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Andrew Siañez-De La O

@mexicancryptid.bsky.social
472 followers 515 following 473 posts

Writer-Designer @ ZeniMax Online Studios | Award-winning Stage and Audio Dramatist | Fighting every day to put dinosaurs in Elder Scrolls Accursed opinions are my own. They/He, Mex-American 🇲🇽

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Reposted by Andrew Siañez-De La O
Nathan Grayson @nathangrayson.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
in a week that saw microsoft give activision the reins to halo and bungie pivot back to destiny, one thing has become abundantly clear: the people in charge do not have a long-term, overriding plan. they’re just reacting. the result, when times are bad, is chaos
"Things are still very chaotic," a current id Software employee who was granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly told Aftermath. "While there has been an attempt to communicate to the studios, it is still entirely in bullshit corporate speak. I still don't believe they have a clear vision for the future. The only concrete thing they have communicated is they want higher profits, and they want it now. Aggressive goals are being set that would have been unrealistic even before the layoffs. ... To say the workers within Xbox have a dim view of the future is putting it mildly. We keep thinking morale can't sink lower but the obvious incompetence of Xbox management somehow keeps driving it down worse."
This mirrors shifts in strategy that have come to dominate the still-new Sharma era, including others outlined Tuesday. Rare is joining Activision, Turn 10 and Playground are fusing, and—most gallingly, considering their history—Obsidian is being folded into Bethesda to work on Fallout instead of its own original series. As with the previous round of layoffs, details betray Microsoft's haphazard approach: A Halo developer got promoted and laid off in the same week. Gears of War: E-Day's story director is out of a job days after celebrating that the game had gone gold. Hellblade developer Ninja Theory, now without a buyer after a brief glimmer of hope, is once again on the chopping block.
All of this betrays a simplistic mindset that does not accurately reflect the reality of game development: People are disposable, studios are interchangeable, and series can be traded like sports teams. Nothing matters more than franchises and their money-printing prowess. Unless, evidently, you are Hideo Kojima, in which case Microsoft suddenly has money to burn.
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headfallsoff @headfallsoff.com · 22/09/2026
microsoft have essentially bought up and bulldozed almost an entire american arts industry as a half-hearted distraction from their main project of trying to monopolise and rent-seek global digital infrastructure and military contracts
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I need you to understand that I've never been more serious when I say ... this is me.
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Dan Larson @danlarson.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Writers/Musicians/Artists told you from Day 1 that this was theft. Straight up. Always has been.
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Wait, did I tell y'all I wrote this little rogue rooster? Finally unlocked him the other day. VO knocked it out of the park, love this guy.
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dannyodwyer @dannyodwyer.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
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💉🔪🩸kelly 'arekay' yeo🩸💉🔪 @kellyarekayyeo.com · 14/09/2026
This is legit making me tear up. All the work, time, emotional & physical labour, mental anguish, creative energy, and passion that we’ve poured into organising over the last 3+ years has been worth it. I always think I could have done more but this is the best thing I’ve ever been a part of
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Voryn Dagoth Ur @dagothurthegod.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
Dagoth Ur quote tweeting Mozail

Mozail: "Good boy" "Good girl"
What if your partner is non-binary?

