ZeniMax Bets On A Seasonal Reset For A 12-Year-Old MMO

The Elder Scrolls Online interview comes at a fragile moment for ZeniMax. I spoke with the studio’s leadership as the MMO enters its twelfth year, following layoffs, a cancelled flagship project, and the departure of a long-time director. The mood was restrained but focused. The team is no longer talking about survival in abstract terms. They are outlining structural changes meant to keep the game running for decades.

Thanks to the PC Gamer report, we know that 2025 was a difficult year inside ZeniMax. Microsoft cancelled Project Blackbird, which had been positioned as the studio’s next major release, as part of wider layoffs. The decision rippled through the company. Matt Firor, who had directed The Elder Scrolls Online for two decades, left soon after. Internally, teams were forced to absorb both the loss of colleagues and the end of a project that had defined years of planning.

Despite that context, the current leadership is not signaling retrenchment. Executive producer Susan Kath and game director Nick Giacomini described a studio regrouping around ESO as its long-term home. Their answers were measured, but the intent was clear: the MMO is not winding down. It is being reworked.

“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 said. “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.”— Susan Kath

The most visible change is structural. The Elder Scrolls Online is abandoning its long-standing yearly chapter model in favor of a seasonal release cadence. This is not a branding tweak. It reshapes how content, fixes, and systems are planned and shipped. For years, the chapter model locked teams into 18-month production cycles that prioritized new zones and headline features. Smaller but persistent issues accumulated in the margins.

Giacomini acknowledged that the old structure limited what the team could realistically address.

“We communicate with our players, we read, we listen, we play the game—it wasn't like we were blind to the things that players were talking about,” he said. “We had this commitment to the chapter model, it was 18 months long, and it left little time to focus on these other things that we knew were important.”— Nick Giacomini

Under the seasonal model, the studio expects to ship updates more flexibly, without waiting for every component to be complete or perfectly aligned with a yearly launch. That flexibility is already showing up in Update 49, which targets long-standing quality-of-life issues. One example is mount training, a system players have criticized for years due to its time-gated progression. A newly formed internal team now focuses exclusively on identifying and resolving these kinds of problems.

Kath described that group’s role plainly.

“A team with a mandate of: Let’s find out what everybody wants to do, and let’s do that,” she said.— Susan Kath

The shift also reflects a broader change in mindset. For much of ESO’s life, certain systems were treated as untouchable unless they could be fixed everywhere at once. Housing furnishing limits, for instance, were delayed because they could not be applied cleanly to Notable Homes. Under the new approach, partial solutions are acceptable if they improve the experience now, with further work continuing in the background.

This philosophy extends to core mechanics. One of the most significant upcoming changes is free, instant respeccing. Players will be able to adjust builds without visiting shrines or paying in-game currency. The decision is tied directly to the recent subclassing system, which was designed to encourage experimentation but was undermined by the friction of respec costs and travel.

Giacomini framed the old system as outdated, including from his own experience testing builds.

“I would zone into my house, I would check my DPS against the target dummy,” he said. “Then I’d be like, ‘Okay, now I want to change a morph.’ Now I have to leave my house, go to the shrine, change it, go back to my house, go back to the target dummy.”— Nick Giacomini

“It was friction,” he continued. “It was preventing me from actually exploring and experimenting. The old paradigm was anachronistic.”— Nick Giacomini

These changes point toward a longer horizon. Giacomini has openly talked about a 30-year ambition for The Elder Scrolls Online. That figure is aspirational, but it is shaping decision-making now. The leadership argues that simply adding new zones on a fixed schedule will not sustain the game for another decade, let alone two.

“When we're talking about Elder Scrolls Online being a 30-year MMO, it sounds nice,” Giacomini said. “But it’s what we want. This is a home for us. Just adding the next thing wasn’t the right path if we wanted to have a shot at reaching that mark.”— Nick Giacomini

The January reveal event, which outlined the seasonal transition, was intentionally condensed to avoid overwhelming players. Even so, feedback suggested the audience wanted more. Kath noted that the 45-minute presentation felt long internally, but player response pushed in the opposite direction.

“You could have gone longer,” she said, paraphrasing community reactions. “We aren’t done yet. We have more to talk about in the next couple of months.”— Susan Kath

That confidence stands in contrast to the uncertainty that defined much of 2025 for the studio. It also mirrors trends across the MMO genre. Long-running games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV have recently revisited entrenched assumptions about progression, difficulty, and player freedom. In each case, longevity required letting go of systems that once defined the experience.

For ZeniMax, the wager is that The Elder Scrolls Online can do the same without losing its identity. The seasonal model is meant to create space for correction, not reinvention for its own sake. Whether it succeeds will depend on execution, but the intent is explicit. ESO is no longer treated as a solved problem. It is being actively renegotiated with its players.

Read also, while official news on The Elder Scrolls 6 remains scarce and Bethesda confirms the next mainline entry is still far off, fans looking for open-world fantasy now are turning to alternatives. Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon has emerged as one such option, offering a darker take on exploration while the wait for Tamriel’s future continues.