Hello there, cookie munchers. July 15 brought four stories worth your attention: Xbox removed Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 from its upcoming Game Pass schedule, id Software faced questions about the expertise lost in recent layoffs, Ubisoft Barcelona workers continued their strike, and 11 bit studios confirmed around 20 job cuts. Let’s get into the news.
Xbox landed the corporate disappearing trick
On July 7, XBOX announced that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 would join Game Pass on July 21. The remake was listed for cloud, console, and PC through Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium, and PC Game Pass. Xbox later edited the announcement to say that the game had been removed from the list of titles coming soon, but it gave no reason, replacement date, or indication of whether the change was temporary.
VGChartz reported the removal, while VGC raised licensing as one possible explanation. That theory is plausible because Tony Hawk games involve music, skater, brand, and sponsorship agreements, but it remains a theory. Xbox has not said that licensing caused the removal, so there is no reason to promote an educated guess into an official explanation just because Microsoft declined to provide one.
Game Pass is a rotating subscription service, and subscribers understand that games will enter and leave the library. The problem here is not that the catalog changed. The problem is that Xbox announced a specific release date, quietly withdrew it, and answered the obvious question with nothing more than an editor’s note. It is a small story, but it is also a useful reminder that access through a subscription can disappear before it even begins.
🦊 Kiki: Okay, so Xbox announced the game, gave it a date, listed the platforms, and then edited the post like it was deleting a typo.
The game did not get delayed. It did not move to another wave. It simply vanished from the list and left behind one editor’s note, which is the corporate version of unsending a message and refusing to tell everyone what it said.
Maybe licensing blew up. Maybe legal arrived late. Maybe the skateboard escaped through an unsecured ventilation shaft and is now grinding across the Azure servers.
Whatever happened, Microsoft owns enough words to explain it. Fans should not have to assemble the answer from licensing theories, old contracts, and the position of the moon.
🍪 Chip refreshes the Game Pass page and starts checking whether the rest of the schedule was written in disappearing ink.
id Software’s headcount defense misses the real question
Game Developer reported that a Texas WARN notice confirmed 136 layoffs connected to id Software’s Richardson office, including 96 people based at the office and 40 remote employees who reported to that location. After the cuts, id Software said it still had the crew needed to build the games and technology for which it is known. The studio also said its current team is roughly the same size as the one that made DOOM (2016).
A former employee strongly disputed that reassurance. According to GamingBolt’s report, which cites Game Developer, the source alleged that most of the team behind the DOOM: The Dark Ages Revelations expansion was laid off, that id Tech lost a large amount of institutional knowledge, and that about 90 percent of the design team responsible for areas including gameplay and artificial intelligence was affected. Those claims come from a former employee and the department-level breakdown has not been confirmed by id Software in the sources reviewed for this article.
The disagreement matters because headcount and capability are not the same thing. A studio can employ the same number of people it had in 2016 while having a very different balance of engine programmers, combat designers, technical artists, producers, quality-assurance staff, and veterans who understand years of undocumented decisions. id Software may rebuild successfully and make another excellent game, but comparing the current headcount with the DOOM (2016) team does not tell us what knowledge was lost or how long replacing it could take.
🦊 Kiki: “We have roughly the same number of people as in 2016.”
Fantastic. Same number of chairs. Crisis solved.
That is the kind of answer you give when the spreadsheet has a headcount column but nothing labeled “knows how the engine actually works.” You can replace 30 mechanics with 30 baristas and technically the building still has 30 employees. The cars may have some follow-up questions.
Maybe id Software rebuilds and makes another excellent game. I hope it does. But if critical knowledge left with the layoffs, comparing today’s total with the DOOM (2016) team is not reassurance. It is management holding up a calculator while the former employees point at the engine room.
🍪 Chip counts the remaining employees twice, then looks for the spreadsheet column labeled “years of knowledge we just deleted.”
Ubisoft Barcelona workers are refusing the thank-you-and-goodbye package
Ubisoft Barcelona workers are holding a three-day strike from July 14 through July 16 over a proposed restructuring that could affect up to 51 employees. Ubisoft says the studio may be refocused entirely on Rainbow Six projects and that the collective consultation process is still underway, which means the final number of affected positions has not yet been decided.
An employee told GamingBolt that the proposed severance was “far below the minimum expected” and lower than packages previously offered to laid-off workers at the studio. The employee said discussions were continuing about saving some positions by moving people onto Rainbow Six work, while roles connected with the Assassin’s Creed team appeared more likely to disappear. Members of the Barcelona studio worked on Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, and affected employees learned about the collective redundancy plan shortly before the game launched.
The workers are asking Ubisoft to reduce the number of affected roles, provide compensation that gives departing employees meaningful support, and protect the remaining staff from another collective redundancy process. Severance is not a ceremonial thank-you payment. It buys time for rent, food, relocation, and a job search after the company has removed the salary on which those things depended. Since Ubisoft says the proposal remains under consultation, the outcome can still change, and that is precisely why the workers are striking now.
