It’s probably a weird day to be working at Bethesda’s Rockville headquarters. In a week’s time, on August 18th, the Communications Workers of America have organised numerous rallies across the US and Canada in support of Xbox workers, 1600 of which may lose their jobs over the next year, on top of the 1600 who have already been laid off. Today, as shared by Game Developer’s Chris Kerr, CWA union members have already initiated a protest outside Bethesda HQ in the form of a giant inflatable rat, and a huge number of planted red flags, each one representing a laid off worker, as Xbox CEO Asha Sharma reportedly.
In a statement from OneBGS-CWA member Nathan Hahn, the move is explained as follows: “We heard that Microsoft leadership was coming to our office this week, and decided to make our presence visible at the office to show how our developers have been impacted by these devastating layoffs… To show our presence, we put up posters around the office, but we were immediately told by management we couldn’t have posters facing the outside of our cubes.
NEW: CWA union members have inflated a giant rat and deployed a wall of red flags representing laid off Xbox workers outside the Bethesda office in Rockville.
The protest was timed to coincide with a visit from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who is apparently at the studio today.— Chris Kerr (@kerrblimey.bsky.social) August 11, 2026 at 5:22 PM
“Then, we brought in balloons so that they could see we were here, but inside our cubes this time. A separate team of laid off developers planted flags outside, one flag for each laid off dev. Each flag was a public reminder of how many people management cut from our teams – not just our colleagues and coworkers, but our friends at the end of the day.”
Hahn, a technical producer, continued to explain that these efforts to push back against the layoffs are not just to “ensure impacted Xbox devs and testers get treated fairly,” but to act as a reminder that “layoffs like this cannot continue.” He notes that if leadership at Microsoft don’t have the “courage to do what’s right for our studios to make the best possible games, it’s up to us to stand up for each other and protect the future of our careers and the game industry.”
Today at HQ, we had special guests from Microsoft leadership. We refuse to let executives forget what game studios are actually made of: their workers.
As welcome gift, we placed hundreds of flags outside, honoring all of the game workers who have been laid off by Microsoft in 2026 (so far).— OneBGS – Bethesda Game Studios Union (@bethesdaunion.bsky.social) August 11, 2026 at 6:06 PM
The Save Our Devs rallies are still set to take place next week, planned to be held at some of the main Microsoft-owned studios, such as the Blizzard Irvine office, id Software Building in Richardson, Texas, Activision’s Austin, Texas office, and the ZeniMax building signs in Rockville and Cockeysville, Maryland.
This follows on from a claim from OneBGS last month that Bethesda’s Montreal workers were told they’d be getting the “smallest severance legally possible,” a detail they were informed of on the same day as numerous Fallout game announcements. Also important to remember is the fact that a boycott called for by BDS against Microsoft over their supplying of AI tech to the Israeli military.
Solidarity with the workers at Microsoft as always.
