The situation at the studio is not looking too good – we have reported on this several times recently – but it is possible that the number of employees has remained the same.
Shortly after the release of Halo: Campaign Evolved, several developers announced on LinkedIn that they had been laid off, sparking fears of another round of layoffs at Halo Studios. The studio, formerly known as 343 Industries, was unaffected by Xbox’s most recent wave of mass layoffs, but this could quickly change, especially since the game has received a mixed response. However, Dean Takahashi, a GamesBeat reporter, discovered that there had been no internal layoffs; the affected employees were external contractors. According to Takahashi’s source, there were no layoffs at Halo Studios. It is common for changes to occur among external contractors after a game’s release. That is what people are noticing.
While this is good news, it does not mean that layoffs will not happen later on. After all, Xbox is already planning to lay off an additional 1,600 employees during the 2027 fiscal year, and, as mentioned, Halo: Campaign Evolved is not performing well in terms of sales. According to data from Alinea Analytics, the Unreal Engine 5 remake of Halo: Combat Evolved only just made it onto PlayStation’s Top 10 list for July, with sales of 351,000 copies. Taking into account sales from Steam, 212,000 copies, and the Xbox and Xbox PC apps, 900,000 copies, the game has not yet sold 1.5 million copies despite relatively light competition.
According to OpenCritic, critics gave the game an average score of 82 out of 100. However, Steam users are much more critical: based on 8,375 user reviews, the game currently has a disappointing 62% approval rating. The future of the series is currently quite uncertain, especially following rumors that all new Halo projects in development have been canceled. Even the fate of the Halo remakes of the second and third games is reportedly uncertain.