Dagoth Ur: good bogcup
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
My carnivorous motel play “Truth or Consequences” is getting published! Shout out to 1319 Press and Fresh Ink! Insta announcement: www.instagram.com/p/DdEfzjSFIP...
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Had a fantastic time chatting about my play Rough Magic and an even better time listening to these amazing folks talk about Shakespeare and the Borderlands!
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
My guild beat heroic Vashnik tonight and the whole time all I could hear was Umwak from the Ewoks animated series. (We're 4/8 heroic!)
Snake-y boi boss from the 12.1 Venemous Abyss raid in World of Warcraft.Umwak from the Ewoks animated series.
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I also did a narrative/fiction pass on the new ability/passive names and mastery flavor text (for Warden and all the refreshed classes).
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I got to work with Elle Newlands (Diablo IV VO) prior to ESO's layoffs, truly a phenomenal voice actor and a joy to work with! I hope what we worked on sees the light of day sometime soon.
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Rik Godwin @rikgodwin.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
To work 60 hours a week just to be laid off before the game you destroyed yourself to make is released is... Fuck I don't even know what that is. Disgusting, at a minimum.
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Kendra, normal version @kendrawcandraw.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Tim Curry and Dolly Parton have taught us not only that you should be bigger, weirder, gayer, and freakier, but also that those qualities are what people will love about you. The things that make you strange and amazing are the things that will resonate with other strange and amazing people
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Devastating to lose both Dolly Parton and Tim Curry. I'd sing "9 to 5" with my mom while she drove me to school during my parent's divorce and Rocky Horror helped connect me to my own queerness. Genuine icons.
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LittleKuriboh @littlekuriboh.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Company that union busts and fires its employees and then justifies it by spreading rumors they were leaking stuff are now insisting you have to sympathize with them because it’s heartbreaking what these leakers are doing to their employees.
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Mike.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ @dumbmike.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Tim Curry taught me it was okay to be impossibly evil and gay
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Obsessed with these boys. I've put an embarassing amount of time into this game, but hey, what else am I doing right now?
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CWA @cwaunion.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Today, game workers and allies are taking action at Save Our Devs actions across the US and Canada to call out layoffs and corporate greed in the industry and to demand fair first contracts across Microsoft’s gaming studios.
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Repping the Thousand Eyes at the rally today outside the ZOS office!
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Handing out flyers at my One Piece locals today! I'll be at our Hunt Valley rally this Tues. August 18th @ 12:00p! Details on all our planned rallies: actionnetwork.org/event_campai...
actionnetwork.org
Save Our Devs Actions!
Join game workers and allies at actions across the country to Save Our Devs! In July, Microsoft reported that they would be laying off thousands of workers across the company – impacting hundreds of ...
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Molto speaks!
ESO's in-game system mail with a message titled, "For Your Insatiable Curiosity." It reads:

"Our Thousand Eyes remained unblinking in the face adversity! They dismissed us as pests without any regard for our drive! To discover the unknown is written in our very nature! It should be of no surprise that we, above all others, would be the ones to map and catalog and scurry across the districts.

Your efforts, dear Eye of mine, will be remembered long after the memory of you fades as all motes of light do in the eternal darkness that awaits us.

And yet! It is this day that you are celebrated! This era in which you have made your mark! Rage against those who would dismiss us—dismiss you! Rage! Rage! Rage!

-Molto the Whisperer
as transcribed by his speaker, Melandir."
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Chris Kerr @kerrblimey.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
NEW: CWA union members have inflated a giant rat and deployed a wall of red flags representing laid off Xbox workers outside the Bethesda office in Rockville. The protest was timed to coincide with a visit from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who is apparently at the studio today.
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
This is slow burn yaoi and I'm obsessed. www.youtube.com/watch?v=izNe...
youtube.com
The Search For The Leviathan
YouTube video by Wifies
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OneBGS - Bethesda Game Studios Union @bethesdaunion.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Developers like Atran Raikany from ZOS are responsible for making the game worlds we love feel alive. Microsoft's lay-offs aren't just short sighted business decisions - they're threats to the future of these worlds. #SaveGameWorkers and tell Microsoft to end these layoffs: shorturl.at/5ruBE
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Hannah 'Pichy' Stockmann @hpichystockmann.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Savage.
"Devolver and its board are seeking shareholder approval to delist, believing becoming a private company is in the best interests of Devolver, its employees, its partners, and its Shareholders as a whole," a spokesperson for the company told GamesIndustry.biz.

"We’ve made an announcement about this.

"The purpose is simple and positive. Being private will allow the Devolver Digital team, especially the finance, legal, and executive team, to singularly focus on the long-term health of the company and less on satisfying the requirements of the public market, which have nothing to do with being a successful game publisher."
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
So much about Heart’s Week, both the quests and developing the holiday as a whole, was about celebrating all the ways you can love. Nghi Vo’s “The City in Glass,” is going to seem like a weird pull for such a cozy quest line, but trust me. It’s deeply romantic in some really breathtaking ways.
The book cover to Nghi Vo’s “The City in Glass,” is presented beside a tall, tiger print Khajiit, a cat person from the Elder Scrolls Online.
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Wait, here are some stealie screenshots I had tucked away! I'm fairly certain these were part of my very first batch.
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Trying to compile everything I wrote on ESO (to the best of my abilities because no way am I tracking down all my antiquities/stealies). Here are the numbers for only the things already released!
Spreadsheet listing the amount of items written per each of the following categories:

