‘Halo studio lost 95 people in layoffs and switches to Unreal Engine’

343 Industries, the developer of Halo Infinite, has lost at least 95 employees as part of Microsoft’s recent round of layoffs, Bloomberg reports. It seems that new titles are being switched to a new game engine, namely that of Epic Games.

The well-established game journalist Jason Schreier writes on Bloomberg that Microsoft has refused to name concrete numbers, but that the medium has viewed a spreadsheet. It would show that at least 95 people have lost their jobs at 343 Industries. The list of laid-off employees would include the names of “dozens” of veterans, including senior executives and contractors, whom the studio relies heavily on, according to Bloomberg. According to sources, the fired people without permanent employment were told only a few days in advance that their appointment would end.

Since it was announced that Microsoft is making a significant round of layoffs, there have been rumors that 343 Industries would stop development of the Halo series or that development would be transferred to another studio. Those speculations soon led to one developer response; on Twitter, the company said that Halo and Master Chief will remain and that 343 Industries will continue to develop Halo now and in the future. Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios, previously indicated that 343 will remain Halo’s in-house developer and employees will remain in charge, although more work may be outsourced.

Apart from the layoffs, there seems to be another important change being made. The studio has been working with its own Slipspace engine for some time. According to insiders who spoke to Bloomberg, this engine is based on old code from the 1990s and post-millennium, has its fair share of bugs, and is the source of some annoyance for some Halo Infinite developers. Certain multiplayer modes that are nearing completion, such as Extraction and Assault, which are present in previous Halo titles, have yet to be released for Halo Infinite, and that delay is partly due to issues surrounding the engine, the sources say.

Partly due to these problems, switching to the popular Unreal Engine from Epic Games has been considered for some time. Late last year, after former studio boss Bonnie Ross and a leading figure responsible for the engine left, the decision was made to use the competing engine. This switch will first materialize with a new game codenamed Tatanka, sources familiar with the matter say. This is a project that 343 Industries is working on together with the Texas-based study Certain Affinity. It would first have started as a battle royale game, but according to the sources, the game could evolve in several directions. Other future games would also explore whether to use the Unreal Engine. Internally, there are some skeptics who fear that the way the Halo games feel could be negatively affected by the switch.

Halo Infinite