Obsidian Director Blasts People 'Running Their Mouths' About How the Studio Has Changed Following Xbox Layoffs

Brandon Adler didn't mince words. The Obsidian director — currently steering The Outer Worlds 2 and an unannounced project — used a LinkedIn post to torch the chorus of pundits pronouncing his studio dead, hollowed out, unrecognizable after Microsoft's axe fell. "Cold take artists." "Running their mouths." His phrasing is blunt because the frustration is specific: people with zero visibility into credits, contributions, or daily reality are rewriting Obsidian's obituary in real time.

The layoffs were real. Microsoft called it the "most significant restructure" in Xbox history — 1,600 gone immediately, another 1,600 queued for the fiscal year. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs spun out into new ownership. Double Fine and Compulsion Games went independent. Arkane's fate stays murky. ZeniMax Online, id Software, and Obsidian each lost "large chunks" of their teams. Bloomberg later confirmed Obsidian canceled the Avowed sequel entirely. That is not narrative. That is damage.

But Adler's point lands harder because it's verifiable. The directors and leads on today's projects are the same names from The Outer Worlds, Pillars of Eternity, New Vegas. He draws the line straight back to KotOR2. That through-line isn't marketing copy — it's credit rolls. When critics claim the studio's "DNA" mutated, they're ignoring who actually writes the code, designs the quests, directs the performances. Misinformation doesn't just annoy developers. It rewrites history while the people who made it are still sitting at their desks.

Adler concedes the obvious: nothing stays identical across two decades. Teams expand. Tools change. Ownership shifts. But continuity of personnel matters more than the Twitter theorists admit. The specific alchemy of Obsidian — reactive storytelling, systemic reactivity, a particular flavor of weird — persists because the architects persist. You don't lose that by changing a logo on the paycheck. You lose it when the leads walk out. They haven't.

The Avowed cancellation stings precisely because it proves the opposite of the "Obsidian is fine" cope. A whole project, greenlit and staffed, evaporated in the restructure. That's not business as usual. That's a studio losing capacity to execute its own vision. The reported pivot to a new Fallout game — presumably the unannounced project Adler directs — reads like triage: bet on the proven IP, shelter the remaining talent under a banner Microsoft understands. Smart survival. Not a sign of health.

What Adler's post exposes is the gap between discourse and development. The "cold take artists" operate in a content economy that rewards speed and certainty. Nuance — that the same leads remain while the ranks thin, that identity survives fracture — doesn't generate engagement. Outrage does. So the studio gets buried in takes before the farewell emails finish circulating.

Adler's pride in the history isn't nostalgia. It's a baseline. He's proud of what they were because it explains what they are. The excitement for "who we have become" isn't corporate speak — it's a director looking at his current board and recognizing the hands on the wheel. The rest is noise.

Microsoft's restructure didn't kill Obsidian. It wounded it. The difference matters. The studio still exists. Its core remains. Its next chapter — Fallout-flavored or otherwise — will be written by the same people who wrote the last three. The critics running their mouths don't know those names. Adler does. That's the only credential that counts.