Names being whispered:

Arkane Austin – supposedly “under evaluation.” Their next project hit a creative reset right when the budget tightening began.

Compulsion Games – staff already being reassigned to support work for Playground.

Alpha Dog – effectively shuttered; HR just hasn’t announced it publicly yet.

Roundhouse Studios – rumor is they’ll be folded back into ZeniMax Online by February.

inXile Entertainment – new RPG still in pre-greenlight limbo; if it doesn’t meet “Game Pass driver” thresholds, it’s gone.

Double Fine – Tim still has a small prototype group, but leadership is calling them “optional headcount.”

Across the broader org, internal docs mention a 10-12 % reduction in the Xbox/ABK vertical before fiscal Q3 ’26. QA and community teams are hit hardest. Marketing for smaller titles will now be handled by “centralized lifecycle ops,” which is corporate speak for one skeleton crew managing everything.

Todd Howard’s situation is being described as “stabilized but unsustainable.” Starfield’s post-launch numbers plateaued far below forecast, and even though the DLC brought some revenue back, the brand impact was severe. He’s still the face of Bethesda, but inside the company, there’s talk that he’s “running on borrowed time.” The joke going around ZeniMax is that Todd now spends more time in review meetings than in design sessions—trying to justify every headcount.

Someone from the leadership track described it bluntly: “This is the Atari 1983 moment, but with HR slides.”

The next wave of announcements (supposedly January ’26) will be spun as “streamlining for agility,” but it’s really the dismantling of the creative side of Xbox. The remaining pillars are CoD, Minecraft, Candy Crush, and Forza Horizon. Everything else is a cost center.

Phil still signs the emails, but the decisions are coming from Finance. And Finance only sees red.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5784171&forum_id=2\u0026show=month#49333028)