2025 has become a difficult year for workers across the tech and gaming industries, marked by wave after wave of layoffs. Microsoft alone has carried out three separate rounds this year, joined by studios like EA, PLAION, Virtuos, and King, with the list, unfortunately, continuing to grow.
Many will recall the shocking dismissal of Unity’s entire Behavior team, and now, in yet another round, it has come to light that Ben Cloward, a respected and well-known figure in the community, is among those affected.
Ben Cloward has been in the industry for over 20 years and is widely recognized for his expertise in shader development. Ben co-created ShaderFX, now the built-in tool for real-time shader creation in 3ds Max and Maya, and was the original author of Maya’s Uber Shader. In recent years, he was part of Unity’s Shader Graph team and shared his knowledge through talks at major industry events and a YouTube channel with over 75,000 subscribers.
Ben put together a list of the main things he worked on at Unity in his announcement post: