"It has finally caught up to me"

Image credit: Halo Studios

Update: Game Developer cite a source familiar as having told them that Halo Studios staff have "departed as a result of external contractor shifts" and that no full-time staff have been laid off.

Original story below:

Halo studios appear to have cut an unspecified number of staff following the release of Halo: Campaign Evolved last week. A number of contract workers at the studio have posted about their departures on LinkedIn within the past day or so. Halo Studios' parent company Microsoft, lest we forget, laid off around 1600 workers in early July, while parting ways with several of the studios that had been under their umbrella.

"After 6.5 years working on Halo and dodging just as many rounds of layoffs - it has finally caught up to me," Halo Studios producer Nick Treitman wrote in a recent post. "I have nothing but love for Halo and the folks at the studio, this is just a tough reality in the gaming industry right now."

Meanwhile, Paul Morris - a scrum master on Campaign Evolved with previous producing credits The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered and Forza Motorsport 7, shared a similar story. "Today, I learned my time at Halo Studios will be coming to an end following the successful launch of our latest game, Halo: Campaign Evolved," he wrote. "I know this is one of the most challenging job markets our industry has seen, and I know the road ahead won’t be easy. But I’m not done, and my purpose has not changed."

Both Treitman and Morris' LinkedIn profiles indicate their roles at Halo Studios to be contract ones, meaning it's possible the company have opted not to renew such deals following Campaign Evolved's launch, rather than having laid off full-time staff as Microsoft did last month. Not that that would be any less terrible - the result in both cases is people out of work at a time when, as the pair acknowledged, losing your livelihood is especially tough to bounce back from.

I've contacted Xbox for comment.

Microsoft's recent cuts have affected a vast swath of the big name studios the company own, including Bethesda, Obsidian, Id Software, and ZeniMax.