Despite an incredibly tough 2025 for ZeniMax, The Elder Scrolls Online's leadership is hopeful: 'We've definitely got our eyes on the future, because this is our home'

I do not envy working at ZeniMax in 2025. Project Blackbird, which was set to be the studio's next biggest project, was brutally cancelled by Microsoft in a rash of layoffs, leaving Elder Scrolls Online devs reeling. As if that wasn't enough, Matt Frior, the director of ESO left after 20 years at the company as a result of that incident.

The MMO, however, appears to be choosing hope. Recent updates promise a complete overhaul to how content is released for the 12-year-old game, shifting to a seasonal pattern that should, the team hopes, make them far more agile. Especially when it comes to nixing quality of life and design bugbears which have been annoying the playerbase for years.

I asked executive producer Susan Kath and game director Nick Giacomini how the studio had dealt with these blows and come back seemingly swinging for the fences. And while the response was understandably somber, both studio leads describe the atmosphere at ZeniMax as energised.

"Obviously last year was a tough year for the studio—as you said, for reasons we don't even necessarily need to dig into—but the team has very much rallied," Kath explains. "I see a lot of enthusiasm from the team as we're going forward. Folks are excited about their work. I'm excited for them to be doing this. We're looking forward."

Giacomini shares that sentiment: "We're human, right. To just pretend that something like that had no effect on us would be disingenuous. But yeah, I agree with Susan, we have rallied.

"We are excited by what we're doing. We're excited by this transformation, this change, this evolution. It's like a second wind, and we've definitely got our eyes on the future, because this is our home. We are determined to make it continue to be so for us, for our players, for as long as we possibly can."

In the rest of that interview, Giacomini mentioned a 30-year ambition for the game, and it's easy to see that determination here. The Elder Scrolls online seems to be at a point in its life cycle that a lot of MMOs have reached in these past few years—that being, having to overcome institutional or foundational baggage to survive.

Whether that be WoW's long-standing reliance on borrowed power being set free in lieu of evergreen content, or FF14's assumptions about player difficulty (and even glamour), the running theme seems to be transformation. These are all games with grey in their beards, and a refresh has been in order each time.

On the January reveal itself, Kath tells me that they tried to condense things so they didn't overburden the playerbase—and yet, the enthusiasm is still there: "It's funny how 45 minutes felt like a really long time—but a lot we've heard from people, like: 'You could have gone longer!'

"That is to say: We aren't done yet. We have more to talk about in the next couple of months, as we do our next reveal event, [and] I'm excited for what's there as well."