u/DBones90

There's a report going around that Obsidian is in talks of closure similar to other studios like Ninja Theory and Double Fine. However, Jason Schreier reported today on BlueSky that this isn't the case. The post:

>Despite a report this morning, I can confirm that Obsidian is *not* in negotiations to avoid shutting down. Plenty of details are still up in the air surrounding the layoffs (picture will be clear on Monday) but Xbox is keeping Obsidian, according to people familiar with the situation.

To be clear, this doesn't mean the studio won't suffer layoffs, have projects cancelled, or otherwise be in a shitty situation following Microsoft's changes from leadership. However, it seems that, for the moment at least, shutting the studio down isn't on the table.

I was watching Jason Schreier's breakdown of the recent history of Xbox in his most recently released video (highly recommended for those curious on industry news), and something he said in there sounded oddly familiar.

When talking about the deal Obsidian and other studios made at 10:05, Schreier says:

>Part of the arrangement behind all of these acquisitions is that the studios get to keep their autonomy. Zenimax becomes its own entity or stays its own entity, still reporting to its CEO and leader, while studios like Double Fine and Obsidian turn into what's called "limited integration studios." They're told, "Make great games, take risks, try to win awards. It's okay if a game isn't a huge hit because it can still be useful to Xbox as part of this broad strategy to get games on GamePass."

The rest of the video does a great job exploring the ways this strategy was and wasn't successful, but this part in particular rang a bell because the "limited integration studio" sounded an awful lot like a grefram, the compromise option between the Living Lands and the Aedyr Empire at the end of the game.

In both cases, the consolidating force (Xbox/Aedyr) creates an arrangement with the controlled body (Obsidian/The Living Lands), saying, "If you give us x, we'll give you y, and otherwise you'll be able to manage yourselves." But, of course, the tricky thing with this arrangement is that the consolidating force still "owns" the other party, which means that they're free to change the arrangement at a future date. For those that don't watch Schreier's video, this is what ends up happening when Xbox shifts its strategy to profitability, and those developer studios focused on making critically successful games start facing closure because they're not making big enough hits.

And when I made this connection, viewing the rest of this game through this lens started making a lot of sense. When Kai brings up how hard it will be for the Living Lands to stay independent, it tracks that the writers would have had first-hand experience with that given Obsidian's troubles with lost deals and layoffs that almost led to their closure. The animancers in Fior, who escaped a safe but controlling regime to better develop their craft, evoke the many developers who left bigger studios to take a risk making it on their own, including the folks who left Black Isle to form Obsidian in the first place. And I'm sure there are more than a few developers in the industry who are like the pargrunen at Solace Keep: so burned by AAA developers that they remain fiercely independent even when it might mean their own doom.

Now do I actually think that the writers of Avowed intentionally created a "fuck you" to Microsoft and hid it within their video game? No, not really, and it's a strength of Avowed's writing that, even with this lens, it feels like this game is exploring these themes rather than writing a manifesto. Through this lens, we can see how the tension between independence and "safety" through consolidation goes beyond Eora and is a conflict that is very relevant for people in the real world.