Elder Scrolls 6 developers fear delays and crunch after Xbox layoffs deliver "crushing" blow to morale

Developers at Bethesda Game Studios have said that this week's Xbox layoffs have had a devastating impact on the team building The Elder Scrolls 6, with staff describing lost colleagues across every discipline, shattered morale, and real fear that the cuts will delay a game already many years away from release.

The details:

• Current Bethesda staff told IGN that the layoffs hit "a mix of every discipline: programmers, artists, and designers," with one developer noting that a person who had been at the studio since Morrowind was among those cut. This appears to reference 27-year veteran Christiane Meister, who worked on every Elder Scrolls entry from Morrowind through Skyrim, as well as Fallout 3 and Fallout 4.
• "The loss will have a substantial and cascading effect on the game and morale of this studio," one developer said. Another described it as "crushing" to the Elder Scrolls 6 team specifically: "We've all been very excited and hyped for TES 6, and this has had a crushing effect on morale."
• Developers expressed concern that the studio would attempt to fill the gaps with cheaper contracted workers, which would compound delays due to the proprietary nature of Bethesda's internal tools. "Other devs aren't going to know how they work, resulting in more delays, and we'll need to crunch to make up the time," one staff member said.
• Bethesda's union confirmed the studio "lost dozens of programmers, artists, designers and testers" in the initial 1,600 cuts this week.
• Developers noted that a final release date for Elder Scrolls 6 had not been set as far as they were aware, and Todd Howard has previously said the game is still "a while" off.