Obsidian Director Brandon Adler Fires Back At ‘Cold Take Artists’ Questioning Studio & ‘Outer Worlds’ After Xbox Layoffs

Obsidian Entertainment game director Brandon Adler pushed back hard against online criticism of the studio this week, calling out what he described as an “enormous amount of misinformation” following a fresh round of Xbox layoffs that hit the RPG developer.

Adler, who directs The Outer Worlds 2 as well as an unannounced project, made his comments in a July 11 LinkedIn post. Obsidian was among the studios affected by Microsoft’s latest restructuring, reportedly losing more than 50 employees — roughly a quarter of its workforce — with losses ranging from a 21-year veteran artist to an engineer only two months into the job.

In the wake of the cuts, Obsidian is shifting its priorities from a planned Avowed sequel to a new Fallout project, reportedly led by Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer, though work on Avowed is said to continue in parallel.

The layoffs triggered a wave of online commentary questioning whether Obsidian still has the talent to deliver a new Fallout game, with critics arguing that much of the New Vegas creative team is long gone and that the studio isn’t who it used to be.

Adler rejected that framing directly. “The number of times I’ve seen people, with no understanding of who has worked on our previous games or what they contributed, talk about how Obsidian isn’t who they used to be… is staggering,” he wrote. He argued studio leadership has remained remarkably stable: “In most circumstances, the people in lead or director roles are the same people that worked on games like The Outer Worlds, Pillars of Eternity and New Vegas. Like, literally the same people,” he wrote, adding that “the through line from KotOR2 to our current games is pretty clear.”

Adler did concede the studio has evolved over time. “Is Obsidian the same as it was 20 years ago? No, of course not. Nothing stays the same,” he wrote. “But the DNA at Obsidian is the same as it always was.” He closed by dismissing critics as speaking with “zero insight into how a game is made.”

Much of Adler’s post was devoted to the layoffs themselves rather than critics, calling it “an extremely difficult week” in which he had to say goodbye to close friends and colleagues, and praising those let go as some of the best people in the industry, both professionally and personally.

The episode is part of a larger shakeup across Xbox’s studio portfolio this month, which has also seen Double Fine and Compulsion Games spun back out as independent studios and Ninja Theory and Undead Labs sold off, as Microsoft narrows its focus toward fewer, larger franchise releases.