🦊 Kiki: Ah yes, the classic game-launch combo: thank everyone in the credits, serve the cake, and then tell 51 people their careers are entering a consultation process.
Nothing complements a successful release quite like discovering that your reward may be unemployment with a severance package workers say is worse than the previous one.
“Your contribution was invaluable” remains the industry’s favorite sentence right before finance opens a calculator and discovers the value was, in fact, extremely negotiable.
Ubisoft says the consultation is still open. Good. The workers are now testing that feature in production, and the strike is the bug report management cannot quietly mark as resolved.
🍪 Chip puts 51 employee badges on the conference table and refuses to let anyone hide them under a slide titled “strategic priorities.”
11 bit studios is stable, but around 20 jobs are not
The situation at 11 bit studios S.A. is different from the larger cuts at id Software, and that distinction matters. The developer and publisher behind Frostpunk and The Alters confirmed that around 20 employees are leaving the company. In comments published by Game Developer, a spokesperson said the company’s financial situation is stable and explained that it is entering a new production cycle that requires project teams to be adjusted to their current phases.
11 bit studios also said it found internal transfers for most of the employees who were initially at risk. That is important and deserves to be acknowledged because moving people into other teams is clearly better than removing every affected role. Around 20 employees still could not be carried into projects at earlier stages of development, however, and the fact that the company handled most of the situation responsibly does not make those remaining departures disappear.
Studios need different team sizes at different stages of production, but those stages are not random weather. Companies build the schedules, approve the pipelines, and decide whether enough projects overlap to retain experienced staff between releases. If a financially stable studio still cannot find a place for around 20 people in its next cycle, the production model has decided that preserving continuity costs more than losing it.
🦊 Kiki: Credit where it is due: moving most of the people at risk into other teams is better than throwing everyone overboard.
Now for the part the press release would prefer we read very quickly.
“The finances are stable and around 20 people are leaving” is one hell of a corporate sentence. Apparently stability is a status effect that applies to the company but not the humans working there.
The production cycle did not walk into the office, grow arms, and fire anyone by itself. People built a plan that had no chairs for those employees, then pointed at the calendar as if March had made the decision.
🍪 Chip moves most of the team onto new projects, looks at the 20 pieces left on the table, and declines to call the puzzle finished.
The industry keeps flexibility and distributes the instability
Placed together, the four stories show how consistently the industry moves uncertainty away from companies and toward everyone else. Xbox changes an announced subscription schedule and leaves players to guess why. id Software cuts 136 roles connected to one office, then uses a historical headcount to reassure people while a former employee warns that important expertise is gone. Ubisoft proposes eliminating up to 51 positions, forcing workers to strike for better protection and severance, while 11 bit studios transfers most of the people at risk but still leaves around 20 without a place in its next production cycle.
Corporate language makes these decisions sound almost weightless. Plans are adjusted, teams are aligned, resources are focused, and priorities evolve. Nobody loses a job in this vocabulary; a role simply stops matching the shape of the next presentation. The language is useful because it describes the company’s decision without requiring anybody to dwell on the person who has to live with it.
Not every restructuring is malicious, and not every schedule change is a scandal. Companies sometimes have legitimate reasons to alter plans, reduce teams, or delay access to a game. The issue is that flexibility has become a one-way benefit. Companies keep the freedom to change direction, while players receive less certainty about services they pay for and workers receive less certainty about careers they built around projects the companies approved.
🦊 Kiki: At this point, “the industry is changing” has the same energy as a kid blaming the cat for deleting a save file.
A game disappears? The industry did it.
A team gets cut after launch? Also the industry.
Engine experts vanish after management removes the people who had the knowledge? Must have been the mysterious industry goblin again.
Funny how “the industry” makes every decision except the ones signed by executives. Maybe the next patch can finally add accountability to the roadmap, assuming it is not delayed because of licensing.
🍪 Chip opens the corporate roadmap, notices that every risk points toward somebody else, and rotates the page to see whether accountability is printed on the back.
In the end…
There was no single main character in gaming news today, but there was a clear pattern. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 was removed from the upcoming Game Pass list without an explanation. id Software says it can continue building its games and technology, while a former employee says critical expertise was lost. Ubisoft Barcelona workers are striking while 51 proposed layoffs remain under consultation, and 11 bit studios found internal transfers for most people at risk but still confirmed around 20 departures.
Those facts should not be exaggerated into one giant crisis, but they should not be treated as unrelated noise either. An editor’s note is not an explanation, headcount is not a measurement of institutional knowledge, launch credits do not protect people from layoffs, and production cycles are not natural disasters that companies are powerless to plan around. The stories differ in scale and severity, but all four show an industry that has become very comfortable asking players and workers to adapt to decisions they did not make.
🦊 Kiki · 🍪 Chip · ⭐ Byte · 🦁 Leo
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