Virtuos, a renowned company for collaborating with other studios on projects like Dark Souls Remastered, Oblivion Remastered, and the upcoming Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, is reportedly planning to downsize its workforce. Approximately 300 employees are said to be facing potential layoffs.
These reports come from Gauthier Andres of French outlet Origami, as shared on Bluesky. Coincidentally, on the same day, Virtuos’ lead game designer Adrien Jouannet made an appearance on a Cyberpunk 2077 livestream discussing the studio’s contributions to the game’s latest update in collaboration with CD Projekt.
Andres indicates that around 300 Virtuos employees, constituting about 7% of the total workforce, are at risk of losing their jobs. According to Virtuos’ website, the company has a global workforce of over 4200 individuals.
The layoffs are expected to primarily impact Virtuos’ employees in China, with repercussions also felt in other regions worldwide, including the French studios involved in the development of Oblivion Remastered. Currently, Virtuos operates from 25 locations globally, having recently acquired five studios, including UK-based Third Kind Games and a new establishment in South Korea, since August 2024.
INFO: des licenciements de masse sont en cours chez Virtuos, studio derrière Oblivion Remastered et le futur Metal Gear Solid Δ.
300 postes (7% de l’effectif) sont à risque chez ce spécialiste de la sous-traitance implanté en Asie, aux USA et en Europe, dont trois antennes en France.
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— Gauthier ‘Gautoz’ Andres (@gautoz.cool) 16 July 2025 at 15:45
“Virtuos is said to have made significant efforts on Oblivion, with a policy of over-delivering on quality relative to the budget, and a contract without royalties (no bonuses tied to the game’s success),” reads a translated excerpt from Andres’ post on ResetEra, closely matching our machine translation. “The result: teams were pushed to their limits for a pure showcase project, with its profitability likely to be questioned.”
The report suggests that Virtuos’ emphasis on projects like Oblivion Remastered and Snake Eater reflects a shift in their strategy towards tackling larger projects or series rather than focusing solely on remakes. We have reached out to Virtuos for further insights.
If these staff reductions do materialize, they would mirror the recent wave of layoffs on the other end of the Oblivion Remastered partnership. Microsoft, the parent company of Bethesda, recently laid off approximately 9,000 employees and scrapped three games, leaving some developers who were working on a now-cancelled MMO at ZeniMax in a state of uncertainty according to their union.