Quests: x46
Books: x36
Songs: x4
Crafting Motifs: x7
Houseguests: x5
Assistants: x2
Pets: x11
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The Elder Memes @theeldermemes.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
It's easy after mass layoffs to forget the remaining devs have to keep going. The work continues with a gutted team haunted by absence and a silent threat that they might be next
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Mike Bithell @mikebithell.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
This was, is, and always will be a brilliantly shit illustration of how stupidly self defeating business people can be. Forgoing the universal positive of a staff self-training on their own time, because of the vague fear that one in a hundred might make some money.
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
I had planned to start a little ESO book club list for quests that I wrote. Essentially, "if you liked x quest, read y." So, as I suddenly have a lot of time on my hands to catch up on my tbr, I'm starting a thread I'll slowly add recs to! 📚🧵
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Looking back on some fun stuff I wrote. Really loved how this Meet the Character turned out. www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/p...
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OneBGS - Bethesda Game Studios Union @bethesdaunion.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
No devs, no games. We are the ones that make the games, and we will fight for every developer hit by these layoffs.
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Andrew Siañez-De La O @mexicancryptid.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
My WoW guild leads gifting me game time so I can keep raiding with them after being laid off?? I love my online friends???
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Riley MacLeod @rcmacleod.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Happy to have @supercrip1994.bsky.social on the site today, investigating how cuts and layoffs have affected the multi-faceted Xbox accessibility work so many players rely on.
“I loved every minute of working on accessibility for Xbox titles, and I’m heartbroken I won’t be around to help anymore,” they said. “The future of Xbox accessibility is going to be something that takes a long time for players to feel. Individual studios still have their accessibility culture that they’ve built up over many years.”

It’s not a question of whether each remaining development team cares about accessibility, but rather if they still have the resources to properly implement each feature and design. The former employee explained that games releasing within the next year are relatively finished in terms of accessibility testing and feature roadmaps, but there’s no certainty what the future of Xbox accessibility looks like beyond 2027. This is in large part due to cuts not only affecting the internal full-time Xbox accessibility team and individual studios’ employees, but also contractors who provided critical services like accessibility testing. They said that without a centralized accessibility support network, the “standards and prioritization frameworks that helped save teams time and energy” no longer exist.

“That support structure, while on paper didn’t look like it was doing anything, was actually educating and connecting developers, and providing the framework to take a massive list and then narrow it down to what would be most impactful for disabled players,” the former employee said. “If we think about games like Forza, their innovations came from Game Accessibility Workshops. But who is left to run the Workshops if Xbox’s research headcount has been cut, and there are no dedicated accessibility researchers?”
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Brandon Sheffield @brandon.insertcredit.com · 22/07/2026
I got asked about AI in games again! I think we underestimate how, while AI use is more rampant in the East than the West, our protections against it here are dramatically worse.
From the Gamesradar article: "Necrosoft Games creative director Brandon Sheffield also highlights a cultural divide. "I think we are witnessing an attempted assassination on the very concept of creative work, especially in the West," he says. "While I'm anti AI use everywhere, at least in China and Japan people aren't getting fired with the intention to replace them with AI as that's legally difficult. There it's being used to supplement the work. I've seen Chinese companies express amazement at how Western studios are firing folks in order to have 'fewer devs do more' with AI. Why fire all your good people?"

Sheffield says Necrosoft will never use gen AI. "I feel sick about it frankly," he adds, and he would love to see the tech "be treated like a pariah." In his view, "once you let it infect your studio, [it] creatively bankrupts that studio."

"We've also seen that companies outside of games have had to hire back their engineers because AI couldn't cut it – or they're finding that all their tokens are getting spent by execs on 'convert this PDF to a powerpoint' which is cheaper to just have an intern do! So it may be slightly faster, and a lot worse, but it's also more expensive? Neat ... We're dismantling the entire industry in the interest of short-term shareholder gains and it's just a terrible plan.""
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OneBGS - Bethesda Game Studios Union @bethesdaunion.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Bethesda Games Studios’ Montreal workers are being treated especially poorly by XBOX and we won’t stand for it. Here are the details. If this upsets you let Microsoft know: feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/ide...
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Nathan Grayson @nathangrayson.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
microsoft is in full damage control mode following last week's layoffs. its main strategy so far? namedrop sequels to popular series at every turn. but despite what execs like asha sharma might want you to think, those series were made by people, and now they'll never be the same
Todd Howard just shared plans for the Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Starfield franchises. These worlds have earned a special place with hundreds of millions of people over many years. I'm looking forward to what's next, including the partnership with Obsidian on a new Fallout game and closer collaboration with ZeniMax Online Studios on The Elder Scrolls. The achievements of these franchises are remarkable: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has crossed 65 million units sold, becoming one of the 10 best-selling games of all time, Fallout 4 has also crossed 35 million units sold, joining the top 25, and Starfield will soon reach over 1 billion hours played.
This statement sucks so bad that it makes my blood boil. Look what the franchises did, all by themselves! Look what they’ve accomplished, of their own volition, thanks to their own intrinsic goodness! So many big numbers, which translate to giant heaps of cash in the bank accounts of execs and shareholders! Never mind the people who spent decades painstakingly crafting the many games, stories, and other creative endeavors that corporate ghouls now so happily flatten into “franchises,” erasing themes, meaning, and human beings in favor of empty iconography.

