More than 300 game developers lost their jobs in one day, just three weeks before Christmas

It’s another miserable day for the videogame industry, as the past 24 hours have seen hundreds of people put out of work at Ubisoft, Torn Banner, and Sweet Bandits.

In terms of raw numbers, the Ubisoft layoffs are the deepest cuts. The decision to end development of the free-to-play shooter XDefiant, coming less than three months after executive producer Mark Rubin insisted “the game is absolutely not dying,” means the closure of Ubisoft’s San Francisco and Osaka studios (although Ubisoft’s San Francisco business office remains open), and a “ramp down” of the company’s studio in Sydney. A total of 277 people are expected to lose their jobs: 143 from the San Francisco studio, and another 134 “likely to depart” from Osaka and Sydney.