Xbox studios are hemorrhaging generational talent amid Microsoft's layoff wave, with one Bethesda veteran highlighting the loss of an artist responsible for so much of the studio's history that, "If you've played a BGS game you've had his art on screen 99% of the time."

Ben Carnow, a Bethesda veteran of nearly 20 years himself, puts a spotlight on former lead weapon artist Dane Olds in a Bluesky post.

A LinkedIn post from Olds confirms, "I have been laid off alongside so many passionate and talented colleagues."

Like countless game developers now facing a horrible job market after layoffs, Olds indicates he may leave the games industry altogether, even after 20 years at Bethesda. "I'm now looking for work inside and outside of the game industry. If you can use my expertise in weapon art, character art, team building and management please reach out to me," he says.

Carnow says "Olds is my truest friend" and "an artist of legendary skill." He outlines just some of the key contributions Olds has made over the years, including: "Too many Skyrim weapons to count. All the Dwemer creatures. MUD CRABS. Like half the guns in Fallout 4. Loads of weapons in Starfield."

"Laid off by Microsoft," Carnow concludes.

In 2023, Bethesda ran a developer spotlight featuring Olds and discussing his work. "Fallout 3 was my first big AAA game so that's very special to me," Olds said at the time. "Skyrim was an amazing experience because I got to help define the look and feel of the Dwemer art in the game as well as getting to make all of the steel weapons and many artifacts like the Mace of Molag Bal. Oh! It also features one of the few creatures I've gotten to make – the mudcrab."

Olds was also pivotal in the development of Fallout 4's expanded weapon system. "On that title Todd [Howard] came to me one day and told me he had this crazy idea to make all our weapons moddable and that he wanted it to change the way they looked and played. So, I started in on the pipe weapon set and the rest is history. It was a lot of fun figuring out how to make that system work and I learned a ton working on that game."

Much like Olds, Bethesda also laid off 27-year veteran Christiane Meister, a core artist who made major contributions to Skyrim, especially the Khajiit and Argonian designs, as well as Oblivion, Morrowind, Fallout 4, and Fallout 4.

Cases like these are precisely why remaining Bethesda developers expect work on The Elder Scrolls 6 to be impacted by Microsoft's layoffs, fearing crunch, quality dips, or delays for the already long-awaited game.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is reportedly so desperate for another Fallout game that it's reassigned Fallout: New Vegas maker Obsidian to the series at the expense of a planned Avowed sequel and other projects.

Fallout and Elder Scrolls union says Bethesda layoffs didn't hurt Microsoft's "14 layers of management" – "We lost dozens of programmers, artists, designers and testers."

We're just a day away from Palworld's much anticipated 1.0 release, and to celebrate Pocketpair both released all 27 pages of patch notes and confirmed that there'll be no price hike when the survival and crafting game exits from early access. Oh yeah, it's all coming together.

"After much thought, we have decided not to raise the price of Palworld following the 1.0 release and will keep it at $29.99," Palworld announced on social media. "We are incredibly proud of how far Palworld has come. Thanks to the amazing support of our players, it has become a success beyond our wildest dreams."

Keeping the price fixed at its early access rate is just "a small way of saying thank you" from the team for all the "continued support" the game has been shown by its very dedicated playerbase.

It's typical for games to raise prices when leaving early access: Valheim, for example, announced it will jump from $20 to $30 when it graduates to 1.0 in September. his isn't outlandish, the whole point of early access is it's an unpolished and unfinished snippet of a game, and therefore its full release should be worth more if you consider the better state it'll release in and all of the additional content it'll contain. If the 27 pages of patch notes are anything to go by, Palworld fits the bill as well, which makes it all the nicer that Pocketpair has chosen to keep the price steady.

All in all, $30 for everything that Palworld offers seems like a proper steal. You get all the much-loved existing features, new additions like the wing pack, plus all the new items and Pals. Oh, and that big old World Tree. It's certainly a great way to kick off and celebrate the launch of 1.0—all that's left is to wait and see what it's like once we actually get our hands on it.

Doom developer id Software was reportedly pitching various projects before a majority of the studio was laid off, including a new Perfect Dark, a John Wick-inspired game, and a multiplayer Doom game.

As reported by GamesBeat – which has interviewed now-former employees about the massive layoffs at id Software that have reportedly seen 136 of its 185 developers laid off by Xbox – after finishing Doom: The Dark Ages' Revelations DLC, the studio wasn't working on a major project, and was in the midst of pitching various ideas, which unfortunately left it in a vulnerable position. These projects apparently included an original game called Fury, a new Perfect Dark, and a multiplayer-focused Doom title.

Fury is reportedly a project that studio co-director Hugo Martin proposed, and blended sci-fi, noir and cyberpunk elements with Gun Fu combat in the vein of the John Wick film series. Another apparent candidate was a western robot survival game with the codename Ironwood. Meanwhile, Doom reportedly had pitches for multiplayer, co-op, and DLC projects for the series that never materialized.

There was also a Perfect Dark pitch reportedly being worked on with a presentation given and concept art in the works. The series hasn't had a release since the Xbox 360 launch title, with the rebooted project from The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics canceled last year as part of what seems like now-yearly mass layoffs at Xbox.

However, none of these projects are likely to ever come to light. Reports out of Bethesda claim that Xbox is apparently pushing the company to get the likes of The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 out sooner, and that alongside those two, the company is to focus on tentpole franchises like Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake.

Of course, I don't really understand why you would absolutely gut the company responsible for Doom and Quake (as well as the studio that made Wolfenstein's most influential title: Wolfenstein 3D) if you wanted to focus on those series, but Xbox and Microsoft decisions don't always make the most sense. Previously, Matt Booty (then head of Xbox Game Studios, now executive vice president and chief content officer of Xbox) said "we need smaller games that give us prestige and awards," a day after closing Tango Gameworks, which had released Hi-Fi Rush – a smaller game that gave Xbox prestige and awards.

John Romero praises the devs who carried on id Software's legacy as Microsoft reportedly lays off half of the studio.