Studio Behind Oblivion Remaster Lays off 7% of Staff

Virtuos, a support studio mainly known for its co-development of projects such as Dark Souls Remastered and Stellar Blade, has been reported to have cut 7% of its global workforce as part of restructuring within the company. All in all, this means that a total of 270 employees (at least) will be out of a job. The majority of these are coming from Asia with other cuts occurring in Europe.

The latest release that Virtuos were heavily involved with was the Oblivion Remaster- which received a mostly positive reception with improved visuals and keeping the core Oblivion DNA while introducing new mechanics and quality of life features. The studio have announced that only around 10 members of staff who worked on this project will be laid off. Considering that the game is reportedly one of the best selling games of the year so far, it seems that layoffs are coming as a result of wider company restructuring not related to Oblivion’s performance.

These layoffs come during the same week of Microsoft’s record breaking mass restructuring, which saw 4,000 jobs cut within Xbox across multiple studios. This also saw the cancellation of many upcoming projects and games that had already been in development for years. Thankfully, Virtuos’ layoffs aren’t quite as dire but its still worrying that a studio removes to many members of its staff even after a massive success like Oblivion Remastered.

According to reports, Virtuos put a lot of effort into the remaster with no royalties promised by Bethesda or Xbox. This could mean that, while the game was a massive financial success, Virtuos themselves may not have seen as large of a return on investment as they may have hoped initially.