Hello! I was wondering, since a bunch of studios connected to Xbox have been hit by layoffs today (with more apparently to come), do we know if any of the development studios that are working on the Age of Empires franchise are facing similarly tough times? Hopefully everything is fine and new DLCs will keep coming out, but I was just wondering if anyone knew anything about this.
As far as I’ve read it doesn’t affect AOE or AOM
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Thankfully, Forgotten Empires Studios is not owned by Microsoft.
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Yeah but World’s Edge is owned by microsoft, we can only wait and see along with the developers.
It looks like World’s Edge is now going to be under the Activision umbrella, and some more people are getting fired.
Source: Continuing Our Reset - XBOX Wire
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268 people given the heave-ho 
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I hope Capture Age and Chronicles survive, despite Microsoft’s misdeeds
I don’t play CoD, but from what I’ve read, Activision seems to be greedy enough to actually release regional skinpacks.
If they only sell regional skins, I would be fine.
But I run a scenario through AI and it looks way worse.
XP grinding for new civs
Battle passes
Cosmetic sales
Campaigns and civs in separate DLCs
Maybe even using different developers than forgotten empires.
The deep, community-driven historical passion might be replaced by corporate metrics. Studios like Forgotten Empires might be pushed aside or strictly micromanaged by Activision executives to prioritize high-margin digital items over mechanical depth.
I really hope the classical DLCs stay and they don’t ruin the game.
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Shareholders-focused capitalism is the bane of our society.
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https://www.vg chartz.com/article/469158/nearly-half-of-age-of-empires-dev-worlds-edge-laid-off/
(you need to delete the space in “vg charts”, I couldn’t post the link without that. it’s an interview about the layoffs)
can’t say I’m sad about adam isgreen getting fired. he is one of the persons who have publicly made promises about the game that they broke almost immediately
he also worked in the windows phone. not sure i need to say anything else
but am I ever proud of what our studio team and partners were able to do with the series and juice the genre’s return
yep, they sure juiced the game
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I’m sorry for everybody layed off.
I don’t understand why, I only assume it’s again because of some absurd business reasons nobody with a healthy mind would ever get behind.
Also hate the timing. Peopls worked hard to get ana amzing DLC out and aren’t there anymore to receive the reward from the community for it.
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Funnily enough this is the second time an evil corporation fired him, first was EA since he was one of the original Command and Conqueror Red Alert Devs. So he was burned by EA before.
Note WE only oversees the development, they’re just a management layer. FE does most of the world with support from other studios and they’re third party so Microsoft can’t fire people from them.
Honestly things look rather bleak eitherway. Singleplayer enjoyers will likely now stop getting content while the game itself will likely shift into more aggressive pay to win or monetisation strategies for the multiplayer enjoyers
Such as say them adding a battle pass or regional skins that give buffs to the units as Micro transactions. This is Activision, so I fully believe they are capable of such bone headed greed.
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So I thiiiiink that these cuts and this reorg under Activision were mainly administrative in nature, not creative in nature. That being said, Worlds Edge did steer the creative direction that the AoE games went, which presumably means Activision will now have that responsibility. Hopefully they don’t get too hands on, and they let the people closest to the franchise decide the course as opposed to just going whack-a-doodle. But only time will tell I suppose…AoM and Chronicles I have a bit of concern about getting the axe, i’m not worried about AoE 2 getting axed, but I am admittedly slightly nervous about bad decisions regarding the game being made.
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Thinking of this optimistically, Activision has gotten better with their subsidiaries in the last year or so. Overwatch rebranded again and it’s basically back to how OW1 was like, COD MW4 isn’t a much of a dumpster fire as previous year’s one and they’re finally making a new Spyro game which has been received well. They have also published games for Japanese developers without any problems in the past, such as FromSoftware.
On the other hand, this is a layer of middle management that really didn’t need to exist and will probably make communication within the corporate structure worse. Since now FE has to answer to WE which answers to Activision which answers to Xbox which answers to Microsoft. Which is a baffling choice organisation wise since things are already rather complicated.
The best case scenario is nothing really changes and things go on as usual, but since even Senior management like Adam Isgreen has left that is unlikely. The worst case scenario is Activision does Activision things and puts in stuff like battle passes, microtransactions, DLCs hacked up into smaller pieces and mods being legally owned by them now.
I’d say something in between of these two extremes happening is most likely. We’re gonna see stuff like cosmetics and skins being put in a micro transaction store. Maybe even seasonal battle passes that gives players a new civ in the free version and premium skins in the paid version. But the DLC out will either remain the same or be increased since AoE2 is both cheap to make content for and easy to profit from said content.
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Wait is WE still going to exist? It sounded like FE is being moved to Activision, I could see that meaning that what remains of WE will also just be wrapped into Activision and WE will cease to exist as an independent entity. Also given that the whole stated goal of these cuts as a whole is to remove middle management and flatten the org chart (that meaning make less steps from the baseline workers on the ground to the Xbox chief.)
From what i’d heard, most divisions had 14 levels between the baseline worker and the Xbox chief, for comparison I work for a large, well known company in the US and there are 7 steps between me as a baseline worker and the president, so 14 is ridiculous and trimming that was one of the stated goals of the cuts.
EDIT: Reading that article linked above, I see it explicitly states WE will not be removed and FE will still report to WE. Strange choice given the stated goals of the cuts, but hopefully that keeps FE and the Age franchise insulated from any Activision weirdness
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There’re already bad decisions when WE was in charge: RoR, V&V, 3K, and now the carousel ads in the main menu… It seems that at some time they were unsure about the future direction of the game.
I’m of course not saying Activision will do any better — they may be much worse. But personally for me, the game’s overall style and identity have already been damaged, so what will happen next doesn’t feel nearly as serious to me anymore.
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We need to come together, find a benefactor to help us form an indie studio, then buy the rights to Age of Empires, World’s Edge, and Forgotten Empires, so we can get rid of the annoying corporatism.
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Terrible to hear. We really need the studio to communicate which teams got fired and what is the future of their products.
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