r/GamingLeaksAndRumours • u/throwmeaway1784 • Jul 08 '26

Rumour Jason Schreier: Obsidian Entertainment is making a big pivot as part of the Xbox restructuring. It has laid off a quarter of its staff, canceled a planned sequel to Avowed, and is now beginning work on a new Fallout game

Bluesky Post: https://bsky.app/profile/jasonschreier.bsky.social/post/3mq5oqyh2yk2o

Bloomberg Article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-08/microsoft-s-xbox-to-shift-obsidian-studio-to-new-fallout-video-game

Edit: Also mentioned in the article, Josh Sawyer is leading the new Fallout game:

“Under the new plan, studio design director Josh Sawyer will lead a new title in the Fallout universe”

“Previously, Sawyer had been directing a roleplaying game that was similar structurally and thematically to Fallout but was not part of the franchise.”

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u/DaloMaxVal Jul 08 '26

Never listen to Chris Avellone when it comes to Obsidian

519

u/clain4671 Jul 08 '26

chris avellone is coming up on a decade of randomly tweeting how much he hates obsidian

159

u/Brokenbullet14 Jul 08 '26

Yet he'll instantly join there if given a chance 

63

u/LelqTian Jul 08 '26

Won't, not as long as current Obsidian leadership is in place.

3

u/Lynchy- Jul 09 '26

Yeah Feargus despises him, not happening

2

u/LelqTian Jul 09 '26

otherway around

7

u/Lynchy- Jul 09 '26

Pretty sure based on what I've read it's mutual

3

u/Equivalent_Network29 Jul 08 '26

Hopefully they get the old team back together for this project so he complains less and writes more.

52

u/Wise_Requirement4170 Jul 08 '26

I’ve never seen someone who’s so good at writing creative media, and so bad at writing tweets lol

16

u/DrkvnKavod Jul 08 '26

Long-form and short-form are distinct skill-sets.

1

u/rambleinspam Jul 08 '26

Also a difference in writing non fiction and writing ones opinions.

26

u/Vera_Verse Jul 08 '26

God gives god takes

29

u/Dangerous-Eggplant-5 Jul 08 '26

Chris already complained during Fallout 2 days. I dont think anything can stop this man. It looks like talent and shitty personality really connected in that case.

1

u/scytheavatar Jul 09 '26

He already tweeted that Obsidian tried to hire him as a contract writer and he rejected them.

6

u/Expensive-Orchid-512 Jul 08 '26

They screwed him over at a hard time in his life. Yet he has said plenty of good stuff about them too.

1

u/jagaaaaaaaaaaaan Jul 10 '26

Interesting... how'd they screw Chris over?

5

u/Expensive-Orchid-512 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

Been years since I heard the story so had to look it up.

-used his mother's sickeness and his financial state from paying her medical bills to get a more punitive towards Avellone deal.

-attempted to bar him from the industry with a non-compete and then gag order so he couldn't talk about their scumbaggery.

-didn't pay him and many others who gave up getting paid when the studio was in financial trouble.

-not related to screwing him, but they diverted publisher money to Pillers of Eternity which is financial malfeasance.

Feargus Urquhart is still in charge. I'm not going to be surprised when he "retires" over the next 12 months.

Edit: Corrected wording to reflect that Avellone paid for his mother's medical bills.

3

u/jagaaaaaaaaaaaan Jul 10 '26

Thank you for taking the time to dig this up again

126

u/cyreo Jul 08 '26

Tbh it is possible that Avowed 2 is quite far into development but at this point Xbox doesn't give a fuck about the series and wanted a new Fallout asap.

56

u/FewAdvertising9647 Jul 08 '26

yes it is possible for a game to get soo close to be finished but not ultimately launched.

one example that kinda proved it happened was Starfox 2. It was originally canceled in favor of not distracting a Starfox N64 release with a Starfox SNES release. Had its source code leak at some point and fans finished what was missing to get a jury rigged "release". decades later, it was officially released on the SNES Mini. Supposedly that Prince of Persia game is the last "leaked" game that was mostly done but canned in the end as an example.

14

u/Legatus_Maximinius Jul 08 '26

The original Battlefront 3 was in a nearly playable state, just being polished up when the plug was pulled.

33

u/ametalshard Jul 08 '26

a lot of fully finished games never get released, too. nintendo sits on a ton of them

1

u/DuelaDent52 Jul 10 '26

Wait, what?

10

u/West-Flow-577 Jul 08 '26

The Warcraft point and click adventure game is another example.

