The team behind Elder Scrolls Online is one of many that's been impacted by ruthless cuts being made by Xbox at the moment. Purportedly up to half of the devs behind Bethesda's MMO have lost their jobs, and a former designer on the fantasy sandbox has been quick to point out the game's unsung glories.
In the wake of the redundancies, Andrew Young, a senior content designer on Elder Scrolls Online who worked on the online RPG from 2012 through to 2024, vented his frustrations on Twitter. "I'm just so angry today," he says. "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."
He adds that fans may never realize just how integral Elder Scrolls Online was to Bethesda. "Talking to people today and realizing there’s really no one left and no changing it now makes my heart ache," he says. "For the people, our game, who we were as a team and a studio. This is a serious loss, and I don’t think people know how much."
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.July 6, 2026
No specifics are given, but my mind immediately jumped to Blades and Legends, two free mobile spin-offs that came out in the 2010s. The former was all about constantly getting into swordfights, while the latter was a digital card game. Both have since been unceremoniously closed, and Young could be talking about other projects within the umbrella of Bathesda's parent company ZeniMax, either.
Elder Scrolls Online has been a reliable money-spinner, bringing in upwards of $2 billion across its lifetime to date. Those are decent earnings, especially when it comes to the currently over-saturated live-service and MMO market. The game adopted a new updated schedule in 2025, moving from yearly changes to a more seasonal approach, with Season Zero: Dawn and Dusk due to finish tomorrow, July 8.
Hopefully, this all helps those impacted by the job losses - which are expected to total 3,200 across Xbox and Microsoft by the end of the year - to find new opportunities. And maybe a little more respect will be put on Tamriel's Second Era as well.