This is how the people running the show at Xbox—and countless companies besides—view games, not to mention everything else in their robotic, colorless lives. Numbers and lines trending ever upward. Fuel for platitudes and faux-inspirational nonsense directed at the LinkedIn hivemind, of which they all paradoxically believe they’re the main character. Another stepping stone toward the next bigger, better thing. No ultimate destination, no camaraderie, no soul. Just an endless ladder that leads to the void regardless of which way you climb.
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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
"What matters the most is that the games are good" - as long as we have OD, Fallout 5, who cares, right? Everything's fine!
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Lady Nerevar @ladynerevar.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Extremely lore correct very official impeccably sourced tier ranking of which Daedric princes would and wouldn't support a union (thank you @doomfunk.bsky.social and the braintrust)
Tier maker list of all the daedric princes. The categories and contents are as follows: 

Union Man: Malacath, Mehrunes Dagon, Hermaeus Mora, Sanguine, Namira
Unions, but Evil-y: Jyggalag, Peryite
No: Vaernima, Sheogorath, Hircine
Corpo CEO: Azura, Clavicus Vile, Boethiah, Molag Bal, Mephala, Meridia, Nocturnal
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CWA @cwaunion.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Game workers and allies are taking action at #SaveOurDevs rallies! Earlier this month, Microsoft reported that they would be laying off thousands of workers across the company – impacting hundreds of union jobs. An injury to one video game worker is an injury to all.
A photo of workers at a rally against layoffs!A photo of workers at a rally against layoffs!A photo of workers at a rally against layoffs!A photo of workers at a rally against layoffs!
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OneBGS - Bethesda Game Studios Union @bethesdaunion.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
First Skyrim, now Fallout 4, @elianora.bsky.social continues to support us with her fantastic creations. Thank you yet again! This week's rallies are going to be historic and we couldn't do it without fans like these! 💛💙
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Finn @thefinninator.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Been a bit but this one is for the #ZOSFam
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Trick Weekes @trickweekes.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
One of the things that, as lead writer, I had to bang into the head of senior leadership sometimes was that writers were not interchangeable even within a project. One writer knew a certain companion inside and out. When we lost that writer, a new writer coming in took twice as long to do the work.
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Jake Steinberg @jakesteinberg.substack.com · 13/07/2026
an issue with how we talk about the games *industry* is that i think we have normalized talking about studios like interchangeable labor pools instead of groups of artists making creative work
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Lady Nerevar @ladynerevar.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Got tagged into a thread about how the community can support laid off devs, so I thought I'd put together a quick infographic. I made this company agnostic, since, well, games industry has been doing this a lot :( More Elder Scrolls specific notes in thread below.
Orange and Blue poster titled: How can the community support developers undergoing layoffs?

DON'T
Don't spread rumors or misinformation
	About who is/isn't laid off, why anyone was/wasn't laid off, what is going to happen to the game, etc.

Don't do things to "support" the devs if they haven't asked
	Don't review bomb games, cancel subscriptions, boycott the company, or yell at company employees online if the developers haven't asked you to. It does not help them.

Don't forget about this 
	The consequences of layoffs don't end when the news cycle moves on. Remember the devs when there's a cool announcement that they should have been a part of, or a bad bug they could have prevented.


DO!
Do listen to the developers and amplify their voices
	Use your platform to share the human stories of those affected, not just the impacts it'll have on the game.

Do dispel and correct misinformation 
	If you see someone saying something mean or misinformed, shut them down or correct them if you're able to.

Do follow the developer's lead 
	If the developers ask for a specific action (like a comment writing campaign, a protest, or removing a post you've made), do it!

Do tell them they mattered 
	Tell the team (or individual developers) about the impact their work had on you

Do offer direct support, if you can 
	Buy their art, listen to their podcast, leave a LinkedIn review if you worked with them, let them know if your company is hiring, etc.
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