Earlier this month, Xbox announced a wave of layoffs unlike anything the company has seen before. Every studio under the company has been affected, and if one hasn't been outright sold or dropped, they've suffered brutal layoffs that you argue they may not be able to bounce back from. It's a very extensive wave of layoffs, and we're seeing some tremendous talent let go.
Just to really show how deep these layoffs go, it has been revealed that a senior character artist who has worked at Bethesda for 27 years and left a lasting mark on The Elder Scrolls was also recently let go.
Xbox just fired the designer of Khajit And Argonian
Among the layoffs was character artist Christiane Meister — a 27-year veteran of Bethesda and (as far as I can tell) one of the longest-tenured women in gaming, period. She worked on Argonians + Khajiit in TES3, horses in TES4 and TES5, Fallout creatures and more. (cont.) — Lady Nerevar (@ladynerevar.bsky.social) 2026-07-07T21:51:43.381Z
First noticed by BlueSky user Lady Nerevar (thanks PC Gamer), Christiane Meister has worked on pretty much every modern Elder Scrolls game, having first worked on Khajits and Argonians in Morrowind, before moving to horses in Oblivion and Skyrim. She has also worked on creatures for the Fallout series and has essentially been a key part of Bethesda for nearly three decades.
She also gave her original creations a bit of a makeover for Skyrim, helping transform the Argonians and Khajits from creepy beastmen into the Argonians and Khajits we all love and recognize today.
It's a huge loss for Bethesda and Xbox as a whole, and a layoff that doesn't make much sense in the grand scheme of things. You have to assume that expertise would have been welcome in The Elder Scrolls 6, but then again, most of what Xbox is doing right now doesn't make sense outside of a few spreadsheets.
Hopefully Meister can find some more work soon, although she has a pretty impressive resume to fall back on if she needs to. Not everyone can just point to a race in The Elder Scrolls and say “I did that,” and Meister definitely deserved a lot better than she's unfortunately gotten.
- Released
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2026
- ESRB
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m
- Developer
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Bethesda Game Studios
- Publisher
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Bethesda Softworks
