Inside King: Layoff Lawsuits, Toxic Leaders, Toothless Ethics Teams, Low Morale and Mandatory AI Use
For the last six weeks, we’ve been speaking to multiple King staff affected by the layoffs announced in July.
They claim:
- Some staff are taking legal action over their severance packages
- The cuts were apparently made with no consideration for staff performance
- The layoffs were haphazard – some staff have been rehired within weeks of being laid off
- Toxic managers investigated by workplace ethics teams – some multiple times – saw no repercussions
- The cuts to the ‘bloated’ workforce don’t go far enough, said one manager, who expects more
- Microsoft says all staff must use AI daily, but adoption is low and even King leadership is sceptical
To make those 200 job cuts, one source claimed that it was as if King had “listed every employee, sorted by salary and then fired them top down, only skipping over people they trust.”
“It didn’t matter that it was people who worked there for ten or more years or who contributed to the success and earned promotions,” they continued. “Performance didn’t matter.”
We’re told King’s performance reviews rank staff on a five point scale: ‘off track’, ‘more to do’, ‘good work’, ‘ahead of the game’ and ‘game changer’. But those ratings did not seem to factor into who was eliminated, said another senior manager.
Employee feedback changes enacted as King became part of Microsoft have also contributed to low and declining morale at the Candy Crush maker, we’re told. “Especially in the last two years people became more and more unhappy because leadership would make decisions nobody could understand,” said one source. “People couldn’t raise criticism anonymously any more.”
They also claimed that some burnt-out staff have been put on medical leave. “Candy Crush and King in general is a very very toxic environment,” they added. “Individual contributors are talented and nice – the toxicity comes from the leadership team. So, yes, Microsoft and AI is one cause [of the low morale] but the toxicity is endemic of the leadership team at King.”
“AI was being introduced by Microsoft as mandatory a while ago,” says one source. “The goal for last year, if I recall correctly, was having a 70 or 80% daily usage of AI on general tasks. And the goal for this year was to get up to 100%, so that every artist, designer, developer, even managers have to use it on a daily basis.”
But another source suggested that the mandate isn’t working: “AI adoption is very low apart from ChatGPT,” they said. “King leadership is in general quite AI sceptic.”
Microsoft's AI adoption is so low they're forcing their employees to use it to desperately boost their metrics, but even their employees know it's dogshit and don't want to use it, but they have to or they'll be fired, Lol. I predict on the current course that MS Gaming has about 2-3 years before their game quality notably declines and we start seeing the consequences of AI slop injected into everything, releases for 26/27 will likely be safe. At least when this AI bubble bursts, Satya Nadella will be booted out of Microsoft.
Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 26 August 2025
