Former Elder Scrolls Online director Matt Firor has revealed his reason for unexpectedly leaving ZeniMax Online Studios in July 2025 after nearly 20 years with the company, and it will probably come as no surprise that Microsoft's summertime bloodbath is to blame.
"Project Blackbird was the game I had waited my entire career to create, and having it canceled led to my resignation," Firor wrote in a January 1 message posted on LinkedIn. "My heart and thoughts are always with the impacted team members, many of whom I had worked 20+ years with, and all of whom were the most dedicated, amazingly talented group of developers in the industry."
Firor also said that he is not "directly involved" in any projects being put together by former ZeniMax employees, such as Sackbird Studios, founded in October 2025 by a group of former Elder Scrolls Online and Project Blackbird developers. "I am advising some of them informally, but I am not leading them," Firor wrote. "They are in good hands with their respective leaders and I can't wait to see what they come up with."
It sounds like morale at the studio is pretty awful since this all went down with a senior QA describing what microsoft does best
As for The Elder Scrolls Online itself, new ZeniMax boss Jo Burba said in August 2025 that "the game isn't going anywhere," but it sure doesn't sound like morale at the studio is in a good place: Describing the post-cuts ZeniMax as a "carcass of workers," senior QA tester Autumn Mitchell said a few weeks after the layoffs that "Microsoft just took everything that could have been great about the culture and collaboration and decimated it."
