Bethesda lays off nearly 20-year veteran Dane Olds, who may leave games industry

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Xbox studios are hemorrhaging generational talent amid Microsoft's layoff wave , with one Bethesda veteran highlighting the loss of an artist responsible for so much of the studio's history that, "If you've played a BGS game you've had his art on screen 99% of the time."

Ben Carnow, a Bethesda veteran of nearly 20 years himself, puts a spotlight on former lead weapon artist Dane Olds in a Bluesky post .

A LinkedIn post from Olds confirms, "I have been laid off alongside so many passionate and talented colleagues."

Like countless game developers now facing a horrible job market after layoffs, Olds indicates he may leave the games industry altogether, even after 20 years at Bethesda. "I'm now looking for work inside and outside of the game industry. If you can use my expertise in weapon art, character art, team building and management please reach out to me," he says.

Carnow says "Olds is my truest friend" and "an artist of legendary skill." He outlines just some of the key contributions Olds has made over the years, including: "Too many Skyrim weapons to count. All the Dwemer creatures. MUD CRABS. Like half the guns in Fallout 4. Loads of weapons in Starfield."

"Laid off by Microsoft," Carnow concludes.

In 2023, Bethesda ran a developer spotlight featuring Olds and discussing his work. "Fallout 3 was my first big AAA game so that's very special to me," Olds said at the time. "Skyrim was an amazing experience because I got to help define the look and feel of the Dwemer art in the game as well as getting to make all of the steel weapons and many artifacts like the Mace of Molag Bal. Oh! It also features one of the few creatures I've gotten to make – the mudcrab."

Olds was also pivotal in the development of Fallout 4's expanded weapon system. "On that title Todd [Howard] came to me one day and told me he had this crazy idea to make all our weapons moddable and that he wanted it to change the way they looked and played. So, I started in on the pipe weapon set and the rest is history. It was a lot of fun figuring out how to make that system work and I learned a ton working on that game."

Much like Olds, Bethesda also laid off 27-year veteran Christiane Meister , a core artist who made major contributions to Skyrim, especially the Khajiit and Argonian designs, as well as Oblivion, Morrowind, Fallout 4, and Fallout 4.

Cases like these are precisely why remaining Bethesda developers expect work on The Elder Scrolls 6 to be impacted by Microsoft's layoffs, fearing crunch, quality dips, or delays for the already long-awaited game.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is reportedly so desperate for another Fallout game that it's reassigned Fallout: New Vegas maker Obsidian to the series at the expense of a planned Avowed sequel and other projects.

Fallout and Elder Scrolls union says Bethesda layoffs didn't hurt Microsoft's "14 layers of management" – "We lost dozens of programmers, artists, designers and testers."