What Is The Future For The Elder Scrolls Online With All The Layoffs?

[00:08] This time bringing you a look at the question really about what is the future video that to be honest I'm not expecting to do very well for a variety of reasons. But as we'll get into, this

[00:20] shake out of the back of my head. And so I decided to just make the video and be done with it. Now, this video is going to cover a few different things. And so Uh first I'm going to talk about why I'm making this video. Then we're going to

[00:33] talk about what has happened as objectively as possible. And then the speculation and stuff on my end. But to give a brief setup uh recently Zinamax Online Studios has been the subject of numerous layoffs and that has very much

[00:49] is the future of this game at this point? Is it being sunset, maintained, maintenance mode, you know, whatever you want to call it. What is happening here? And that's just one of those things that again I couldn't get out of my head. But

[01:02] why is that? Well, if you've been around the channel an extremely long time, you may well remember that I used to cover ESO a lot. That is because I have played ESO a lot. Too much actually. Perhaps a not uncommon story right after my son

[01:15] was born in 2019. The company I was at gave me some like paternity leave. And it was pretty much during kind of that period of my life that I was like, "Oh, I just can't play these games anymore. They demand too much of my time. You

[01:28] take care of other stuff, which was much more of a necessity at that point, as few other things that I don't want to derail this video with. It just kind of dawned on me that I just wasn't going to be able to play MMOs anymore. Not in any

[01:42] great detail anyway. But I've often said that I really enjoy The Elder Scrolls franchise as a whole, and The Elder Scrolls Online is included in that. And while I don't really love the MMO aspects of it, and we could go on and on

[01:54] like about this thing, ultimately before that happened, I just played a ton of ESO. And that combined with my general interest in the IP, all of this recent news just had me thinking about this game, especially since we very recently

[02:08] updated road map that is supposed to be what is in store for ESO going forward. However, while that road map is nice, I also don't think what they said actually like addresses the main concern people had, which was that this game is like

[02:23] being sunset in some way or simply being maintained. Because, as I'm hoping to go what they've put out does show that they still have things planned with the staff they have left and everything, it also again just doesn't actually discredit

[02:37] anything people have been speculating up to this point because two things can be true at the exact same time. what they've said and what people are worried But in order to explain that, I should probably explain the crux of the

[02:50] into that. So, let's talk about just what is happening here. Now, the layoffs are not news at all at this point. I mean, most of that happened at the beginning of July. It is now the start

[03:02] of August. But in the recent mass of Xbox layoffs, with still yet more to forgetting about that part already. Zenamax online studios got hit particularly hard. I don't see the exact numbers anywhere and I doubt they would

[03:15] give the exact numbers but anywhere from like half to twothirds of their studio much much smaller than it was but the catch is people also might not remember at this point. There were also more layoffs last year across Microsoft and

[03:30] then the other MMO that Zenamax Online Studios was working on got outright cancelled. So, there's been a significant amount of movement at that studio in the past year or so in terms of like projects and things being worked

[03:42] on. The cancelled project, Project Blackbird, we don't really have too many details on other than a lot of people were really enjoying what they had so far, but you know, doesn't do us a lot of good here in the present day. Now, a

[03:54] been on my mind, however, following all of these layoffs, we got a sort of official update from the new game director. And I do say new because the studio is now being co-led by two people, it would seem a Nick G and Josh

[04:08] Henderson. The crux of this update, which will be linked down below, is basically that obviously they've lost a lot of staff. However, they still plan content, but some of that is going to be delayed as a result of those layoffs at

[04:21] the very least. This means that in what's left of 2026, they are rolling out update 51 a week later on September 28th. that will include a bunch of new content. On October 21st, the second season will drop, and we'll get into

[04:35] which will feature a lot of uh changes of its own. And then for 2027, while they're still finalizing plans there, a few things are confirmed. The new trial, Crimson Velt update 52, has been moved to uh January in particular. That was

[04:50] initially planned for 2026 from what I understand. And then they're also planning to refresh some of the class and overall combat stuff in 2027 as well. But that seems to be more of a target than a finalized plan. So all in

[05:03] all, that's kind of what we know, what has happened, and what has been confirmed, I guess you could say. Everything past this is just pure opinion and my own general thoughts on the matter. So I think it's worth

[05:15] mentioning straight away these new season systems. That's not how this used has been through some different models over the course of its lifespan. It used to have a subscription outright. Now, it is actually buy to play, like you buy

[05:29] stuff is free, but it's monetized of course via like the shop in particular. And then while you would buy the expansions and stuff, uh they would also the form of their chapters, which was usually like their main expansion for

