Making Fallout and Elder Scrolls games will "be harder than ever now" following Xbox cuts, say laid-off Bethesda devs calling loss of institutional knowledge "staggering"

Bethesda Game Studios has been feeling the impact following Microsoft's plan to cut over 3,200 employees at Xbox, with the company's union representatives reporting a big loss of "dozens of programmers, artists, designers and testers."

Unsurprisingly, these layoffs will likely have an impact on Bethesda's ongoing and future projects – like The Elder Scrolls 6, which fans have been eagerly waiting nearly 15 years for now.

Former developers affected by the widespread cuts from Microsoft report as much, too, with such sources telling Game Developer that Bethesda will feel the blow of the situation in its work on such new games.

"Bethesda Game Studios lost a lot of talent this week," one ex-dev says. "Xbox says they want to focus on their core franchises like Fallout and Elder Scrolls, but that's going to be harder than ever now."

In other words, this is a large setback for Bethesda, as the remaining folks working on the big series struggle to balance the shockwaves from the layoffs with a quick enough recovery so that development might move along.

It's not just Bethesda, either. As another source tells the outlet, "The institutional knowledge that has been lost or will be lost completely as individuals leave the gaming industry all together is staggering. Those that are left must be scrambling to pick up the pieces."

That's a troubling thought to try and stomach, to say the least, but it does seem to reflect the current industry's climate. Things are undeniably turbulent.

This all lines up with what Bethesda has recently been saying, too – that The Elder Scrolls 6 will be hurt and potentially delayed by the Microsoft layoffs, and that they've "had a crushing effect on morale" at the company.

We can already see this with The Elder Scrolls Online, which has been hit particularly hard by the Xbox debacle. Who knows how it might impact new Fallout and Elder Scrolls titles?

I just hope the affected developers are able to land on their feet, and Bethesda resurfaces despite the layoffs – the book isn't closed for good here yet, after all.

As Elder Scrolls Online fans fear for the MMO, Bethesda reportedly confirms its team is the same size it was when it delivered some of its best content.