Didn't Bluepoint say something similar before they got bought? 

Don’t worry, the ActiBlizz deal ain’t gonna be in the way of them now

You are right lol, so far every major acquisition was a surprise out of nowhere :) I never believe those rumors

Yeah, a few others are off as well. Pretty sure Arkane is off on LinkedIn, was suggested by an employee in the 2020 NoClip documentary about Arkane that they had 150 just at the Lyon Studio, and assuming that Arkane Lyon and Arkane Austin are about the same size, that would mean they had 300 or so in 2020, when LinkedIn only had 250 or so listed for them. With staffing up since then, they were probably at 350 or so leading up to Redfall's release, and surprisingly, we haven't seen any noticeable layoffs on LinkedIn after Redfall flopped, good on Xbox for that.

Ninja Theory said in a 2021 job fair marketing message that they already had 150 devs at that point, and LinkedIn only had 120 or so listed at the time, if they were 150 in 2021 and LinkedIn is showing 140 now, probably means they are around 170 right now.

The one I think must be off on LinkedIn, but have no proof of, is inXile. They built that huge brand new Tustin studio in 2020, which seemed to have room for 200 devs in that studio alone, plus they have their smaller New Orleans studio which seems to have around 20-25 devs based on the interior pictures, and yet LinkedIn has them going from around 105 devs to 121 devs since 2020, such a small increase for 3 years when they built a brand new studio with space for more devs. Meanwhile we've heard that Project Cobalt is an extremely ambitious AAA RPG, while they are also already developing a 2nd game which is rumored to be in a core Xbox/Zenimax franchise (believed by some to be a new isometric Fallout RPG in the style of Fallout 1 and 2). I just don't see how they can be working on 2 games at once, one of them AAA, with 121 devs like LinkedIn suggests.

As for Tango, I would guess closer to 150 devs personally. Considering they had simultaneous development on both Ghostwire Tokyo and Hifi Rush for most of the years both were in development, I just don't see how they could have made both with only around 100 devs split between them, unless there was lots of outsourcing to other Zenimax studios or something. Ghostwire in particular is quite ambitious, with AAA tier (though rough) graphics, a pretty sizeable map, and dozens of hours of content. Maybe they could have done it with only like 65 devs (the other 35 on Hifi) and some outsourcing though, would need to look up the game's credits.

Yeah usually when things leak you see the story say due to a source that spoke anonymously since they can't speak about it.  But there is no anonymous voice in a billion dollar deal of a publicly traded company, if a person were to leak that before the companies they would be go to jail for insider trading and sued for breaking their nda.

It’s criminal to have AAA studios that do GaaS, be light staffed.

Yes, that did happen, Bluepoint denied they were being acquired by Sony just 2 months before Sony announced they had acquired them. However, there is one big difference between CD Projekt and Bluepoint, Bluepoint was privately owned, CD Projekt is public, meaning they have stockholders. It is actually in the best interest of CD Projekt devs and executives, especially any who have a significant amount of stock in the company, to let acquisition rumors grow, as rumors of an acquisition can increase their stock value, meaning a bigger payoff for stockholders when Sony and CD Projekt conclude their acquisition negotiations and make the deal public. It would be most unusual for CD Projekt to deny the rumors, possibly hurting their own stock value in the process, when they can just ignore those acquisition rumors and let people think whatever they want to think, and possibly have their stock value grow as a result of the acquisition rumors. 

Another big difference is that Sony themselves accidentally leaked their intention to acquire Bluepoint in June 2021, just weeks before Bluepoint denied the acquisition rumors in early July, and just 3 months before the acquisition was announced in September. Sony themselves leaking intent to acquire Bluepoint is a much more reputable source than some Destiny 2 leaker posting about CD Projekt being acquired and Days Gone 2 entering development on her discord.

So that Florian guy is looking like an unhinged idiot.

Who?

I'm drawn towards the disparity between The Initiative's drop and XGS Publishing's gain.  Seems like this whole 'jumpstart' structure from Initiative might go away after Perfect Dark comes out.