{"id":856991,"date":"2026-09-22T20:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T20:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/856991\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T20:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T20:38:09","slug":"gears-of-war-e-day-story-director-laid-off-just-four-days-after-celebrating-the-game-going-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/856991\/","title":{"rendered":"Gears of War: E-Day Story Director Laid Off Just Four Days After Celebrating The Game Going Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"

Juan Vaca, the story director on the upcoming Gears of War: E-Day<\/a>, is one of the hundreds of employees who are losing their jobs as part of the latest round of Xbox cuts. And heartbreakingly, Vaca was laid off just a few days after a celebratory post announcing that E-Day had gone gold.<\/p>\n

On September 22, Xbox announced more layoffs and studio changes<\/a> as part of its ongoing corporate \u201creset.\u201d (The company is also moving Halo under Activision<\/a> and merging its Forza teams into one studio.) Over 260 employees were laid off on Tuesday, according to Xbox, following a massive round of layoffs in July. Included in this most recent round of cuts was Vaca, who confirmed the news on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am part of this round of Microsoft Layoffs and am open to new opportunities in games\/film\/TV,\u201d posted Vaca on LinkedIn<\/a> and BlueSky. \u201cIf your team needs a director\/storyteller please reach out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vaca joined the studio in 2022 and helped \u201cguide narrative teams and cross-discipline groups through the process of building a story from concept to execution,\u201d according to his LinkedIn page. It is unknown at this time how many other people at The Coalition were laid off as part of Tuesday\u2019s latest round of Xbox cuts. According to a source familiar with the matter, less than a handful of people were cut at the studio for reasons unrelated to today\u2019s wider restructuring within Xbox, and the plans around E-Day\u2019s launch remain unchanged.<\/p>\n

Kotaku has contacted Xbox for more information.<\/p>\n

What makes this layoff all the more depressing is the fact that just four days ago, on September 17,<\/a> Vaca posted on those same social media sites that Gears of War: E-Day had gone gold, effectively meaning development of the game, which launches on October 6, is done and it is now ready to be printed on discs.<\/p>\n

\u201cGears of War: E-Day has gone Gold,\u201d posted Vaca on LinkedIn. \u201cExcited for the world to see what the whole team\u2019s been cooking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Update 9\/22\/2026, 3:14 p.m. ET: Added further info about the impact of the cuts.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Juan Vaca, the story director on the upcoming Gears of War: E-Day, is one of the hundreds of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[32372,247674,2539,74,1298],"class_list":["post-856991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gears-of-war","tag-gears-of-war-e-day","tag-layoffs","tag-technology","tag-xbox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}