The award-winning video game publisher Zenimax Media will cut 166 jobs from its Rockville studio come September, according to Maryland’s Department of Labor. The company’s Baltimore-based studio will lose 213 jobs.
The job cuts come amid a price hike on the Xbox gaming console last year and rising costs of assembly due to this year’s economic uncertainty, according the Associated Press.
Zenimax, which is owned by Microsoft, owns major gaming franchises, including the critically-acclaimed Video Game Awards’ Game of the Year title “The Elder Scrolls,” plus “Fallout,” “DOOM” and “RAGE.”
The gaming studio became renowned for developing gaming innovations that changed the industry, like pioneering open world role-playing games and offering downloadable content for players following a game’s release that drove favorable profits.
Microsoft acquired ZeniMax and its game publisher, Bethesda Softworks, in 2020 for $7.5 billion in cash. At the time, it was one of the largest privately held game developers and publishers in the world.
Zenimax was cofounded by late businessman and attorney Robert Altman, husband of TV superhero and Potomac resident Lynda Carter, of “Wonder Woman” fame.
