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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is one of the best-selling games of the year, but the studio behind the impressive redux is reportedly laying off hundreds of talented developers.
Virtuos, which is currently working on the soon-to-be-released Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater and the rumoured Fallout 3 Remastered, is said to be hit with “mass layoffs” affecting 7% of its workforce.
Oblivion Remastered dev suffers lay-offs
According to renowned French reporter Gauthier ‘Gautoz’ Andres, who reports for the website Origami, “mass layoffs are underway at Virtuos, the studio behind Oblivion Remastered and the upcoming Metal Gear Solid Δ.”
Andres reports that the massive co-development company, which currently houses 4,200 employees, will be laying off workers in China and France. The current expectation is that 200 employees will be affected.
The reporter claims that one of the reasons behind the lay-offs is because of the level of quality put into The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. Andres explained that the team created a product that didn’t match the royalties Bethesda had agreed to which made the release profitable for Bethesda, but not for Virtuos.
“Virtuos is said to have made significant efforts on Oblivion with a policy of over-quality relative to the budget and a contract without royalties (without bonuses indexed to the game’s success),” the reporter said. “The result: teams put to the test for a purely showcase game, doomed to see its profitability questioned.”
As a co-developer, Virtuos has a lot of work going on. In fact, the studio has just wrapped up work on Cyberpunk 2077’s new 2.3 update which adds new quests, customisation options and much more. The studio is pretty much everywhere.
In the past few weeks, games industry lay-offs have ravaged studios across the world with Microsoft laying off 9,100 employees over the last few weeks. The Microsoft lay-offs in particular has seen multiple projects cancelled including Perfect Dark, Everwild and the next MMO from the developers of The Elder Scrolls Online.
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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
- Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Xbox One
- Genre(s): RPG