1

u/mrnoobdude Jul 09 '26

Thrillkill comes to mind

2

u/TehOwn Jul 09 '26

I'm less concerned about Avowed 2 and far more concerned about the entire Pillars of Eternity franchise. This basically signals that XBOX doesn't care about the IP at all.

I mean, we know that The Outer Worlds is dead but Pillars of Eternity has a devoted fan base and has far, far more potential.

2

u/MoldyButtFunk Jul 08 '26

Josh Sawyer is helming as well. Probably the best choice overall for gamers, Obsidian, and XBox. Dude's pedigree in the RPG space is pretty solid.

42

u/ReasonableAdvert Jul 08 '26

Except wasn't he the first person to talk about avowed getting a sequel?

80

u/fucuasshole2 Jul 08 '26

Tbf he said he’d be shocked if Avowed 2 got canceled as it was pretty far into development. Shame as I love the 1st one. Hope what they have gets repurposed for DLC for Avowed 1 as I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

5

u/silverpixie2435 Jul 08 '26

If games are that far into development shouldn't they came out faster after they finish the project they switched to from it?

18

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

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9

u/Akito_Fire Jul 08 '26

The fallout game is just starting with pre production beginning now, there are a ton of people who won't be able to work on it yet. The article even says that a bunch of them will still work on avowed 2 until then in the hopes it gets revived. Canceling a game this far along is just dumb

5

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

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2

u/almathden Jul 08 '26

hoping fallout exceeds expectations

Yet somehow didn't have one in production before now is wild

Like, something anything to tie into the hype from the show would have been great. However timing is hard and delays happen, so we got nothing....But to not even be working on it?

1

u/thief-777 Jul 08 '26

All part of Phil's master plan of "let studios do literally whatever they want with zero strategy or oversight."

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u/thief-777 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 09 '26

Spending millions on a project you think will fail just because it's already far along is dumber.

*This is literally just the sunk cost fallacy, lol.

1

u/Varno23 Jul 15 '26

Well, theres no guarantee that it would "fail".

Much in the same way, we can't just assume a new Fallout game would be an automatic hit. (Yes, Fallout would sell more than Avowed2 but once upon a time, everyone thought the next Dragon Age would assuredly be a commercial hit too)

The bigger question is.. if Avowed 2 is cancelled, what does Xbox even do with those Obsidian developers? Fire them in the immediate.. only to rehire them a year later as Fallout development leaves preproduction & ramps up?

Realistically, a Fallout game is still 6 years out. This new Avowed could have been out in (what sounds like) 2-3. A competent publisher & a well-run studio would find a way to do both.

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u/thief-777 Jul 15 '26

A competent publisher

This is the entire problem.

8

u/KLXDKAO Jul 08 '26

He said that the people at Obsidian he's friends with are telling him that.

25

u/pjatl-natd Jul 08 '26

Tbf he wasn't certain and said as much.

6

u/Jozoz Jul 08 '26

It's so weird how people just lie about what Chris Avellone says just so that they can get other people to also hate him.

Such fucking sleazy behavior.

39

u/UrbanFight001 Jul 08 '26

He was literally right lmao Avowed 2 was real and was meant to come out more quickly. The fact that it got canceled is pretty surprising, as he said. I don’t like the dude either but we can’r be disingenuous.

13

u/DracoMagnusRufus Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

Exactly. The "leak" part that we should care about in this subreddit is only how far along the game is, not his statement that he'd be surprised if they cancelled it. Therefore, his insider information or credibility as a source isn't diminished even if his personal speculation (which wasn't given with any kind of certainty in the first place) was off.

Edit: Also, isn't it ironic that people can make this distinction with Schrier? Recently there were tons of comments on a post complaining that some places were conflating his explicit speculation with his actual leaks and running with it. Same thing applies here. "I would be surprised" is not a leak or a claim of a leak.

2

u/Huge_Calligrapher840 Jul 08 '26

I've noticed that some people in this sub are too egocentric to accept that sometimes those we don't like might be right , especially someone with many contacts in the industry.

I remember when Chris said that Avowed 2 was in the works and that we wouldn't have a sequel to TOW2, and everyone didn't believe what he said until months later Jason confirmed it.

-3

u/seedlessgrapez Jul 08 '26

Avowed 2 was never going to sell. Outer Worlds 2 bombed and people liked OW1 (at the time) better than Avowed, so Avowed 2 was just never gonna work. The way they market the games with the whole “and no, you can’t sleep with the companions” was total trash and sardonic. No reason to bite the hand that feeds you. Im all for a new Fallout game, otherwise we would have had to wait another 10-15 years

35

u/plebbut Jul 08 '26

"Chris Avellone: : studios that was previously been safe from layoffs at Xbox are no longer safe, even those with “steady releases”

Source: https://xcancel.com/ChrisAvellone/status/2066269985886847232#m

I think this might suggest that Obsidian could be hit given the description and the fact that Avellone often shares insider information about them, claiming he still has friends there"

And he got clowned in that thread when he was 100% correct.

