If you jettison the team but keep the biz people, I don't know what to tell you

Happy amidst the hurt.

the two outfits for men

Good morning! Dog planter.

Encounter

Black Cat by Maya Fidawi

The language some people use to describe their peers is downright sickening. When people describe layoffs as "necessary sacrifices" it doesn't absolve the injustice, it makes it clear you're the imposter we should all hate. Those are fucking people, man. They're your goddamn trenchmates.

Here’s a really fun one! The iconic armor worn by the Dragonborn in all the Skyrim key art was made by Lead Character Artist Christiane Meister. The Steel Sword (and a majority of weapons in Skyrim) were made by Senior/Lead Weapon Artist Dane Olds. Both were just laid off by Microsoft.

This week, Microsoft GUTTED Bethesda, Zenimax, iD, & more. The C-suites treat the workers who make the games we love as disposable and don’t care they’re destroying the future of the industry! Let them know it has to STOP here: feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/ide...

This is a tiny thing, but it's what I've got. If you were (or are) a writer/designer/artist on Elder Scrolls, I want to make sure the community remembers your work. Comment or DM me with your contributions and I will make sure they're recorded on The Imperial Library and @uesp.net forever.

I wanna re-emphasize that games never overhired, and they never "got bloated". Most game studios have run lean for the majority of their life. The way they justified that lean development pipeline was through massive amounts of crunch and damage to the health of developers all of us loved.

One way you can show Microsoft your concern is here through the XBOX Player Voice feedback platform: feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/ide...

When we shipped Deus Ex 2 we made the producer a shirt that read “it’s fine ship it” with a sleeve cut off and dozens of holes in it

Layoffs destroy companies. The erosion of trust can never be undone.

Among the layoffs was character artist Christiane Meister — a 27-year veteran of Bethesda and (as far as I can tell) one of the longest tenured women in games, period. She worked on Argonians + Khajiit in TES3, horses in TES4 and TES5, Fallout creatures, and more. (cont'd)

Unfortunately I’m one of the 1,600 devs who lost their jobs yesterday due to the #XboxLayoffs I loved my job at Bethesda with my whole heart. The teams I got to lead, the features I got to ship, the incredible fans I got to meet while working on Fallout were beyond S.P.E.C.I.A.L. I’ll miss it all.

I and a good number of very talented game devs were laid off by Obsidian as part of the Microsoft sacrificial rituals this morning. If you or anyone you know is looking for a Senior Writer/ND with more than two decades' experience in titles like Dragon Age and Mass Effect, please let me know!

If you were a writer/narrative designer laid off recently (or not so recently and are still LFW) and there's ANYTHING I can do - lend an ear, look at a resume/portfolio, put in a good word for you somewhere - PLEASE let me know. Because my god, we have to look out for each other out here.

If anyone's in need of stupidly talented associate-mid level quest and narrative designers with a track record in the RPG space, I know a couple of great folks looking for work right now.

GG to GDQ

I need steam to update its tagging system, when I look for a singleplayer title it shows me all games "theoretically capable of singleplayer experiences" but that includes MMOs. When I'm looking for a singleplayer game I mean a game that is literally devoid of any matchmaking or mutliplayer elements

futurism.com/future-socie... lol

A Gathering in the Woods, by Mariachiara Di Giorgio

Jeremy Miranda (American,b. 1980): Tide Pool, Acrylic on panel

the provinces decline to offer tribute, the armies return in defeat, the temple of the arts has closed its doors, and the name of the Emperor is scoured from the palaces by his own magistrates. now the sun and storms turn against him. the Mandate is lost.

For centuries, Bedouins across the Middle East and North Africa have covered their entire body in the heat. They remain comfortable — or as comfortable as one can be in such temperatures — because their clothing is loose, thus allowing for airflow. This way, your body can breathe.

NOW PRESENTING ON THE OCCASION OF IT’S 250th ANNIVERSARY: THE HISTORY OF AMERICA (as told in Japan in 1851):

shutting down a major artery into the city during a holiday weekend while the world cup is in town and there’s a historic heat wave that’s lead to energy rationing just so you can have a wedding is a real radicalizing eat the rich moment

this was about Realmguard #1 (on marvel unlimited TODAY) and lmao Lorenzo Tammetta (pencils) killed it tbh my horrible drawing (L), Lorenzo & Rod Fernandes' (colors) final panel (R) (issue #1: www.marvel.com/comics/issue...)

Hi! I'm the music composer and sound designer for DREDGE and I am officially looking for new work !! If you've got a cool game that needs audio of any kind. Please reach out. My DM's are open. Here's a few of the cool games I've done the music and sound design for! 🔊🎵 #gamedev #indiegamedev

my belief is that at the end of the day, great games are made by groups of people who have high trust with each other & can fluidly execute a shared vision. which is a small part of why these layoffs are so devastating- it's not just about jobs, it's about these "trust structures" being torn apart.

Finally got around to doing a drawing of Mina

Injuring my tail bone is basically just living through a day where there's a 50% chance at every moment I'm gonna pull the most excruciating muscle. This is an insane amount of pain.

Gotta love random injuries around my tailbone 🫠

this is what it feels like to make a game

This "ai code/art is already everywhere and impossible to avoid so you should just relax about people using it" shit has to stop, it's not remotely true. Same exact shit as "it's the inevitable future!" or "you can't put the genie back in the bottle!!" We can literally do whatever the fuck we want

selling these bad boys at the other worlds zine fair in sydney on july 11 ✅

tired of the "#1 dad" nonsense. if you're a dad, stop treating it like a joke and post your actual national dad ranking. i'm # 492,018, which is actually really high up there, but more importantly it lets me enter ranked dad lobbies where i can get matched up for fistfights with dads of my caliber

3/4 🛡

did a blog post of my Thoughts on the Actual State of Unreal in 2026, how it has come to this, etc etc. i've been an unreal user since 2008, and this is the worst the vibes have ever been. is there hope? perhaps www.joewintergreen.com/absolute-sta...

The thing about discussions of increasing the price of games to make dev more sustainable is that we still are getting quarter after quarter of record profits from major publishers so idk seems like the layoffs have very little to do with AAA pricing and a lot to do with business strategy

1/3 of the game industry has lost their job in the last two years. Ubisoft closed two more studios today. Everyone is out of work. To that end I'm starting a new bundle to benefit a layoffs hardship fund. Game devs: please consider submitting your PAID games to the bundle, which will launch in July.

a game dev thing that drives me crazy is hearing (well meaning) devs bash whatever engine's scripting tools over 'real programming' every time im like "i will not open my loud mouth about 'hey quick question how do you plan on making content'"