Another round of layoffs are coming to both Microsoft and Unity. Both tech companies are dropping more employees from their respective workforces, with Unity cutting 300 employees and Microsoft said to cut about 5% of its head count, which amounts to more than 10,000 people.
According to Unity, this set of layoffs were a result of a combination of weak economic trends and the company’s acquisition of the monetization company ironSource, which readers will recall cost $4.4 billion and was also the business move that prompted its CEO to disparage game devs that don’t monetize their products from the jump.
As for Microsoft, the upcoming layoffs were first reported by Sky News, which noted that the firings were expected “in the coming days,” but insider sources reporting to The Verge said that layoffs are likely coming today ahead of the company’s quarterly earnings report next week. Other reports say that most of these layoffs will affect Microsoft’s engineering division and will be “significantly larger.” This latest set of firings is likely spurred by the company’s $68B attempt to purchase Activision-Blizzard.
As alluded to in the lede, this is the second such time both companies shed employees: Unity shed hundreds of staffers this past July, and Microsoft let go of nearly 1,000 workers this past October.
