Ninja Theory Layoffs Begin as Hellblade Devs Say Goodbye

Ever had a job you loved so much that leaving it felt like losing a part of yourself? That's the vibe coming out of Ninja Theory right now, and it's rough to read.

Last month, Xbox announced its intention to close the Hellblade developer after two deals to save the company didn't pan out. Now the consequences are hitting home, as staff take to LinkedIn to say their goodbyes. Journalist Chris Kerr spotted the posts first, and they're every bit as heartfelt as you'd expect from the team behind Senua's saga.

"I've been trying to figure out how to write this because Ninja Theory was never just a job to me," said gameplay programmer Katrin Mair. "After four years, it's hard to put into words how much this place and the people in it have meant to me." Mair moved to the U.K. just to work there, and she says what she'll remember most is how much people cared — about the work, the details, and each other. "It's incredibly sad knowing that we won't get to finish what we were working on," she added. "So much care, talent and effort went into it, and I really wish we'd had the chance to see what it could have become."

It's not just one voice, either. Technical director Loong-Wei Ding is among those affected, and his leaving post calls on other studios to snap up his former colleagues. Expert technical sound designer Alessio Mellina is at risk of redundancy after 12 years with the studio, having worked on the industry-leading binaural audio that powered Hellblade's haunting whispers. "As the only Technical Sound Designer here, I've been the owner of most of our dynamic audio systems on recent projects," he said.

Performance capture expert Xoe Suvari has also been let go, and his farewell is a tribute to the craft: "Hundreds of shoot days. Hours and hours of data. Sweat and bruises from set builds. New pipelines and the never ending battle of naming conventions. I saw my team grow at work and as people, and together we built a performance capture stage that was truly top of its class." The fact that every post talks up colleagues suggests the layoffs are widespread across the studio.

There's a bittersweet wrinkle here too. At the Xbox Games Showcase in June, Microsoft announced Senua, the third game in the Hellblade series. It's widely speculated that the trailer was meant to drum up interest from potential buyers, since Microsoft would have known by then it had no plans to publish the title itself. Ouch.

This is part of a much bigger shake-up at Xbox. Microsoft announced the next mainline Halo game will be made by Call of Duty studio Activision, with mass layoffs hitting Halo Studios. World's Edge and Rare have been moved under the Activision umbrella, while Obsidian — the team behind Grounded and The Outer Worlds — is now a Bethesda studio working on a new Fallout game. According to Xbox Chief Content Officer Matt Booty, these changes put the company three quarters of the way through planned restructures, which means more job losses are likely in the coming months.

For fans, it stings knowing a studio with such a distinctive voice is winding down — and that a project full of care and talent may never see the light of day. What do you think about the state of Xbox right now? Will you be picking up anything from these reshuffled studios?