After a plan for hundreds of layoffs in Maryland at Microsoft-owned ZeniMax and Bethesda Game Studios (BGS) was announced in early July, video game developers and union members rallied in Rockville to demand their positions be restored. A total of 166 Montgomery County jobs and 213 in Baltimore will be eliminated in September.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen to the work we were doing,” said Stephanie Zachariadis, who worked as a BGS game writer and designer for five years and was recently told her job was cut. She said she was working on an unreleased game “that a lot of people were pretty excited about.”
Zachariadis, a bargaining representative for her union, said she is still employed under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act and plans to continue bargaining with Microsoft.
“It can’t be overstated how much it upends your life to have your job lost, and so suddenly and spontaneously and callously like it’s happening here,” said Juniper Dowell, who worked as a quality assurance tester at ZeniMax for five years before being cut last week, and is also a union organizer.
“We love doing our jobs. I love working here so much,” said Jay Woodward, a game programmer at BGS for nearly 20 years before being laid off.
“It feels like there’s plenty of room to keep us all employed in terms of Microsoft’s budget… it would be really nice if we could just get back to work and make them games that will define a generation of video gaming,” Woodward said.
Rockville elected officials were in attendance to show support, including Rockville Mayor Monique Ashton and City Councilmember Marissa Valeri.
Protesters were hopeful jobs could potentially be restored. Union members think the layoffs were implemented illegally and plan to fight at the bargaining table, including for recall rights and more severance.
BGS, an Xbox studio, develops games like “Fallout” and “The Elder Scrolls.”