Age of Empires studio World's Edge lost almost half of all employees this week, as part of Microsoft's latest round of job losses.

The cuts form part of the 268 staff let go across the wider Xbox business, as part of a projected target of 3,200 job losses forecast over the course of this current financial year.

It was announced on Monday that World's Edge would now be part of Activision, though details on how the studio's employees had been impacted remained unclear. In the days since, however, staff have now reported via social media that nearly 50% of the company was now out of work, while its next project had been cancelled.

"I am of course disappointed that this is the way the time with World's Edge and Age ends for myself and many of my talented teammates that were also impacted — we had some great plans for what's next," wrote Adam Isgreen, formerly the company's studio creative director, who had served at World's Edge for 16 years. "I hope the team that remains can rise to the occasion down the line."

"Our studio was reorganized to be under the Activision umbrella," added Andrew Martz, formerly a senior software engineer at the studio. "As part of that reorg, our next project was cancelled and a large chunk of our studio was laid off. I was part of that layoff."

"'It was nice working with you' was not a message I expected to get while on vacation," wrote another laid-off staff member, former lead principal software engineer Greg Snook.

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