Matt Firor, president of ZeniMax Online Studios and game director of The Elder Scrolls Online, has announced that he is leaving the company.
"After more than 18 years leading ZeniMax Online Studios, I'll be stepping away later this month," says a message attributed to Firor on the official TESO X account. "The studio and The Elder Scrolls Online will be in great hands under the direction of new Studio Head Jo Burba, along with Executive Producer Susan Kath and Game Director Rich Lambert.
"Together, this leadership team has spearheaded many of ESO's biggest ideas and expansions and will continue to make this game something we're all proud of. While I won't be working on the game anymore, I will be cheering you on and adding to the thousands of hours I've already spent in-game. There are many more stories to be told, adventures to be had, and I know this amazing community will carry that shared legacy and success forwards."
Firor has been at the head of ZeniMax Online since it was founded in 2007. Prior to that, Firor was a co-founder of MMO studio Mythic, where he spent 10 years as producer on Dark Age of Camelot. He's held the position of The Elder Scrolls Online since it launched in 2014, shepherding it from a rough launch in 2014 to ongoing success as one of the best MMOs on PC today.
Firor's departure comes just hours after Microsoft announced the layoff of roughly 9,000 employees company wide, which includes deep cuts to numerous Xbox game studios and the closure of The Initiative, the studio that was working on the now-cancelled Perfect Dark reboot, as well as the cancellation of Rare's Everwild project. An all-new MMO in development at ZeniMax Online Studios, which has been in the works since 2018, was also cancelled today, and an unknown number of studio employees have been let go.
A justification for this latest round of awfulness hasn't been provided, and in fact Xbox boss Phil Spencer said in an incredibly ill-conceived memo to employees today that "we have more players, games, and gaming hours than ever before," and that "our platform, hardware, and game roadmap have never looked stronger."
It's worth noting, however, that Microsoft president Brad Smith said in January that the company was aiming to spend $80 billion "to build out AI-enabled datacenters to train AI models and deploy AI" in its 2025 fiscal year, and that money has to come from somewhere.
