Ex-Elder Scrolls Online Boss Explains Why He Left Microsoft

Matt Firor founded Zenimax Online in 2007 and helped Bethesda shepherd The Elder Scrolls Online into one of the premier MMORPGs out there. He left abruptly last summer when Microsoft laid off dozens at the studio amid a wider bloodbath at the company and canceled the upcoming online multiplayer game he and others were working on, Project Blackbird. He recently broke his silence on the reason for his departure, confirming what fans had long suspected.

“Project Blackbird was the game I had waited my entire career to create, and having it canceled led to my resignation,” Firor wrote in a January 1 post on LinkedIn which he later shared on Bluesky. “My heart and thoughts are always with the impacted team members, many of whom I had worked 20+ years with, and all of whom were the most dedicated, amazingly talented group of developers in the industry.”

The post never mentions Microsoft directly and doesn’t take aim at the decision makers at Xbox, which acquired Zenimax Online in 2021, but the move clearly left a very bad taste in many veteran developers’ mouths. Some of Firor’s former colleagues went on to form Sackbird Studios to work on their own multiplayer game. “With internal funding and full creative control, the studio is focused on crafting bold, character-driven experiences free from corporate compromises,” they wrote last year.

Bloomberg reported that Blackbird was an ambitious loot shooter that mixed elements of Destiny and Blade Runner with the structure and questlines of an MMORPG. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer reportedly played a build of the game last March and loved what he saw, making its eventual cancelation even more perplexing. The layoffs and cuts came as Xbox game studios were reportedly tasked with achieving a controversial 30-percent profit margin despite being forced to make all of their games playable for free on Game Pass.