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 had "never looked stronger," The cuts also included multiple cancellations including the Perfect Dark reboot (and the closure of the studio making it), Rare's Everwild project, and an unannounced MMO in development at ZeniMax, codenamed Blackbird.
