Elder Scrolls Online Studio Says It's Back to Its Old Size After Layoffs

Senior developers at ZeniMax Online Studios say the team is now the same size it was between 2015 and 2018, before it staffed up for the canceled MMO Blackbird. The claim came through Baratron, admin of the UESP Discord, who attended the ESO Tavern event in Hesse, Germany, where ZeniMax Online staff spoke with players. Reported by Massively OP, the framing matches a line id Software used a week earlier.

The Xbox layoffs 2026 are one thread in a wider reset: Microsoft is pulling funding from external IP like IO Interactive's Project Fantasy, pausing third-party Game Pass deals, and weighing the closure of Arkane, Undead Labs, Compulsion Games, Double Fine, and Ninja Theory.

Baratron relayed the comment from Associate Design Director Jason Barnes and Associate Director of Community Management Jessica Folsom.

"According to both Jason Barnes (Associate Design Director) and Jessica Folsom (Associate Director of Community Management), ZeniMax Online Studios is now at the same size as it was when they made both Wrothgar and Summerset. Which, as we know, are both highly acclaimed DLCs. So while the layoffs are extremely upsetting for everyone involved (of course including players), this is not necessarily the end of new content or the game going into maintenance mode."

— Baratron

Orsinium, which contained the Wrothgar region, launched in 2015. The Summerset chapter followed in June 2018. Between them ZeniMax Online shipped the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood DLCs, the Morrowind chapter, and Clockwork City, so a smaller team has produced a heavy run of content before. ZeniMax Online staff Nick Giacomini and Susan Kath skipped the Tavern event to work on a revised roadmap, and ESO's Kevin Gbolie said on the forums that the studio still plans to deliver content and will share an update.

The comparison points to a specific line id Software addressed fans in X a week earlier, when the studio wrote that its team is about the size it was during Doom (2016). Both studios sit under the same parent, so a shared framing is not surprising. WARN Act filings put the cuts at 213 at ZeniMax Online and 136 at id Software. ZeniMax Online also lost 62 people in 2025, right after Blackbird was canceled.

The Microsoft filing scope is worse than the single number suggests. A Maryland WARN notice lists 213 layoffs at ZeniMax Online and 166 at ZeniMax Media, the parent of Bethesda Game Studios, for 379 total. The ZeniMax Online Union counted 461 members at the end of 2024. With last July's 62 cuts added in, the studio has lost 275 people between July 2025 and July 2026, leaving roughly 186, about 40 percent of the headcount it had a year and a half earlier. A former ESO UX lead once cited the game as bringing in $15 million in monthly revenue for over a decade.

I think the "same size as 2015" line is the part worth pushing back on, because a studio staffing up is a different place to work than one that just cut 60 percent of its people in a year. Headcount can match on paper while the environment does not. The 213 at ZeniMax and 136 at id were hired for reasons, and game development in 2026 does not run the way it did in 2016.

Other studios landed in the same wave. Kotaku reported losses at Obsidian Entertainment, where about 25 percent of staff were cut, an estimated 50 to 60 people across design, software, QA, and writing, including The Outer Worlds art director role. Microsoft's June restructuring removed more than 4,500 gaming employees across studios, Game Pass, and xCloud, though it closed none of its studios outright.

The precedent for the framing is not encouraging. Bungie and BioWare likely hit headcounts close to their peak years during the 2020s layoff waves, and matching those numbers did not restore their output or bring back Halo: Reach or Mass Effect 2. A studio can carry the same count and lose the senior staff who hold its institutional knowledge, and a senior developer with a decade of context carries more than a cheaper junior hire.

I have some sympathy for developers trying to counter a decline narrative, and two studios under one parent lining up the same message is not sinister on its own. The trouble is what the line implies. Read as PR, it treats the people cut as surplus and edges toward the "lazy devs" rhetoric that recasts mass layoffs as a necessary correction by management. id Software, for its part, has moved on quickly: it told fans its plans are intact, and The Verge's Tom Warren reported the studio is in early development on a new Doom game rather than being turned into a support team.

Read also, Crytek's 2013 Xbox One exclusive Ryse: Son of Rome was once planned as Xbox's answer to Assassin's Creed. Developers, including production designer Patrick Hanenberger and art director Peter Gornstein, said scrapped sequels could have moved the series to a Viking setting, Japan, England, France, and Constantinople. The Viking pitch predated both the History Channel's Vikings and Assassin's Creed Valhalla. A remaster was rumored last month, but Crytek has not commented.