Key information
Last month, Xbox announced its intention to close Ninja Theory after two rescue attempts failed, leading to ongoing layoffs as studio employees share their farewells on LinkedIn. Gameplay programmer Katrin Mair, who moved to the UK for the role, expressed sadness that the team will not be able to finish their current project.
Other affected staff members include technical audio design specialist Alessio Mellina, who worked on the binaural audio for Hellblade across 12 years, and performance capture specialist Xoe Suvari. Technical director Loong-Wei Ding also posted a farewell message encouraging other studios to hire his former colleagues.
The posts indicate that layoffs are happening across the entire studio. Meanwhile, Microsoft announced Senua, the third Hellblade game, at the June Xbox Games Showcase, though speculation suggests the trailer aimed to boost buyer interest while Microsoft allegedly already planned not to publish the title.
Additionally, last month Microsoft announced that the next main Halo game will be developed by Activision while mass layoffs affect Halo Studios, and Xbox transferred Age of Empires developer World's Edge and Sea of Thieves developer Rare into Activision's structure.
