Virtuos, the studio behind The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and the upcoming remake Metal Gear Solid Delta is planning to lay off 7% of its workforce. The lay-off process is reportedly underway as we speak, and the plan is to initially hit China but branches in Asia and France will be impacted too.
Close to 300 jobs are at risk at Virtuos which operates in Asia, U.S., and Europe with three offices in France. The French team is behind the recently released Oblivion Remastered. Reportedly, the key reason for layoffs is “competitiveness.”
Virtuos was found by former Ubisoft exec Gilles Langourieux, and it is a privately owned company specializing in co-development, game porting, and outsources game development.
Virtuos now plans to target big licenses along the lines of MGS and The Elder Scrolls Oblivion and target a more competitive market of remasters.
The company made significant investment in Oblivion under a contract without royalties and pushed the team to its limits. The team delivered a great product but it seems they got nothing in return.
In February, Virtuos announced a salary freeze.
Virtuos Lyon team is reportedly on strike to protest the layoffs and to defend the studio’s future operational capacity, amid ongoing centralization and consolidation of leadership across the French branches.with a strike an
To make matters worse, the company is now exploring generative AI and has already gone through basic mandatory training sessions for employees.
Generative AI is quickly eating up jobs in the gaming industry. Just recently mass lay-offs at Xbox and across Microsoft shook the gaming industry. One of the reasons for the lay-offs was Generative AI.
No official statements are made at the time of this writing, but news is expected soon.
Source: Gauthier ‘Gautoz’ Andres (Translated by Clawsomegamer)
