The Bethsoft layoffs saga has just gotten weirder.
Last week, Irish news outlet The Connacht Tribune reported that 300 customer service representatives had been newly let go from Bethsoft’s Galway offices, established in 2011 to support the then-unreleased Elder Scrolls Online. The Tribune claimed only five or six employees remained. In response, Bethsoft told Gamestop-owned blog Gameinformer that the Galway studio was still in operation and that it had “reduced staffing” by 50 people back in August (which we reported on then). The company chastised the Tribune for unspecified “inaccuracies” but notably failed to address the total number of employees/contractors laid off more recently or remaining in Galway.
Now we’re finally getting some clarity in the form of an anonymous source via Develop.
The alleged former Bethsoft employee claims that “when The Elder Scrolls Online ‘underperformed and didn’t meet the estimated expectations,'” Bethsoft began to make cuts to what was once a department of 600. “Entire departments were closed down and large numbers of employees were laid off, our source tells us, but by the beginning of 2015 it was clear that even more jobs would be cut,” writes Develop. Layoffs over the course of 2015 were punctuated in September, when Bethsoft allegedly decided to shut down the Galway branch entirely and outsource customer service to the US and India.
According to Develop’s source, Bethsoft let go 300 employees over the course of 2015 “with less than ten now remaining.” The Tribune had implied all of the layoffs were recent (“around 300 workers have been dealt a major blow ahead of the Christmas”), but the real number remains unclear.
Massively OP cannot independently verify Develop’s source, nor do we know whether the word “employee” is being used interchangeably with the word “contractor” in the piece.
It’s not been a good week for Bethsoft, which delayed the launch of its Elder Scrolls-themed online TCG with a curt “I think it’s safe to say it’s not coming in the next 15 days” from Pete Hines.
The company did not respond to our request for more information last week.
