Studio head Philip Holt says he was being incredibly candid with employees as layoffs loomed.

Undead Labs, the studio behind the State of Decay titles and the in-development State of Decay 3, has had a rocky few months since Xbox announced plans to divest the studio from its Xbox Game Studios portfolio back in July. In the intervening months, the studio has faced the specter of layoffs as it transitions from an Xbox studio to an independent one, and studio leadership has weathered this turbulence by being candid with the team.

In an interview with The Game Business, Undead Labs studio head Philip Holt explained that he has tried to be open and clear with the studio that layoffs were likely coming as part of the Xbox divestiture and pivot to independent ownership—which they did in late September.

“Rather than keeping them in the dark and manufacture some alternate reality, I just brought them alongside," Holt told The Game Business. "That probably reduced some anxiety. I tried to put myself in their shoes. You’re not in control, you don’t really know what’s happening, you know your job might be at risk, and you’re wondering if this game is actually going to finish. So, I tried to share as much as I could. We had pretty direct conversations. We talked early on that under probably any scenario, there’d be job losses. On the day of the layoff, people were prepared. That ended up being a real courtesy, as painful as it was.

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