Helen Chiang, the first chief operating officer Xbox has ever had, is out of Microsoft after about three months in the job, and one report says she did not leave on her own terms. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma told staff in an internal memo on October 23, first reported by The Verge, that “Helen Chiang is leaving Microsoft today. I’m grateful for her years of service and wish her well.” On Friday, Eurogamer added that a source familiar with the situation said Chiang had been “terminated for policy violations”, a claim the outlet says it could not independently verify.
Xbox’s statement does not confirm or deny the termination
Asked about the claim, Xbox gave Eurogamer a formal statement: “We don’t discuss individual personnel matters. We’re grateful for Helen’s years of service and wish her well.” That is the same wording as the memo, and it is the only official comment so far. Nothing from Microsoft describes the exit as a firing, and no policy has been named. Until Microsoft or Chiang says more, the termination is a single-source report, and we are treating it that way.
She was promoted into the role in July’s “reset”
Chiang got the COO job on July 6, in the “Resetting Xbox” post that cut about 3,200 roles across the fiscal year and moved four studios out of Xbox. Sharma created the role for the first time, wrote that Chiang “will report directly to me”, and gave her end-to-end profit and loss responsibility across content, hardware, platform and services, with the brief to bring those businesses “together under one operating model” and hold teams accountable for results. The same post described her as a near two-decade Xbox veteran whose work ran from Xbox Live to leading Mojang and the Minecraft franchise.
Twenty-one years at Microsoft, most of them visible through Minecraft
Chiang spent 21 years at Microsoft. She ran Minecraft as Mojang’s studio head and later as corporate vice president of the Minecraft franchise, the period in which the game crossed from a studio purchase into Microsoft’s biggest gaming brand, with a film, spin-offs and a Netflix series in the pipeline. That record is why the COO appointment read as a safe pair of hands for a company mid-restructuring, and why a three-month exit with no explanation landed hard.
What happens to the COO job now
Sharma’s memo said Xbox will “share more on COO leadership as plans are finalized”, and her duties are expected to be split among other Xbox leaders in the meantime. The reset itself is not over: Xbox said in September that the restructuring was about three-quarters complete. Whoever takes the role inherits the same brief Chiang was given in July, and now a question Microsoft is not answering about why the first person to hold it lasted a quarter.
