Former Elder Scrolls Online chief confirms Microsoft's 2025 bloodbath drove his departure from ZeniMax: 'Project Blackbird was the game I had waited my entire career to create'

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.

Microsoft laid off roughly 9,000 people on July 2, 2025, many of them from its Xbox division—a massacre made even more grotesque by the words of Xbox chief Phil Spencer, who said as the axe fell that the company's gaming business...