Obsidian Entertainment was one of the many studios affected by Xbox's recent mass layoffs, with the California-based studio reportedly losing over 50 employees in this purge. Additionally, according to Bloomberg, Obsidian has now been tasked with creating a new Fallout game, with the project to be led by studio veteran Josh Sawyer.
The elimination of roughly a quarter of Obsidian's workforce has led to a lot of chatter online about the studio's history, trajectory, and its latest projects like Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2. Everyone has an opinion, and game director Brandon Adler is frankly sick of hearing them (nice spot, Eurogamer)
“Another difficult aspect is having to see a bunch of cold artists come out of the woodwork to talk about what Obsidian is or isn't,” writes The Outer Worlds 2 director in a LinkedIn post. “The number of times I've seen people, with no understanding of who worked on our previous games or what they contributed, talk about how Obsidian just isn't who they used to be… is astounding. Most of the time, they're not only wrong, but spreading a huge amount of misinformation.”
A similar situation recently arose with Bungie, where online chat suggested that no one who worked on Halo was still at Bungie, only for a developer to come out and list dozens of people from the Halo days who were still at the studio.
“The people in lead or director roles are the same people who worked on games like The Outer Worlds, Pillars of Eternity and New Vegas,” Adler continued. “Like, literally the same people. The through line from [Knights of the Old Republic 2] to our current games is pretty clear.”
Obsidian began by creating licensed games for publishers, such as KOTOR 2, Neverwinter Nights and, eventually, Fallout New Vegas. The studio then went through a period of financial difficulty and turned to crowdfunding, giving birth to Pillars of Eternity and Tyranni. Acquired by Xbox in 2018, Obsidian has demonstrated its productivity by releasing six games in the past eight years.
“Is Obsidian the same as it was 20 years ago? No, of course not. Nothing stays the same. But the DNA at Obsidian is the same as it always was. The same DNA that created KOTOR, New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights 2 and Stick of Truth. I'm incredibly proud of our history, and I'm also excited about who we've become.”
He concluded by reminding the audience that people “who are gushing about Obsidian, running their mouths about who we are now versus what we were then,” actually have “zero insight into how a game is made and who has contributed to our previous games.”
- Date founded
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June 12, 2003
- Head office
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Irvine, California, USA
