Elder Scrolls Online developer left reeling by Xbox layoffs—with teams gutted, senior talent gone, and roadmaps 'shifting' as a result
Overview & Key Takeaways
A grim outcome from Xbox's latest round of reaping.
The axe has finally fallen from Xbox's latest round of layoffs and studio sloughing—characterised as a "reset" by its current CEO, Asha Sharma, who paradoxically wants the company to have 1 billion daily players somehow. ZeniMax Online Studios, which currently develops Elder Scrolls Online, has reportedly been hit quite hard.
That's per senior content designer Katherine Souza, who posted to her Bluesky that half the team had been axed—she's since deleted the post due to the wording, but Souza has clarified that by "'half of its team' I'm referring to is active developers working on content, events, and dungeons. I can't speak to the studio at large because I don't have those numbers".
Souza's not the only one effected, though—the platform is awash of ZeniMax Online employees announcing their layoffs, including senior QA tester Page Branson, senior user researcher Elisabeth Whyte, associate design director Mike Finnigan, senior software engineer Dustin Thurston, senior community engagement manager Gina Bruno, the list goes on.
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"For nearly 15 years ZOS has been my home. I have had a hand in every dungeon/arena/trial/event zone/challenge difficulty/etc," writes Finnigan. Other members in that list have similarly extensive, institutional experience at the studio that'll now be tossed out—Gina Bruno, for instance, was with ZeniMax for 19 years.
It's legitimately heartbreaking news, especially given the rough go that ZeniMax Online has endured—in 2025, Xbox cancelled Project Blackbird, a game that then-director Matt Frior had been working on for close to a decade. That was part of a corporate massacre to the tune of 9000 job losses, and it's horrifying to see the studio struck by them again.
Especially given the corner it seemed ESO was turning. In January, I spoke with executive producer Susan Kath and game director Nick Giacomini, who seemed resolute and hopeful despite a difficult 2025, describing a development team that had "rallied". A new seasonal structure and multiple refreshes have been in the works.
Now that's all up in the air, per an update from the team itself on the game's forums: "Looking beyond Season One, the roadmaps we previously shared will be shifting. We want to take the time to evaluate the work in front of us and then lock down an updated schedule. While we'd love to share a concrete details today, stepping back to get our plans straight will let us come back to you with a clear timeline."
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While I'm hopeful that it still might achieve the goals it was clearly striving for, if ESO does find its groove again, it'll do so after being utterly hamstrung for reasons of corporate acquisition and AI overspending that none of these developers had any say in—in spite of Xbox, rather than because of it.
