Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees, and Xbox is part of it.
A voluntary buyout is different from a layoff. The company offers a payment or other benefits, and the employee decides whether to take the deal and leave. Nobody is forced out by this kind of program.
Xbox is more than consoles. Microsoft’s gaming business covers game studios, publishing, PC gaming, Game Pass, and cloud gaming. It isn’t known which of these teams can take the offer.
The division is huge now. Microsoft bought ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda, in March 2021. It closed its $69bn Activision Blizzard deal in October 2023, which brought in Activision, Blizzard, and King.
Right now, no studio, game, or service is confirmed to be affected. There’s no link to any cancellation, delay, hardware change, or Game Pass change.
Buyouts can work out well for staff who were already planning to leave, since they get paid to go. But they come with a known risk for companies. The people who say yes aren’t always the people the company hoped would leave.
