Games launched under the Forza banner have been produced by Turn 10 Studios since the beginning, going back 20 years to the original release of Forza Motorsport in 2025. Turn 10 is a subsidiary of Microsoft and has been since day one, which means that larger layoffs at Microsoft have now impacted employees there as well, with numerous artists and producers announcing on LinkedIn that they were let go this week.
A review of the company’s LinkedIn page shows the “#opentowork” banner across a large number of employees, largely made up of artists and producers, although some developers are there as well. More than a dozen employees have the banner, and many are posting stories on LinkedIn announcing that they’ve been let go as part of the larger Microsoft initiative.
One “Look Development Artist” posted yesterday that she was a part of the layoffs:
Such a sad day for for all the devs that were affected. I was also part of those affected by layoffs today and it’s crazy to think how much is gone in just an instant.
I joined Turn 10 Studios right after college, hitting the eb and flow as I grew and moved through the studio. Every single person I worked with was as aspirational, as they were helpful and wizards at what they do.
Another post, from a 3D Environment Artist, had a similar tone:
I was part of today’s layoffs at Turn 10 Studios. It’s very disappointing how it ended, but I’m very grateful I had a chance to work with some of the best people I’ve met in my life to ship a video game title. Turn 10 was where I had both my first job and internship as an environment artist, so it will always hold a special place in my heart. Thank you all for good memories and giving me this opportunity to launch my career 🙂
Microsoft is not commenting on the exact scope of the layoffs, but did provide some details to Jason Schrier at Bloomberg:
The company’s gaming units were expected to be told throughout the day how many jobs would be cut at each office. The division had about 20,000 employees as of January 2024.
“To position Gaming for enduring success and allow us to focus on strategic growth areas, we will end or decrease work in certain areas of the business and follow Microsoft’s lead in removing layers of management to increase agility and effectiveness,” Microsoft Gaming Chief Executive Officer Phil Spencer said in an email to staff seen by Bloomberg News.
Spencer didn’t share specific numbers but said that impacted employees will be “given priority review” if they apply to open jobs elsewhere within the company. He wrote that Microsoft’s “platform, hardware, and game roadmap have never looked stronger,” but that “we must make choices now for continued success in future years and a key part of that strategy is the discipline to prioritize the strongest opportunities.”
Turn 10 Studios has largely bounced back and forth between the motorsport-focused Forza games and the more open-world adventure racing games under the Forza Horizon banner. The most recent of the former was Forza Motorsport, which came out in 2023. The lack of a newer game is likely related to the company’s porting over of Forza Horizon 5 to the PS5, which is the first for the series.
The Verge has the number of employees being let go at “more than 70,” which leaves “enough people behind to keep Forza Motorsport up and running.” Turn 10 isn’t the only studio in the Microsoft universe of game developers that’s been hit, but the number seems proportionally high. What the future of the brand looks like without more support remains unclear. I have reached out to Microsoft for more information and will update it if/when I get it.
Top graphic image: Microsoft
With the current advances in AI we will soon see – Forza Motorsport AI edition where a fully autonomous driving mode will -always- drive every race for you in neatly AI designed cars, on an AI designed track with AI designed environments and AI generated sounds, voice overs and engine sounds.
I mean … AI is ready for that right?
Sounds like MS is starting to give up on their goal of being a Playstation fighter. Between this and that other studio they dumped it sounds like they’re focusing less on making exclusives.
Now’s the time to call up Angel Studios and beg them for a Midtown Madness 4!
“going back 20 years to the original release of Forza Motorsport in 2025″
Good God; is it 2045 already?
This is really disappointing to hear. I love Forza, both Horizon and Motorsport. While the recent Forza Motorsport had some issues at launch, I think it’s a pretty solid game in 2025. I think that if the devs kept up with good updates FM 2023 could be really incredible, however sadly that doesn’t seem like the case. I also thought FM 2023 was a good base for an even better FM game after it, but there’s no way that’s gonna happen. Hopefully Forza Motorsport stays alive as a franchise somehow.
Also will be forever salty that FM 2023 doesn’t have Long Beach or Monza on the track roster
Wurt?
“removing layers of management to increase agility and effectiveness”
And yet they seemed to have layed off everyone *but* managers.
Not surprised they got impacted. Microsoft has already laid off about 15,000 personnel in 2025, specifically to free up funding for its AI infrastructure.
Hell, if they take the Ubisoft approach of copy and pasting the same open world sandbox ad nauseum, they might not need any staff in their games division.
AI, fiscal year, recession, repression, it’s all the same thing.
Well, there go my hopes for a surprise Forza Horizon 6 release this year…
Probably still coming, just with a lot of AI-generated slop.
From a business perspective, it never made sense to have separate studios.
Even as a kid playing FH2 and FM4, I was so confused seeing people talking about T10 and PG. It took me 5 months to understand that they’re different games made by different studios. What’s the point?
