Microsoft laid off 9,000 employees across the entire company yesterday, with an unknown number of those cuts impacting the Xbox and gaming division. Part of these cuts are reportedly directly related to Microsoft’s push into AI, and some of those impacted by the cuts are speaking out about how Microsoft is doing its “damndest“ to replace people with AI as fast as it can.
You might think, then, that at least for a day, possibly even a few days, Microsoft would post-pone any more pushing of its AI technology into the faces of developers, publicly or privately. Not the case, it would seem, as Kotaku spotted that Necrosoft Games director, Brandon Sheffield, shared the beginnings of an email he received from Microsoft and ID@Xbox, inviting him to a roundtable at Gamescom 2025 where Microsoft will be talking up using “AI in our tools and processes to make the game development and publishing experience more efficient.”
Below Sheffield’s post, other developers shared their response to getting the same invitation, with Toronto-based developer Benjamin Rivers saying “just get wrecked, mates.” Sheffield agreed, “they really should.”
While reports of the total layoffs at Microsoft have the number at 9,000, the exact amount of people impacted in the gaming division remains unclear at this time of writing. Meanwhile, these layoffs have left the talented workers and developers out of a job due to poor decisions made by a c-suite of executives who, for some reason still have their jobs, despite the fact that thousands of layoffs is a clear sign they messed up along the way, and pushed out veteran developers who contain a wealth of knowledge that the AI tools Microsoft is pushing cannot hope to replace.
This is just a shot in the dark, but it seems like decisions that don’t lead to wasting and mismanaging talent that has been in this industry for years would be the more efficient route towards successful game development, instead of AI tools that have, so far, proven capable costing a lot of money.
