Following recent layoffs across Xbox that have also severely impacted The Elder Scrolls Online developer ZeniMax Online Studios, the now-former senior encounter designer, Morgan Goin, has noted that the MMORPG’s development team no longer has the number of workers needed to keep up its current pace of content releases. In an interview with the BBC, Goin said that The Elder Scrolls Online players should expect game updates to slow down quite a bit.
“We’re not going to be able to put out the amount of content at the speed that we were… or anything approaching that,” she said when asked about how the layoffs may have impacted the studio’s content roadmap for the MMORPG. Further in the interview, Goin was asked about how she felt when she learned that she would be part of the layoffs, to which she replied, “Blindsided.”
“We knew something was going to happen to somebody, but not who or how much,” she explained.
A recent report by Game Developer might lend further credence to Goin’s feeling blindsided by the layoffs. According to the publication, an anonymous source from the studio said that ZeniMax Online Studios was doing quite fine thanks to the revenue brought in by The Elder Scrolls Online. They said that the studio was not only paying for itself but that it was also improving on Xbox’s metrics.
“All of the information that was ever visible to us out of those numbers meetings—out of the monthly staff meetings—were that we were doing fine,” they explained. “You know, we’re paying for ourselves. […] We were improving on the metrics [Microsoft] wanted us to improve on.”
A WARN (Work Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notice from last week revealed that 213 of Zenimax Online Studios’ employees had been affected by the layoffs. This is a considerable chunk of the studio’s workforce, since, according to a 2025 report, it had more than 300 employees. Following the job cuts, anywhere between 100 and 150 employees now remain at the studio.
The layoffs have also had a tangible effect on the studio’s work. The Elder Scrolls Online, having just moved to a seasonal model that would revolve around content being released on a regular basis, now seemingly lacks the workforce needed to achieve its planned roadmap. Community manager Jessica Folsom had confirmed as much through a statement announcing that these plans will be “shifting”.
“Looking beyond Season One, the roadmaps we previously shared will be shifting,” said Folsom. “We want to take the time to evaluate the work in front of us and then lock down an updated schedule. While we’d love to share concrete details today, stepping back to get our plans straight will let us come back to you with a clear timeline.”
Former content designer on the MMORPG, Andrew Young, took to social media to mourn the loss of jobs and spoke about how the team behind The Elder Scrolls Online “deserved much better”.
“I’m just so angry today. People will never know the blood, sweat, and tears that went into making ESO or how we basically funded other failing projects while never getting enough resources to really keep up with our release cadence. The team deserved much better.”
