Xbox's Ninja Theory starts laying off staff as closure looms
The Hellblade developer Ninja Theory has begun letting staff go, weeks after Xbox proposed closing the studio when two attempts to sell it fell through.
Xbox's plan to close Hellblade developer Ninja Theory is now being carried out, weeks after the platform holder said it was consulting on shutting the Cambridge studio down.
The proposal was set out on 22 September, when Xbox said two separate agreements to sell Ninja Theory had fallen through and that it would seek to close the studio while continuing to explore other paths forward.
Staff have since begun posting on LinkedIn that they are being let go. The posts were spotted by Game Developer news editor Chris Kerr, and the resulting job losses look widespread rather than confined to one team.
Gameplay programmer Katrin Mair, who spent four years at the studio, wrote that it was "incredibly sad knowing that we won't get to finish what we were working on. 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."
Technical director Loong-Wei Ding and performance capture specialist Xoe Suvari were also named among those affected, while technical sound designer Alessio Mellina, who has spent 12 years at the studio, is at risk of redundancy.
Ninja Theory had been working on Senua, the third entry in the Hellblade series, which Xbox announced at its June showcase. The studio made its name with Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice and its sequel, and with the binaural audio work that became their signature.
The layoffs land in the middle of a wider reshuffle at Xbox. In September the company transferred Rare and ownership of the Halo franchise to Activision, moved World's Edge and Rare under the Activision umbrella, and enacted sweeping cuts at Halo Studios.
Our opinion
The most telling detail here is not the layoffs themselves but the reason given for them. Xbox says two buyers walked away, which turns a studio with a BAFTA-winning series and a famously small, senior team into a line item that could not be sold at any price the market would accept. That is a statement about the economics of mid-sized British studios, not about the quality of the work.
It also makes the consolidation harder to read as strategy. Rare and Halo have been pushed under Activision, a Call of Duty factory, while Ninja Theory, whose whole identity is narrative audio and art-house horror, could not find a home at all. Xbox is not simply cutting costs across the board; it is deciding which kinds of games it still wants to be associated with, and the answer is getting narrower.
Photo by Toàn Văn on Pexels.