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ESO - The beginning of the end?

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Massive changes at ZOS (and they're not good)


When Zenimax founder Matt Firor recently left the company he built back in 2007 it wasn't for the usual retirement reasons. I posted on the forums at the time that this is bad news and Matt wouldn't have left unless there were catastrophic changes incoming that were beyond his control.


Now we have seen the results of those changes. 9,000 employees worldwide have lost their jobs and at Zenimax, it's not clear exactly how many but sources have quoted hundreds and "a fuck ton". A number of ZeniMax Media staffers told Game Developer how they were blindsided by the way the cuts were communicated to employees. One source, who chose to remain anonymous, spoke to us on the day of the layoffs and explained they were left in limbo for hours after being locked out of ZeniMax's internal Slack channel. "In the last few minutes I've unfortunately lost access to literally everything," they said. "No Slack, email, nothing is working. We have an off-work Discord, but it's all people freaking out with no real verifiable info."


They detailed how staff were frozen out of those channels before HR had made contact, prompting widespread confusion and panic. "Considering we don't have email now, I don't know how they're even supposed to contact us—I don't know if they even have my personal email," they added. Another source, who also chose to remain anonymous, corroborated that information and said the ordeal left them feeling as if they had been "run over by a truck."

One of the worst days at a job


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Current ZeniMax employee and ZWU-CWA union member Page Branson Senior QA Tester at ZeniMax Online Studios described that day as "one of the worst days at a job I've ever had in my entire life." She explained Microsoft failed to effectively clarify who would be impacted by the layoffs—and claimed those who were eventually laid off were "absolutely crucial" to the success of The Elder Scrolls Online and "integral" to the everyday function of the studio. "A lot of practical knowledge just disappeared overnight," said Branson. "Everyone left now has to pick up the pieces as best they can. The [dwindling] morale and general confusion of it all has extended into our general workflow. We used to have very, very reliable people working on things and they're no longer there. They were integral. I feel like they were numbers on a sheet that got cut, but the real application of what they were doing was integral to making everything run correctly." ZeniMax Media senior QA tester and ZWU-CWA member Autumn Mitchell said the lack of communication from Microsoft left her and colleagues in a state of "fight or flight" on the day of the layoffs. "It's not okay. It wasn't normal. I don't care how many times they do it to try and make it seem normal—it's not. The way they do it is inhumane. I don't care how much they say that it's dignified or they want to do it in a respectful way—it's not," she added.

ZeniMax has lost a third of its institutional knowledge

Mitchell claimed ZeniMax has lost a third of the institutional knowledge that was keeping a lot of its projects running smoothly. Microsoft said the cuts were made in service of streamlining workflows and making studios more agile, but Mitchell suggests the reality will likely require remaining employees to grind themselves to the bone by taking on the work of multiple people.


"This carcass of workers that remains is somehow supposed to keep shipping award-winning games," she explains. "I don't really know [how that works]. It looks like a lot of people moving between projects to fill in the position of someone who was laid off—and it probably took them a good six months to figure out [how to do that role effectively]." Microsoft just took everything that could have been great about the culture and collaboration and decimated it," she added. "Morale is terrible. It's grotesque. People are stressed. They're crying. For a lot of us, those were some of our best friends. They're our roommates. In my case it was my partner—my partner and I worked together, and he was laid off. And I'm not a unique story. Bethesda UK Axed


My Bethesda contact and community manager Neil Gorton told me this week that "Bethesda UK is closing" and he's now finished working there. The reason given was "Microsoft restructuring". When I made a post about it on the forums I received a 72 hour ban for spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories! Clearly ZOS don't want to hear criticism at any level. I saw the same things happening at Star Trek Online, I and many others raised our concerns on their forums and we all were banned. That game has now been sold to Deca and Cryptic Studios is no more. What does this mean for ESO?


I don't know, but it's obviously not good. When you lose a third of your workforce but are expected to continue to deliver high-value content then clearly something is going to give. The reasons we were given for the content pass were I believe the true reasons as explained to the devs at the time, what they didn't know was that many of them were about to be fired. I think we have seen the end of large content releases; in the future, content will be released in dribs and drabs throughout the year and it won't form part of a large coordinated structure for the game moving forward. I would say that ESO's best days are definitely behind it. What does this mean for SRS?


It means that if the game does indeed shrink, we can expect to see fewer active players online, more difficulty finding enough people for events, fewer new recruits over time, and, if the trend seen in STO follows, the eventual winding down of our guilds as they enter maintenance mode. In STO we had over 1000 active members in 14 fleets (guilds), if you log in today you will be lucky to see 5 people online. Perhaps this is the future of MMOs, they are costly to make, costly to run and difficult to keep players engaged, even a slight drop off in perceived content value will translate to fewer people online.


For now everything will stay as it is, but I have serious doubts that we will be playing this game in 5 years based on past experience. For those who said that the Microsoft acquisition of Zenimax was a good thing, I hope you are choking on your words! Microsoft only cares about its shareholders and ZOS is a drop in the ocean to them. The accountants running the company know or care nothing about Tamriel and the people who inhabit it, they only see $ signs. Massive cuts will save an enormous amount of cash which will give all shareholders a boost of maybe 50 cents on their dividends, but for those affected it's devastating, and for the end users, ie us, it means anxiety and upset, these people value the dollar over people's lives and that sucks big time. But it is what it is, we will continue and provide the best gaming experience we can to our members for as long as it makes sense, but I for one will never bother with another MMO if this one comes to an end, for me it's been 13 years of running guilds in games that start well and end miserably, I won't repeat that mistake. The friends you make in guilds are somewhat ephemeral, we all get on great and have wonderful fun together, but when the game ends as it inevitably will one day, those "friends" fade away and are never heard from again. There are exceptions of course and over the last 13 years I've seen guild members meet and marry, there have been some wonderful stories and I am privileged to have been a part of that. Hopefully, there will be many more. For now then we carry on regardless, but it's going to become more difficult to recruit people so you all need to help, invite your friends, encourage them to keep playing and getting better at the game, because the better they are the more satisfaction they gain and the less likely they are to leave. I'll close off with this message from Liam McDonald regarding Matt's resignation and the messages from the ZOS team regarding my forum ban, make of it what you will.

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