Racing games already do not sell as much as other genres because of a smaller audience, so it’s hard to justify the existence of two Forzas just on different maps. Horizon has the easier handling but people don’t mind the handling of Motorsport.
If Motorsport isn’t dead, it will just be made by Playground Games instead.
People’s expectations for video games these days have risen so much that having an open world map with real-life circuits would be the next evolution of racing games. Assetto Corsa Evo is heading in that direction.
We’ll crucify Microsoft for lay-offs yet again, but I’ll argue that T10 was supposed to be the one making Horizon in the first place.
Hope the devs band together and make a new racing sim/city traffic story game. I mean I’ve played NFS since it had “The” in the title. We need more of those Beams and City Cars to add more variety to GT and FH.
How about a GTA style Uber driver thing?
I’d recommend listening to Brad Sams or Paul thurott about this. Typically Microsoft lays off before or after July because of the fiscal new year, but this year seems much worse.
Tempted to ship my Xbox back to Microsoft telling them that I’ve laid off my Xbox and I’m all in on Sony now.
All I know is, Microsoft needs to bring back Project Gotham Racing.
I loved PGR racing the best. Not the most realistic, but it was so fun. I bought the steering wheel for the Xbox360 just for this game and its sequel.
OR Midtown Madness!
Just wondering if Forenza has been around that long are their cars using an older platform than real cars when it would be easier to change in a game? If you are going to accept video games with cars as car news you have to evaluate them as well.
Cars are crazy expensive (time, which translates to money) to model. The last game I worked on where we needed car props, we were severely limited by the amount of cars we could include before I had the team create modular vehicles for a sense of variety. Got like 10 cars for the price of one and a half lol.
The end result was a modular system that has very much Torch vibes when he publishes his awesome car ideas.
I thought Forza had switched to just 3D scanning real cars.
Often times 3D scanning will just create a detailed mesh to aid the modelers but the output isn’t very efficient for games. There’s a strict polygon limit modelers need to adhere to for performance. Still a huge benefit though.
Also, the modelers will have to create multiple versions, or Level of Detail versions. Usually that’s done along the modeling path – creating the low LOD first, then add more detail for a medium LOD, then finish off with a higher LOD. So the further an object is away from the player, the lower the LOD is.
This is standard practice for practically anything you see in a game. If you look carefully, in some games you can see the point where a model changes LOD and you’ll suddenly see it become a little blockier or more detailed.
Outside of my work as a modeler and animator I model cars as a hobby, and just finishing something as simple as a Ford Ranger without the interior, drivetrain, or suspension (a static in other words) can take four or five days by myself. I’ve been doing this stuff for ten years at this point and it still takes that long. If I do everything and don’t make it a black bottom static that can take a week and a half. I’m not making the models deformable, and things like the fenders and bumpers are not separate objects since that’s more work, so it’s like a third as complex as what most AAA racing games have.
The fastest you could do their level of work at is like a week per vehicle for a group of three (modeler, rigger, and materials), and that’s starting with one of the manufacturer provided display models and with the caveat that you don’t allow any mesh modifications such as custom body panels. If you rush this process you get Project Cars 3 where everything looks off, is poorly optimized, can’t be customized, and has no damage model.
That’s why Gran Turismo 7 abandoned nearly the entire catalogue of vehicles. A majority of the models were from the PlayStation 2 era and had like a fifth of the vertex count, with most of the details being textures instead of being physically modeled. They started this with 4, where they brought in the cars from 3, and 5 made it much more apparent since many of the new cars were entirely physically modeled. Even with 6, the new cars made just for 5 stood out because of the lower vertex count. If Gran Turismo 7 kept all one thousand two hundred and fifty cars and had every one at the same level of detail it would’ve delayed the game by another three or four years at the very least. And that already happened once with 5 because Kaz is a perfectionist.
Maybe it’s just me but if I’m being let go as part as a mass layoff my LinkedIn post might be a bit different in announcing my looking for work intro. Maybe I’m sad to announce after carrying the load for 70 people in the company at a salary far below my contribution the company has decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If you need a quality programmer contact me every one else just sucks.
But that’s just me. And I have used a similar line in an interview jokingly of course
I knew I should have gotten a PlayStation and gone for grand turismo, darn…
I think someone at The Administration got wind of how realistically you can transport people quickly across lesser-known parts of the Mexican countryside, and got a little spooked.
I mean, if Nissan can find race car drivers using video games…
MS bought studios, so it has to kill more of its own.
More importantly kids today can’t afford a real car and thus it’s more about a 20yr old camary that a 20 year old Ferrari you might get down the timeliness if you did everything right in life. So even the fantasy is busted in a world of today. Million dollar supercars are nice but they make a Ferrari a normal person might get stupid slow
We need more Italian plumbers.