Xbox’s Reset Week: Supermassive Loses 70+, and the Undead Labs Boss Was “Irresponsibly Transparent”

Friday, October 9, 2026 — One week. That’s how long it took Xbox’s “reset” to go from breaking news to a body count with a pattern. On Monday we reported the Ninja Theory consultation and Supermassive’s 70 layoffs as they happened; since then the Supermassive redundancy process has officially concluded — the 70 are gone, the statement remains the same — and Philip Holt, the studio head who took Undead Labs independent instead of waiting to be cut, gave an interview that reads like a masterclass in the one thing this industry’s leadership keeps failing at: telling people the truth. His phrase for it was “irresponsibly transparent.” It was the most responsible thing any Xbox-adjacent executive has said in weeks.

This is the week-in-review, not a rehash. The breaking stories live where they always lived — Ninja Theory’s proposed closure and Supermassive’s 70 layoffs from Monday — and what follows is what the week cost, counted fresh: who’s out, who bought their own studio back, and what “reset” actually means when you add up the names.

Supermassive: 70 gone, and this time it’s final

The August consultation is over, and the number landed where the ceiling said it would. Insider Gaming reported that the redundancy process announced August 11 has now concluded, with more than 70 people let go across departments — developers, artists, producers and senior leadership, per staff posts. The studio had more than 400 employees before the round; the consultation originally put up to 75 roles at risk. Do the math and that’s roughly one in six people, including the senior layer that was supposed to be steering the ship.

The posts from inside are the part that sticks. Former IT & Facilities Director Frank Tindle wrote on LinkedIn that he was told weeks ago his role was at risk — and that he’d spent 16 years at the studio. Sixteen years. That’s not a contract winding down; that’s the guy who kept the building running through every previous round of this, finally getting the email himself. And this is Supermassive’s third round of cuts in three years. There is a version of the industry where a studio survives three redundancy rounds and comes out leaner and meaner. There is no version where it comes out the same studio.

What the studio said, versus what it didn’t, tells its own story. Supermassive has not commented since the August statement calling the consultation “a necessary step to help ensure the sustainability of the company.” No final number from the studio. No message to the remaining team that we’ve seen. Just the staff posts, one LinkedIn farewell at a time — the way this industry now announces its layoffs, because the companies won’t.

“Irresponsibly transparent”: how Undead Labs left Xbox

Then there’s the other end of the week — the exit that actually worked. Undead Labs, the Seattle studio behind State of Decay, spun out independent as part of September’s reset instead of waiting for whatever Xbox had planned for it. And studio head Philip Holt gave The Game Business an interview that every other executive in this story should be forced to read twice. He was, in his own words, “irresponsibly transparent” with his team during a reset that hit roughly 2,000 jobs.

“Rather than keeping them in the dark and manufacture some alternate reality, I just brought them along… We had pretty direct conversations. We talked early on that under probably any scenario, there’d be job losses.”— Philip Holt, Undead Labs studio head, in The Game Business interview, as reported by GamingBolt

Read that again. Not “we’re exploring options” while the spreadsheets close around you. Not a town hall promise about the strongest lineup in company history three days before the cuts start. An actual conversation: this is happening, and under probably any scenario, there’d be job losses. Holt said “a significant number of people” left the company during the process — but he also said the team that survived saw the cuts as “a necessary consequence of the reality that we’re in.” That is what honesty buys you: not agreement, but the ability to look people in the eye afterward.

The structure of the exit is as interesting as the tone. Holt created a company called Full Measure to acquire Undead Labs — and the remaining employees are its shareholders. Employee ownership, built deliberately. “The value that’s present has been created by the team that is here, and the team that just left,” he said. “So, it was really important to me that everybody has a stake and an opportunity for upside participation.” In a week where two other studios learned what “reset” costs the people with no stake, that line lands like a thesis statement.

And the game survives the divorce. State of Decay 3 is still confirmed day one on Xbox Game Pass — as we reported during the September reset — and it’s now slated for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, with no release date. Per GamingBolt’s writeup, Holt acknowledged the fear of “getting swallowed up or divested” that hung over the studio for years, and said production on the game picked up in 2022-2023. So the zombie game outlives the corporate structure that nearly ate the people making it. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, and it’s not subtle.

The tally so far

Put the week on one board and it reads like this. Ninja Theory: consultation on a proposed closure is underway after two sale deals fell through; the third Hellblade game, Senua, is at risk; we have the full story here. Supermassive: consultation concluded, 70+ out, third round in three years; full story here. Undead Labs: independent, employee-owned, diminished but intact, game still on track for Game Pass.

Zoom out and the reset keeps its shape. September eliminated 268 roles across Halo Studios, other first-party studios and the Xbox Game Studios management layer. Halo development moved to Activision. Playground and Turn 10 are becoming one studio. Obsidian moved closer to Bethesda. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently described years of Xbox layoffs as “streamlining” on the Sources podcast, saying he feels “fantastic” about the franchises inside Xbox Game Studios — while the company has handed marching orders to roughly 5,750 workers since the Activision Blizzard deal closed, per Game Developer’s tally. Streamlining. Seventy people at a time.

What comes next

The processes are on different clocks now. Supermassive’s consultation has run its course; what’s left is a smaller studio, a third round of exits in three years, and silence from the company itself. Ninja Theory’s consultation still has its legal course to run in the U.K., and Xbox says it’s still exploring other paths — though the layoffs that began Monday tell you which way the door is swinging. Undead Labs, for its part, goes into State of Decay 3 as something unusual: an independent studio whose staff own a piece of it, led by a boss who told them the worst parts early. We’ll keep tracking all three.