Heh, I was working at 2 of those gaming companies when they were acquired by m$. I almost fear taking another job in the gaming industry, there seems to be some kind of bastardised version of Murphy's law that any gaming company that hires me will be acquired by ms 6 months later.
I mean, that's obviously not the case, but it's weird that it happened twice!
Very weird it happened twice! But that's a kind of a cool factoid to tell people haha.
Even with devs and publishers that don't die or are killed, they still lay hundreds off when a game is done. Then the studio limps along in pre-production mode on their next game for 4-5 years it seems like...
Maybe the only job stability in the industry is with indies, and... Nintendo?