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Phil Spencer and his settlement recently got nuked by a Fallout 76 player: in-game, of course. While this post-apocalyptic live-service game has various measures for PvP, nukes are the most spectacular and devastating weapon of destruction.
It did not take long before the event was discovered by Twitteratti, where it became part of the ongoing narrative on Xbox studio layoffs.
"Hiding out in the desert" — Phil Spencer's Fallout 76 avatar survived, unlike Hi-Fi Rush's studio
Xbox has received some flak of late for dissolving four of its studios, adding to the doom and gloom in a year marked by layoffs in the gaming industry. Many consider the nuking of Phil Spencer's in-game CAMP in Appalachia was an expression of vigilante justice.
An X user has come forward as the aggressor, giving a tour of the Xbox CEO's (in-game name P3) nuke-struck settlement in Fallout 76, and an account of the event.
The alleged nuker said,
"He waved at me and walked away...he made me feel like a peon because he was the bigger man about it."
The nuking of Phil Spencer's camp could be a rare modern-day parallel to Richard Garriot's assassination in Ultima Online, but Phil wasn't in his camp when the nuke hit. His avatar was reportedly "hiding out in the desert" by this alleged nuker's account, clad in a menacing Deep space alien-colored Power Armor.
Pro-Xbox Game Studios sentiments are now at an all-time low after the latest round of studio closures. While these include developers with flops like Redfall, the team behind a breakout critical darling like Hi-Fi Rush was also sent home packing; the staff redistribution is unlikely to spark an environment of similar passion projects.
While many people congratulated the anonymous Fallout 76 nuker for his display of solidarity, we are left with yet another footnote to add to the ongoing layoffs. As much as the vitriol against Phil Spencer continues, it is unlikely to overturn Xbox's business plan with assimilated studios.
