As you’ve already guessed, the layoffs in question are part of Xbox’s mass job cuts, which affected thousands of people across numerous studios and, according to recent reports, decimated the King team – cutting around 200 positions, or roughly 10% of the studio’s entire workforce – from middle management, UX, narrative copywriting, research, QA, and level design. Recently, some of those workers spoke to MobileGamer.biz about the layoffs, revealing that the eliminations weren’t just upsetting but, in some cases, outright dystopian.
According to several anonymous workers, the job cuts have indeed affected at least 200 people, hitting the aforementioned departments as well as half of the Farm Heroes Saga team, which lost 50 workers, with some of the game’s key leadership placed on gardening leave ahead of their departure in September.
While not all of them, a significant portion of those 200 roles were reportedly replaced by artificial intelligence, and to make it sound even worse, the AI tools in question were developed by the very workers who were laid off.
