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.
“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.