Halo Studios Lays Off Staff One Week After Campaign Evolved's Launch
Microsoft hasn't confirmed anything officially, but three named Halo Studios employees, a producer, a scrum master, and a software engineer, say their jobs ended this week.
What's Confirmed
Layoffs hit Halo Studios starting August 5, one week after Halo: Campaign Evolved launched on July 28. Producer Nick Treitman, who spent 6.5 years on the franchise, confirmed he was affected. Scrum Master Paul Morris, who worked at the studio as a contractor, said his role ended the same week.
Software engineer Caleb Lawrence also listed himself as available for work. Microsoft and Halo Studios haven't issued an official statement.
Not the People Who Made the Calls
Every name attached to this round so far is an individual contributor: a producer, a contractor scrum master, a software engineer. None of the departures confirmed publicly belong to studio leadership.
Part of an Already-Running Round
Microsoft confirmed 3,200 layoffs across its gaming division earlier this year, with 1,600 of those already carried out in July. Halo Studios' cuts read as a continuation of that count, arriving alongside Campaign Evolved's launch rather than because of it.
The Numbers Already on the Record
That July timeline rules out the game's PlayStation reception as this round's direct trigger. Those PlayStation numbers were already public days before the layoffs started. The game cleared 4th in daily active users on Xbox and 29th on PlayStation, 1% of that platform's active users, while still sitting at the top of PlayStation's best-seller chart the same week. Whatever caused this round, it wasn't a reaction to how the game did on PlayStation specifically.
A Studio That's Done This Before
Halo Studios was known as 343 Industries until a 2024 rebrand, timed with the pivot to Unreal Engine 5 for Campaign Evolved. Treitman's own post put a number on how familiar this is to staff there: 6.5 years at the studio, and this is the round that finally caught him, after "dodging just as many" in the years before it.
Where It Stands
None of the three names confirmed so far have said what's next beyond that they're looking. Microsoft hasn't put out a statement, and Halo Studios' near-term plans, already thin after a canceled multiplayer project and no confirmed follow-up to Campaign Evolved, just got thinner.
