Microsoft has confirmed 213 layoffs at ZeniMax Online Studios, the developer behind The Elder Scrolls Online, along with 166 job cuts at ZeniMax Media. The state of Maryland published the figures in a WARN notice this week, and the ZeniMax Online layoffs mark the second major reduction at the studio in less than a year.
One employee said on social media that roughly half of the studio’s “active developers working on content” had lost their jobs. It is not yet clear how many workers remain at ZeniMax Online, or how the cuts will affect ongoing support for The Elder Scrolls Online.
Maryland requires companies laying off 50 or more workers to file a WARN notice with the state, which is how the scale of the cuts became public. Microsoft has not said which teams within ZeniMax Online lost staff, or whether the cuts will delay any content updates for The Elder Scrolls Online.
A second wave of ZeniMax Online layoffs
A former ESO developer reacted to the news on X, writing: “I’m just so angry today. 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 developer continued: “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. 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.”
The cuts at ZeniMax Online follow a separate WARN notice published on Wednesday confirming around 100 job losses at id Software, another Microsoft-owned studio under the ZeniMax umbrella.
Project Blackbird’s cancellation still looms
ZeniMax Online has faced repeated turmoil over the past year. Studio head Matt Firor resigned last summer after Microsoft canceled Project Blackbird, an unannounced third-person online looter-shooter set in a sci-fi universe, according to a Bloomberg report. The project had reportedly earned strong internal reviews before Microsoft scrapped it, catching its development team off guard.
Writing on LinkedIn months after the cancellation, Firor called Blackbird “the game I had waited my entire career to create,” and said its loss directly led to his decision to leave the studio he had run for more than a decade.
Microsoft has not issued a public statement explaining the latest round of cuts. The company has trimmed thousands of jobs across its gaming division over the past two years, and it has canceled several projects while it reorganizes its Xbox studios.
ZeniMax Online shipped The Elder Scrolls Online in 2014 and has supported it with regular expansions ever since. The game remains one of Microsoft’s most active live-service titles, and the latest cuts raise questions about how the studio will staff future content without the developers who built its recent chapters.