The story director of Gears of War: E-Day has been fired as part of Xbox cuts yesterday, just two weeks before the game he has worked on for more than four years is released. Juan Vaca, who joined the Gears of War: E-Day Developer Coalition in 2022, announced last night that he had been fired from the company on LinkedIn. Vaca wrote: “I’m part of this round of layoffs from Microsoft and open to new opportunities in games/film/TV. If your team needs a director/narrator, please reach out.” To view this content, please enable targeting cookies. Manage cookie settings Here’s the story trailer for Gears of War: E-Day. Watch on YouTube Vaca’s previous post, made just five days ago, was a celebration of Gears of War: E-Day going gold (meaning the game is ready to be printed on discs). The game itself will be released on October 6. It’s unclear how many more The Coalition developers, if any, have been affected by this wave of Xbox cuts. According to Kotaku, which spoke to an anonymous source familiar with the situation, less than “a handful” of developers were fired, and for reasons apparently unrelated to Xbox’s restructuring. Yesterday was another day of upheaval for Xbox, with multiple studios consolidating or drastically changing as a result of ongoing restructuring work. In total, 268 developers were laid off. Studios Rare and World’s Edge came under the control of Activision, Playground and Turn 10 will merge into a studio focused on Fable and Forza, and Obsidian, which is creating a new Fallout game, now reports to Bethesda. On top of that, Halo Studios has been drastically downsized as part of these layoffs, and development of the Halo series has moved to Activision for future releases. Finally, Ninja Theory is heading toward closure, after potential new ownership deals fell through.
