Obsidian’s Brandon Adler, a co-director of The Outer Worlds 2 who is now leading an unannounced project, has responded publicly to the recent Xbox layoffs affecting the studio. He criticised commentators he called “cold take artists” for spreading unsupported claims that Obsidian is no longer the studio it once was, arguing that this misrepresents who is still making its games. The remarks matter because they address concerns about whether the cuts could damage one of Xbox’s best-known role-playing developers and its future projects.

According to the article, Adler described it as an “extremely difficult week” at Obsidian, saying the studio had lost talented developers and close friends. He also encouraged other employers to hire the laid-off staff, calling them some of the best people around professionally and personally. To counter doubts about the studio’s identity, he said current senior staff worked on major titles including Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity and The Outer Worlds, and argued that the same creative “DNA” stretching back to Knights of the Old Republic 2 still remains even if the company has changed over the past 20 years.