Bethesda developers protest Xbox layoffs with giant inflatable rat at Maryland office

Bethesda developers used giant inflatable rat and 800 red flags to protest Xbox layoffs during Microsoft CEO visit

Bethesda developers at the company’s Rockville, Maryland office staged a protest against mass layoffs ahead of a visit from Microsoft leadership, using a giant inflatable rat and hundreds of red flags to highlight the impact of job cuts.

Members of the Bethesda Game Studios Union, OneBGS-CWA, placed 800 red flags outside the office, with each representing a person who had lost their job since July 2025.

The union said the action was intended to draw attention to the effect of the layoffs on workers and their colleagues.

Bethesda developers and CWA union members brought “Scabby,” a giant inflatable rat and put up a wall of red flags outside Bethesda’s office in Maryland, to protest Microsoft’s recent Xbox layoffs.

The 800 red flags represent workers who have been laid off since July 2025.

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“Each flag was a public reminder of how many people management cut from our teams – not just our colleagues and coworkers, but our friends at the end of the day,” technical producer and union member Nathan Hahn said in a statement shared with Kotaku.

The workers also placed posters outside their cubicles. After management instructed them to remove the posters, employees put up balloons instead.

“We heard that Microsoft leadership was coming to our office this week, and decided to make our presence visible at the office to show how our developers have been impacted by these devastating layoffs,” Hahn said.

The giant inflatable rat, commonly known within union movements as Scabby, was also displayed as part of the protest.

The demonstration follows Xbox’s announcement of plans to lay off roughly 3,200 employees as part of what the company described as its “great reset”. The cuts follow previous layoffs, project cancellations and studio changes across the Xbox organisation.

The Bethesda union is also preparing for wider action. On August 18, Xbox workers, together with the Communications Workers of America, are expected to hold rallies across the US and Canada to protest layoffs and call for fair contracts, including potential protections against future job cuts.

“We’re mobilizing to fight back against these layoffs not just to ensure impacted XBOX devs and testers get treated fairly, but to remind our company and game studios everywhere that layoffs like this cannot continue,” Hahn said.