PC Gaming

Curiously absent from today’s mass layoff announcement at Microsoft was legendary RPG studio Obsidian Entertainment, which thus far had navigated Xbox’s 2020s layoff waves unscathed. Not anymore: An indeterminate number of developers has been laid off from the company, according to social media posts from current and former employees. I have reached out to Obsidian…

The latest double whammy that both Grand Theft Auto 6 and PlayStation will soon be ditching disks and going digital has angered fans and roused old discussions of what ownership of videogames and players rights will look like in a digital future. Spoiler alert: it’s not great, that’s if Hideo Kojima’s preminitions are anything to…

A data centre is usually where the so-called magic of any larger scale AI workload actually happens. In order to fulfill its AI ambitions, big tech has overseen a rapid infrastructure build out. Resource-intensive and often loud, they make for exceptionally poor neighbours. Wisconsin residents filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft on Wednesday, alleging that…

The axe has finally fallen from Xbox’s latest round of layoffs and studio sloughing—characterised as a “reset” by its current CEO, Asha Sharma, who paradoxically wants the company to have 1 billion daily players somehow. ZeniMax Online Studios, which currently develops Elder Scrolls Online, has reportedly been hit quite hard. That’s per senior content designer…

Today’s Xbox layoffs may have hit Bethesda and ZeniMax particularly hard, as reports of “significant” cuts have begun to surface and the Bethesda Game Workers Union says that “many” employees at Bethesda Game Studios have been let go. Today’s announcement of major layoffs at Xbox and the spinoff of four studios—Compulsion Games, Double Fine, Ninja…

In today’s announcement of a staggering 3,200 layoffs at Xbox, the fate of one fan (and PC Gamer) favorite studio was left up in the air. Arkane Lyon, the remaining half of the modern immersive sim maestros, appears to be entering negotiations for an indie exit similar to other former Xbox studios. “In France, Arkane’s…

For years now, security researchers have been preparing to fight against cryptanalytic attacks from future quantum computers. But Microsoft has had to push up its timeline, as those attacks seem much closer than otherwise anticipated. As reported by Bleepingcomputer, Microsoft recently published a blog post informing users of its new deadline. Microsoft plans to accelerate…

The time has finally come for Xbox’s massive reset—in a statement on the official Xbox site today, recently-minted CEO Asha Sharma revealed the fate of several studios. I won’t be focusing on them in this article (although you can read the words of my fellow PCG writer Andy Chalk first, if you’d like). Instead I…

Today, Xbox announced what it calls “the most significant restructure in Xbox history”: Part of a larger downsizing at Microsoft that’s putting 4,800 employees out of work, the reorganization will eliminate 1,600 Xbox roles today, with the division aiming to reduce its headcount by 3,200 throughout the 2027 financial year. Alongside the layoffs, four game…

England, a country built on brick designed to retain heat, experienced a historic heatwave last month. Having experienced the blistering 37°C/98.6°F peak myself, there’s little I would not have done to escape that heat—even donning a silly-looking personal cooling wearable didn’t seem beyond the pail. Hardware channel Making Stuff with Mike is based in Denmark,…