Feargus Urquhart, who founded Obsidian Entertainment in 2003 and is now working on Avowed, isn’t looking over his shoulder much now that Microsoft has abruptly shut down Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks.

Microsoft has been laying off a lot of people this year (1900 people were laid off from Activision Blizzard in January…), so it’s no surprise that in an interview with PCGamer, Urquhart talked about how affected he is by what the Redmond company has done, but also how he sees the future of the studio if he were no longer there (after all, everyone ages and there comes a time to retire):

“It’s just terrible. At Obsidian, we went through three layoffs [before being acquired]. They rank right behind the death of my parents as some of the worst days I’ve ever had, so no, it’s just not great. Everything that’s happened in the last six months with the layoffs and the culmination of this with Tango and Arkane and the other studios, it’s really got people worried and shaken. I think we’re just trying to say, “Hey, this is what we’re working on today, and we believe in it. I’m not saying that [Tango and Arkane] didn’t believe in what they were doing, but we just keep our heads down and keep moving forward and say we’re working on great games. We’re working on Avowed, we’re working on Outer Worlds 2. It’s probably not a surprise – we have other things that we’re thinking about and looking at doing.

I think when we all talk, it’s probably a good thing that we all talk like this. We talk about the future and what we’re going to accomplish. But we don’t watch our backs. Obviously, there’s all this stuff going on, but I always go back to the conversation I had with Matt [Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios] in July 2018 when we were just starting the acquisition conversation. I don’t feel like I have a different directive today than I did then. We’re sad about what happened. But as long as I’m doing my job and doing it well, I’m not worried about tomorrow. Me and my partners, we started Obsidian. And even though we sold it, I still care about it. Here’s a shocker: I probably won’t be running Obsidian in 15 years because I’ll be almost 70. But I want Obsidian to be there,” Urquhart said.

You could say he loves his studio…

Source: PCGamer