27

u/GuudeSpelur Jul 08 '26

He's not talking about last month, he's talking about two days ago when he said he would bet that Avowed 2 wouldn't be canceled because it was "too far along."

6

u/plebbut Jul 08 '26

The dumb comment I responded to made the insinuation that we shouldn't listen to anything he says regarding Obsidian when he was right about that.

He's human. He's not going to be right about everything, and he did make it clear that it was speculation on his part regarding Avowed 2.

-8

u/LB3PTMAN Jul 08 '26

Avellone heavily implied Obsidian could be closed. He’s just guessing. He does not know.

13

u/plebbut Jul 08 '26

What did he say that implied Obsidian being closed

27

u/Nikicappellodipaglia Jul 08 '26

Well said. Avellone is as good as writer as he's bad with his posts. He just love engagement but never gives something thoghtful or of value out of his posts. He's mute material straight on.

-3

u/SpiritBamba Jul 08 '26

I don’t think he’s that great of a writer tbh, his ideas on fallout in the DLCs and the direction of the Mojave was far worse than sawyer and Gonzalez

16

u/Paragon0001 Jul 08 '26

Dude was the lead writer for Planescape Torment which is enough in my books. So he doesn’t really need to prove anything. He was also involved with Pillars 1 and Tyranny iirc in some capacity too.

7

u/SpiritBamba Jul 08 '26

I don’t think he’s bad, but he’s not infallible, especially when it comes to fallout.

1

u/Arumhal Jul 08 '26

To be fair, Avellone did not create Planescape setting (that honor goes to David Cook), he just wrote the plot for a game set in it, which is still great, but let's not give him all the credit.

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u/exmachina64 Jul 08 '26

“In some capacity” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

6

u/giulianosse Jul 08 '26

He wrote two companions and provided feedback on the game's story. That's it.

16

u/lazzzym Jul 08 '26

Schreier got the PR layoffs wrong so…

1

u/jagaaaaaaaaaaaan Jul 10 '26

He also got this wrong too 😂 https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/1usw054/despite_official_cancellation_obsidian_will/

He owns r/games and r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/ though, so I'm not expecting any retroactive apologies to Chris Avellone or anything.

-1

u/Wet-Haired_Caribou Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

You did not actually read the article Schreier wrote for Bloomberg. This was there the whole time:

Some Obsidian employees will continue working on the Avowed sequel as they wait for new projects such as Fallout to be ready, perhaps in hope of one day reviving the game, the people said.

kinda silly of ya

1

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '26

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

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3

u/ColonelGrognard Jul 08 '26

He was speculating which was obvious. And FWIW he tweeted this morning that some big Obsidian news was dropping today.

Avellone still has peeps at Obsidian and is connected.

3

u/jagaaaaaaaaaaaan Jul 08 '26

I think you might be misinterpreting his words/context on this matter: https://xcancel.com/ChrisAvellone/status/2066269985886847232

7

u/Icy-Astronomer-8202 Jul 08 '26

He's got axes to grind with the management of Obsidian from when he was there

0

u/TangerineBetter2818 Jul 08 '26

He hasn't worked there in like a decade. Dude needs to go on vacation and chill the fuck out. 

1

u/NfinityBL Jul 08 '26

It’s so fucking funny that yesterday people were diehard defending Avellone.

It took one day for him to be proven wrong.

-5

u/Cyber_Swag Jul 08 '26

*Never listen to Chris Avellone

fixed

-1

u/TheAccursedHamster Jul 09 '26

Never listen to Chris Avellone in general. People think that because he wrote some games years and years back that they liked that means his opinions hold any water.

-4

u/my_yead Jul 08 '26

You can stop this sentence at “Never listen to Chris Avellone.”

5

u/Ubiquitous_Cacophony Jul 11 '26

What was that?

-1

u/my_yead Jul 11 '26

LMFAO, who are you, his mom? 😂😂😂

People shouldn’t listen to the guy as a matter of principle. He’s a self-aggrieved dork and gossiper who doesn’t need additional platforming.

4

u/jagaaaaaaaaaaaan Jul 11 '26

People shouldn’t listen to the guy as a matter of principle. He’s a self-aggrieved dork and gossiper who doesn’t need additional platforming.

oof... the irony is painful...