Aftermath

A memo from Bethesda's boss says the company will focus on "our franchises and IP with meaningful long-term potential" Fallout 4 (Bethesda) Published: July 07, 2026, 12:50 pm | {shareOpen = false}, 2000)"> Share to X {shareOpen = false}, 2000)"> Share to Bluesky {shareOpen = false}, 2000)"> Share to Facebook {shareOpen = false}, 2000)"> Share to LinkedIn {shareOpen = false}, 2000)"> Share by email Monday’s Xbox layoffs hit the studios the company owns hard, and are set to continue to do so as...

Big tobacco is making moves in anime this year. Whereas Crunchyroll’s Smoking Behind The Supermarket With Youhas cornered the market on unproblematic age-gap slow-burn romance, released in smoke-break-length, piecemeal premiere episodes for maximum nicotine mise-en-scène, Chainsmoker Cat is taking a page out of Chainsaw Man’s playbook with its anime opening to get folks on board with its wacky premise: An unexpected dose of absolute cinema. Anime openings are a big deal.

Today Microsoft laid off 1,600 people from its games division—roughly the same number it unceremoniously showed the door last year. As part of this, the company is cutting loose four studios either via independence or new ownership, with one more, Arkane, now in a period of required consultation due to French labor laws. But that still leaves over a thousand on the chopping block today with an additional 1,600 in the coming year.

People are being laid off in a horrendous job market. You do not have to praise the muddled prose of the rich and insulated. Photo by Billy Freeman / Unsplash Published: July 06, 2026, 1:09 pm Last updated: July 06, 2026, 1:20 pm | {shareOpen = false}, 2000)"> Share to X {shareOpen = false}, 2000)"> Share to Bluesky {shareOpen = false}, 2000)"> Share to Facebook {shareOpen = false}, 2000)"> Share to LinkedIn {shareOpen = false}, 2000)"> Share by email Today, Xbox was gutted.

Xbox began widespread layoffs today, around which fears and rumors have swirled since CEO Asha Sharma and CCO Matt Booty announced a “reset” for the company in early June. In what Sharma calls "the most significant restructure in XBOX history," 1600 jobs have been cut today with more cuts planned, and some studios will transition to new ownership or become independent. "After careful consideration, I’ve made the difficult decision to reduce our team by approximately 3,200 throughout FY27.

PlayStation is done with physical discs. Xbox appears done with… video games? Especially with hardware prices rising and not falling—a trend that’s sure to continue in the coming years—it’s hard not to wonder: What’s the point of even owning a console? On the latest Aftermath Hours, we ponder the console-shaped elephant in the room. This time around, we’re joined by Wes Fenlon of PC Gamer to discuss his new project: Warp Point, a web 1.0-style webring of video game blogs for the modern era.

The news Wednesday that Sony was going to stop printing video games on discs has turned into quite the monumental event, finally making good on threats that date back as far as the launch of the Xbox One: namely that one day, and that day is very soon, we will no longer be able to truly own the games we are paying for. There Is No Piracy Without Ownership - Aftermath Is it stealing if we can’t pay for the thing in the first place?

Maybe you’ve heard something called the glass cliff. It’s a phenomenon discussed in a 2007 research paper by Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam that posits that women are overrepresented in leadership roles that are considered “risky or precarious.” You break through the glass ceiling, only to be pushed off a cliff.

In the past few years, thousands of games workers under Microsoft’s many umbrellas have unionized due to a neutrality agreement Communications Workers of America (CWA) bargained while the company was in the process of swallowing Activision Blizzard whole. But that doesn’t mean Microsoft has made things easy.

People don’t understand Connecticut, which I don’t blame them for. The state where I grew up has offered the world influential cultural products like John Mayer, Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, and people who really want you to know they went to Yale. At one job, after someone found out I grew up in Connecticut, they insisted that I must have owned horses. But the truth is a lot more depressing than that. When I came of age the opioid epidemic was in full force.