[05:44] the year, followed by a dungeon DLC, a smaller content update, and then a second dungeon DLC. a lot of the time, at least as far as I recall, that is. However, uh starting in I believe it was the beginning of this year actually,

[05:56] they officially transitioned to the new seasonal system, which is basically just smaller but more frequent updates. So rather than big expansions that would everything to the game, these seasons by default, which were already a thing long

[06:10] before all of these layoffs happened, would include some new story content, events, dungeons, etc. that would basically break it up into uh more frequent and smaller bits of content throughout the year. So nothing

[06:22] seemingly as grandiose as the previous chapters, but the smaller stuff, which to me sounds a lot like the type of content that a smaller studio would be able to handle as opposed to a much larger previous one, which is what I was

[06:35] getting at towards the beginning when I said that the two things that they have exclusive. You can be doing all of this and the game can also be winding down. their plan is to of course continue to grow, but obviously they're going to say

[06:50] completely stops making money. They're not going to say that their plan is to shut it down in the near future unless that has like fully been set in stone at hasn't. But, you know, understand eventually that if it's not making

[07:04] money, it will get shut down because that is how everything online ultimately goes like this. And when that is paired with these seasonal updates, which to me just seems smaller overall, even if they are intended to uh keep people engaged,

[07:18] that were the standard at one point. Combine that with the fact that I sincerely doubt ESO would have been hit with all these layoffs if it was making a significant amount of money leads me to believe that this game just might not

[07:30] be putting up the numbers that it once was, even if it's not like, you know, insolvent or anything. So, the idea of like, hey, let's move this to a more manageable situation while also understanding that it's not going to be

[07:42] this gigantic money maker anymore, especially as The Elder Scrolls 6 is finally underway in full. Let's keep this going until at least that releases, at which point we can re-evaluate that kind of thing. I mean, obviously, I

[07:55] process there, and that's a lot of speculation on my part, as I already said for this part of the video. My point is, all of that can be true while also saying that our goal is to continue to make this an enjoyable experience for

[08:08] people and keep the updates coming. It's also possible that I'm entirely wrong acknowledge that. But here's the thing, and another reason I kind of wanted to make this video anyway, which is that the ultimate future for ESO is pretty

[08:22] much a given. You see, because regardless of what scenario there is actually true, it may well be somewhere in between. The fate of pretty much every game like this is uh I would say a slow slide into non-existence, which is

[08:35] another reason I don't love to play MMOs these days. Because while there have very longunning, another thing that happens is a lot of them get shut down, usually as a result of money, of course. Now, it's not impossible that they might

[08:48] keep them online in some way just to keep the service active. And to be fair, a decade plus long run is hardly the worst thing out there. But sooner or game that is fundamentally multiplayer as an experience is that sooner or later

[09:03] it simply ceases to be. And while there are certainly some again very longunning exceptions to that, it's not exactly like Bethesda at large is adverse to like The Elder Scrolls Blades or The Elder Scrolls Legends. And while those

[09:17] that they are mobile games, they were clearly already willing to shut things down if they weren't profitable enough. And that was before obviously all of these layoffs and everything pushing Xbox and Microsoft at large to focus

[09:31] more on things like just straight up profitability which again all these confidence towards and despite this update is not any less true as of now. going to end it on a slightly different note. Because the reason I made this

[09:46] video isn't to reinforce that, you know, maybe this is going to be the death nail of this game or anything, but rather that there are things I really enjoyed about ESO. That is why I wound up playing it so much. And it makes me kind

[09:58] that it's in. Because while I appreciate the very sort of MMO focused gameplay of the thing isn't going to be for everybody when the franchise at large is say the stuff that I really enjoyed about ESO was their ability to take

[10:14] things that were uh not really used in the single player games lore-wise for a dig into them and kind of show off what they could be and the singleplayer experience of that was still really really good. and the single player

[10:27] experience of a lot of those stories and the sort of delving into the lore of me. It's why I played it so much. And while I could really care less about the really cool stuff there that I think it

[10:40] would be sad to see get put to the torch. This doesn't look great and I have my personal doubts that the game recovers from this. However, I will also community. I still met a lot of cool people while I played that game and I

[10:54] hope for their sake and the people still playing it that some sort of uh equitable solution, whatever that winds up being, manages to arise from this situation. But that is pretty much all I've got for you guys today. Just kind

[11:06] by all means, let me know how you feel about all of it down in the comments like, comment, subscribe, all that YouTube jazz. But regardless of any of that, truly just thank you so much for watching. I really do appreciate it. May

[11:20] you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day.