Halo Studios Hit By Layoffs After Campaign Evolved Launch

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Halo Studios Hit By Layoffs After Campaign Evolved Launch

Published Aug 5, 2026, 7:48 PM EDT

Eric Warner is a contributor at DualShockers with over seven years of journalism and multimedia production experience across print, online, radio, audio, and video publications. He has been writing professionally since 2017 and covering games since 2019, with work spanning lists, news, features, and guides.

Before joining DualShockers, Eric wrote for HN Entertainment and GameRant, worked as a News Fellow for WSHU Public Radio, and served as a Reporter for The Goshen News, where he produced written, audio, and video stories. He holds a Master’s Degree in Journalism and Multimedia Production from Sacred Heart University.

About a week after Halo: Campaign Evolved's public launch, multiple employees have already begun announcing that they have been laid off from the Xbox Game Studios developer Halo Studios, formerly known as 343 Industries.

This comes after a July Alinea Analytics report showed that Halo: CE sold only 900,000 copies on Xbox Series and Windows platforms, 425,000 copies on PlayStation 5, and 212,000 copies on Steam, with the remake notably selling fewer copies in July than Palworld, Minecraft, and Grand Theft Auto 5 on PS5.

Reviews for Halo: CE have notably been mixed across all platforms, and while these layoffs haven't been officially tied to the remake's earnings, it wouldn't be surprising if the poor sales and reception of the remake caused Microsoft to issue layoffs for Halo Studios, especially following the layoff of 1,600 employees in early July.

Halo Studios' Latest Layoffs

On LinkedIn, several Halo Studios employees have begun posting that they were unfortunately laid off from the Halo franchise developer following the launch of Halo: Campaign Evolved.

This includes:

Paul Morris, who worked as a Scrum Master for Halo Studios starting in 2024 on Halo Infinite and CE and notably worked as a Test Associate on Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo Wars, and Halo: Reach earlier on in his career.
Nick Treitman, who worked as a Playtest Coordinator, Associate Producer, and Producer for Halo Studios starting in 2020 before working as a Playtest Moderator for the now-defunct Monolith Productions in 2016 and as an Associate Game Tester for Nintendo in 2014 and 2015.
Caleb Lawrence, who worked as a Software Engineer on Halo Infinite and CE starting in 2022 before working as an Application Engineer at HCA Healthcare.

It's currently unknown if any other Halo Studios employees have been laid off, but given Microsoft's plan to cut 4,800 jobs by the end of the 2027 fiscal year, with 3,200 of which being from Xbox, it wouldn't be surprising to learn if these latest layoffs were a part of Microsoft's job-cutting plan or a response to CE's poor sales.

Halo Studios has been known to suffer from layoffs before, with multiple people losing their jobs in 2025 and in 2023 as a part of Microsoft's seemingly recurring waves of layoffs, with only a few hundred people working at Halo Studios as of summer 2025.

The Future of Halo Studios

Original Halo Designer Isnt Happy With Campaign Evolved

Recently, it was revealed that Halo's next multiplayer project, called Project Ekur, was canceled due to CE facing a troubled development, but new rumors suggest that Halo Studios' next projects may be a Halo 2 remake, a Halo 3 remake, and a new ODST-centered game.

Given the multiple teasers in Campaign Evolved suggesting the production of a Halo 2 remake, the Halo 2 remake may be Halo Studios' next major project, though it may not release on PlayStation platforms given the poor sales of both CE and Gears of War: Reloaded, as well as the notable absence of Gears of War: E-Day coming to PS5.

According to Rebs Gaming, Halo Studios reportedly mismanaged the development of CE, as it was originally primarily developed by the external developers Abstraction and Virtuos under a strict, "aggressive" timeline by HS, only for HS to end their contract with the two midway through the game's development, causing HS to hastily redo the developers' work before launch.

Reviews for Halo: CE have notably been mixed across all platforms

Due to this history, difficulty porting assets into Unreal Engine 5, recent layoffs, and alleged leadership issues, Halo Studios or Microsoft may contract external developers again to develop the Halo 2 remake or even other Halo projects.

Alternatively, Halo Studios may solely work on the Halo 2 and the probable Halo 3 remakes themselves due to issues with working with Abstraction, potentially rushing Halo 2 and Halo 3 remakes that play very similarly to Campaign Evolved with no multiplayer features to coincide with the launch of Project Helix.