Yesterday’s layoffs at Xbox took, and will continue to take, a terrible toll. Some trumpeted the fact that no studios were closed, although the practical impact of spinning them out to independence or new ownership remains to be seen, but that has no bearing on the blow to morale caused by such deep cuts to long-standing dev teams.
One former Elder Scrolls Online developer put words to those feelings in a short, poignant thread on X, lamenting the state of the game and developer ZeniMax Online Studios, which was reportedly purged of half its employees in the layoffs.
“I’m just so angry today,” wrote Andrew Young, a content designer on Elder Scrolls Online who worked at ZeniMax Online Studios from 2012-2042. “People will never know the blood, sweat, and tears that went into making ESO or how we basically funded other failing projects while never getting enough resources to really keep up with our release cadence. The team deserved much better.”
The Elder Scrolls Online has had a tough go of it over the years. Its launch in 2014 did not make a great impression, and while the shift to Tamriel Unlimited a year later turned things around, it always felt to me a bit like an afterthought MMO: The second cousin to World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 whose face you recognize in photos, but whose name you can’t quite put your finger on.
But things seemed to take a darker turn in 2025. Just a year after a GDC talk extolling the actually-quite-remarkable success of TESO, game director Matt Firor—also the president of ZeniMax Online Studios—suddenly left the studio, a move he later said was the direct result of Microsoft’s 2025 bloodbath layoffs that also saw the cancellation of a new ZeniMax Online MMO known as Project Blackbird.
That Microsoft saw fit to cut even deeper into the studio just a year after that has some concerned about its future. Following the layoff announcement, TESO community manager Jessica Folsom reaffirmed the dev team’s commitment to the game but added that previously announced roadmaps for the new seasonal structure “will be shifting.” There’s no indication of anything more serious in the offing but I can’t help thinking of Amazon’s New World, a moderately successful MMO that was nonetheless canned when Amazon decided that its own “go big” strategy for gaming wasn’t working.
“I’ve been gone for a while, but talking to people today and realizing there’s really no one left and no changing it now makes my heart ache,” Young concluded. “For the people, our game, who we were as a team and a studio. This is a serious loss, and I don’t think people know how much.”
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