Xbox cancelled Sawyer’s original RPG to give him Fallout

Josh Sawyer had an original RPG in the works. Xbox killed it and gave him Fallout instead.

Start with the numbers. Obsidian has lost roughly a quarter of its staff this week. A WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) filing puts the cut at 52 people. Kotaku reported it first, and Stephen Totilo confirmed the figure on Game File.

Now the part everyone’s skipping past. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reports that Sawyer was already building a new RPG. It was Fallout-adjacent in spirit, but its own thing, not tied to the licence. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s franchise-first mandate cancelled that project. In its place, Obsidian is now making an official Fallout game, with Sawyer directing.

Xbox cuts 1,600 jobs today, warns the same number is coming

Avowed 2 got the exact same treatment. Chris Avellone said back in November that a sequel was already in motion. That’s reportedly dead now too. Every bit of Obsidian’s output is being funnelled into IP Xbox already owns.

Why Sawyer’s cancelled RPG matters more than Fallout

Sawyer is one of the most respected writer-directors in the industry. He earned that respect making original, weird, personal games: Pillars of Eternity, Deadfire, the brilliantly strange Pentiment. The moment he had his own new idea greenlit, it got pulled the same week fifty of his colleagues lost their jobs. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a studio getting hollowed out, then pointed at whatever franchise the spreadsheet says is safest.

Fallout is one of the biggest names Microsoft owns, and putting the New Vegas director back on it is close to a guaranteed win. But if “biggest franchise wins, always” is the actual rule now, Elder Scrolls is probably next for Obsidian. The real question is whether anyone at that studio gets to make something new again.

---

For more updates like this, check out the gaming news section!