Virtuos helped make one of the year's best-selling video games. Now, 300 of its workers may be out of a job
Virtuos, the game-development studio that developed one of this year's best-selling video games, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, is reportedly laying off about 7% of its staff, which comes out to about 300 employees. The news comes courtesy of Gauthier Andres, a journalist and co-founder of the French video-game website Origami.
Founded in Shanghai in 2004, Virtuos employs more than 4,200 people across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. The company has expertise in many of the most popular game engines used today, including Unreal, Unity, Frostbite, and others, so it's been able to contribute to many different types of games, including some of the most popular ones like Fortnite, Dark Souls: Remastered, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, NieR Automata, Marvel's Midnight Suns, and countless others.
Most notably, though, Virtuos was primarily responsible for the 2025 remaster of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, which was a critical and commercial success when the original version launched in 2006. The remaster was just as popular: It became the third-best-selling game of 2025 less than a week after its release, reaching four million players in just three days.
Virtuos did not immediately respond to Fortune's request for comment.
A rough year for game studios
Virtuos is hardly the only gaming company conducting layoffs. 2025 has been a tough year for studios both big and small: Just this month, Microsoft laid off more than 9,000 employees, with a significant portion coming from its gaming division, which led to some studios closing (The Initiative) and several projects getting canceled, like the remake of the hit 2000 game Perfect Dark. Sony's Bend Studio also laid off dozens of employees, and Electronic Arts also cut roughly 300 to 400 employees this spring.
There are several reasons for why game studios are conducting layoffs, with the primary factor being the skyrocketing costs associated with producing a video games. Games take years to make, with some budgets ballooning over $500 million—more than most Hollywood movies, save for the blockbuster superhero-type fare. Game studios also did a ton of hiring during the pandemic when people were forced indoors and doubled down on home entertainment. But once consumer spending returned to pre-pandemic levels, demand failed to keep up with the pace of studio growth, which is why we're seeing the correction in the industry now. The growing adoption of AI and other automated tools is also transforming workflows, which means some roles are now more vulnerable than they were before.
It just goes to show that even achieving wild success provides no guarantees in the world of game development. Notably, Virtuos helped roll out a major update for Oblivion Remastered just this week.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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