Xbox's latest round of layoffs hit Obsidian Entertainment hard. Job losses swept through the studio, projects were reportedly shelved, and within hours the internet filled up with hot takes about what Obsidian is now versus what it used to be. Then Brandon Adler, co-director of The Outer Worlds 2 and now directing an unannounced project at the studio, decided he'd heard enough.
What Adler actually said
Posting publicly on LinkedIn, Adler opened by acknowledging the genuine human cost of what happened. "This has been an extremely difficult week at Obsidian," he wrote. "Not only have I had to say goodbye to some amazing game developers, but I've had to say goodbye to some of my best friends." He made a point of encouraging studios to hire the affected developers, calling them "some of the best people around, both professionally and personally."
Then he turned his attention to what he called the "cold take artists."
"The number of times I've seen people, with no understanding of who has worked on our previous games or what they contributed, talk about how Obsidian isn't who they used to be... is staggering," Adler wrote. "Most of the time they are not just wrong, but spreading an enormous amount of misinformation."
His core argument is straightforward: the people currently running projects at Obsidian are the same people who built the studio's legacy. He pointed directly to Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, and The Outer Worlds as examples of what the current leadership has shipped. The through line, he says, goes all the way back to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2.
The misinformation problem that set him off
Here's the thing: online discourse after studio layoffs tends to follow a predictable pattern. Someone with a large following posts a take about creative decline, that take gets amplified, and suddenly it becomes received wisdom regardless of whether it has any basis in fact. Adler's frustration is clearly aimed at exactly that cycle.
His argument isn't that Obsidian is unchanged. He's explicit that it isn't. "Is Obsidian the same as it was 20 years ago? No, of course not. Nothing stays the same," he wrote. The distinction he's drawing is between organic studio evolution and the kind of rot that online commentators were implying. "The DNA at Obsidian is the same as it always was," he said. "The same DNA that created Knights of the Old Republic, New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights 2, and South Park: The Stick of Truth."
That's a serious catalog. KotOR 2, New Vegas, and Stick of Truth are all games that players still talk about in the context of writing quality and player agency. Invoking them isn't just nostalgia bait; it's a direct rebuttal to anyone suggesting the studio lost its identity.
What this means for players watching The Outer Worlds 2
For anyone tracking the sequel, the situation is genuinely complicated. The layoffs were real, some projects at Obsidian were reportedly cancelled or restructured, and the studio's release slate looks different than it did a year ago. Those are facts worth sitting with.
At the same time, Adler's pushback carries weight precisely because he's not minimizing the losses. He's making a specific, verifiable claim: that the people who built Obsidian's most celebrated games are still there, still working, and still shaping what comes next. Whether that holds up depends entirely on what ships.
Adler's closing line leaves little room for interpretation: "When you are seeing people spouting off about Obsidian, running their mouths about who we are now vs. what we were then, you are listening to someone crow about something with zero insight into how a game is made and who contributed to our previous games."
The Outer Worlds 2 is still in development. If you're jumping in for the first time once it launches, the The Outer Worlds 2 strategy guides cover everything from character builds to companion choices to help you hit the ground running.
