Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who's covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget.Please enjoy - and I'll see you next week.In a 2024 interview with Chris Plante, just a few months after Xbox fired 1,900 employees in one blow, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said the best way to prevent further layoffs in the video game industry was to ensure constant financial growth for major studios' shareholders. And the most logical way to do that, he intimated, was with layoffs.The thing that has me most concerned for the industry is the lack of growth," Spencer said. When you have an industry that is projected to be smaller next year in terms of players and dollars, and you get a lot of publicly traded companies that are in the industry that have to show their investors growth - because why else does somebody own a share of someone's stock if it's not going to grow? - the side of the business that then gets scrutinized is the cost side."He says it as if it's a natural and irrefutable fact of life. Of course the company has to continuously grow. Obviously the studio caters to its shareholders above all else. The only way to make the numbers go up is to reduce costs, which means slashing headcount. And Spencer is just a man in a Battletoads graphic tee who, clearly, has to do everything he can to make these investors, his fellow executives and himself richer. Poor guy.We're a business," Spencer told Polygon. I've said over and over. I don't get any luxury of not having to run a profitable growing business inside of Microsoft. And we are that today. But just across the industry - you mentioned it, and in sitting here at GDC, I reflect on friends of mine in the industry that have been displaced and lost their jobs and how just, I don't want this industry to be a place where people can't, with confidence, build a career. So that's why I keep pivoting back to, how does this industry get back to growth?"He's already said the answer - layoffs - but it flies directly in the face of his stated desire to create a stable marketplace where his friends can thrive, so he watches the snake devour its own tail and shrugs, never once considering that the question itself is the problem.Fast forward to July 2, 2025. Microsoft laid off 9,000 people across its global workforce, and the Xbox division was rocked by thousands of job losses, multiple studio closures and notable game cancellations. The news came out in leaked memos, social media posts from fired employees and LinkedIn status updates, and I spoke to someone with knowledge of the situation at Halo Studios about the mood among developers. Overall, it's been a lot to keep track of. Here's all of the reported fallout, as it stands on July 8:Reported studio layoffs, closures and info