Yesterday, August 18th, further union rallies against Microsoft's mass layoffs across Xbox studios were held outside across North America. As the One Bethesda Game Studio (OneBGS) union and the Communication Workers of America (CWA)-supported protests continue, one unionised Bethesda developer has said that while work-related morale for those who remain at the studio is low, there's optimism about their efforts to organise.

This latest round of rallies were dubbed Save Our Devs and were held across nine locations in the US and Canada. The likes of Redmond in Washington, Rockville in Maryland, and Austin in Texas have all been the sites of such rallies before, while protests were also held in the likes of Minneapolis and Albany this time.

Around these rallies, two unionised Bethesda developers - lead character artist Alex Nguyen and technical producer Nathan Hahn - have spoken to Kotaku about the current atmosphere at the studio post-cuts. "We actually submitted a proposal to the company on how to perform a reduction in force back in February of this year," Hahn pointed out. "The company sat on that for four months and did not give us a response before performing these layoffs."

Nguyen, meanwhile, refuted suggestions that the layoffs only affected "a whole bunch of middle management", saying that "people on the ground making sure that this game works and putting it in the hands of players" have been let go. Understandably given the layoffs have further shattered the idea of working at Bethesda and Zenimax being relatively stable and secure, as well as jettisoning veteran staff with valuable institutional knowledge, Hahn said that among remaining staff "morale for our work at our jobs has never been lower". Though, he made clear that morale as it pertains to the devs' efforts to collectively organise is "on the upswing".

The CWA union and their Canadian offshoot CWA Canada filed unfair labour practice complaints against Microsoft over the layoffs via the US National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) last month. The unions accused the company of mishandling the cuts, alleging that Microsoft failed to provide information to the union, engaged in bad faith bargaining, performed "coercive actions", and modified employee contracts.

The layoffs have left the future development timelines of games like The Elder Scrolls 6 and The Elder Scrolls Online looking more nebulous, despite Microsoft's efforts to usher out statements suggesting everything's hunky-dory while revealing a bunch of Elder Scrolls and Fallout games/expansions now in the works.

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