Text taken from a post at playground.ru
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] As part of widespread layoffs at Xbox Game Studios, Obsidian Entertainment has fired art director Matt Hansen, a key member of the studio and the art director of the game Avowed. This was announced by former Obsidian Entertainment co-founder Chris Avellone. Hansen became widely known in late 2024 after a series of controversial statements. He publicly wrote that he prioritized hiring Black artists, stating, "There are too many white men in our industry." These statements were widely seen as outright racial discrimination in hiring, and even Chris Avellone himself advised seeking legal advice.
Hansen also openly admitted that he wanted to make Avowed as narrative-driven a game as possible. In response to Elon Musk's criticism of the game's pronouns, he wrote, " I wanted to piss him off so badly with my game, and I can't believe it actually happened. Well, you haven't seen the basic settings yet." Honestly, it's mind-boggling that the richest, shittiest kid in the world is complaining about what I do. I'm frankly disheartened. I can't think of a single person in the world I'd rather piss off. Anyway, Avowed is out February 18th next year. Definitely check it out if you're not afraid of the woke virus. Hansen was fired as part of a wave of layoffs that affected several Xbox studios. There has been no official comment from Obsidian Entertainment or Microsoft regarding the reasons for Hansen's dismissal.
The aforementioned game was a flop (tens of millions of dollars were thrown at it, "Smuta" is a joke), and its art design was quite poor and narrative-driven. Simply ugly and garish. The characters were a match for it. But to spite Elon Musk. So when "creators" whine that greedy corporations are firing them to save money, it's worth remembering that often the very same characters who are being fired now are the ones who rose on the wave of promoting agendas and tolerance by large conglomerates like Black Rock.A few years later, it turned out that the audience doesn't want to eat it, and the corporations are suffering losses. And when the time came for layoffs, the agenda-driven layer was largely eliminated. Games should be made to appeal to audiences, not to anger Elon Musk.
P.S. Incidentally, the aforementioned Chris Avelon was once fired "for harassment" and kicked out of mainstream studios. It later emerged he'd been slandered and acquitted. But he was never invited back into the mainstream industry, even though he was one of the creators of Fallout.
Related:
Xbox 01/22/2025 Don't Fight Alone: One Soldier's Journey
Xbox 11/13/2024 Pentagon secrets leaker Jack Teixeira sentenced to 15 years in prison by a federal judge
Xbox 01/26/2024 Microsoft: Layoffs for nearly 2,000 employees at Activision Blizzard and Xbox
Xbox 01/22/2025 Don't Fight Alone: One Soldier's Journey
Xbox 11/13/2024 Pentagon secrets leaker Jack Teixeira sentenced to 15 years in prison by a federal judge
Xbox 01/26/2024 Microsoft: Layoffs for nearly 2,000 employees at Activision Blizzard and Xbox