Yesterday, amid the layoffs of around 9,100 staff at Microsoft including thousands from its Xbox Gaming Divisions, we learned that one of the impacted projects was an unannounced MMO from ZeniMax Online Studios.
Now, IGN has learned that the entire team for the MMO, codenamed “Blackbird,” has been cut, amid layoffs that impacted several hundred individuals across the Cockeysville, MD-based ZeniMax Online Studios.
Speaking to multiple sources familiar with the project, IGN has learned that Blackbird was to be a new, sci-fi IP. Though it had been in development since 2018, the length of time it was taking to make the game was expected, as ZeniMax was building an entirely new game engine for it.
In the last year, sources tell IGN that pre-production was going well, and the team was actively ramping up in the hope of moving into full production soon. Xbox had approved the scaling up, and some individuals were being moved onto the project from other teams such as The Elder Scrolls Online, as well as some people absorbed from the shuttering last year of Arkane Austin.
One source recalled being told last year by head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty in a meeting that Xbox’s closures of Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and Alpha Dog Games were done for the purpose of justifying increased headcount for other game studios that needed it, including ZeniMax Online Studios.
But now, every person working on Blackbird is gone. The project has been cancelled, and ZeniMax Online Studios head Matt Firor has stepped down. Sources IGN spoke to said that those within ZeniMax only knew that layoffs were coming due to ongoing news reports leading up to yesterday, but even today are still in the dark as to how widespread the cuts actually are. They also confirmed reports that a number of people’s Slack access was deactivated before they were told by HR that they were impacted, resulting in confusion and distress.
Microsoft’s mass layoffs have devastated its games division, and our understanding of the impact is still evolving. IGN was told that Candy Crush developer King was hit hard, and we learned yesterday that Perfect Dark has been canceled and The Initiative is no more. Meanwhile, Everwild has been canceled at Rare and veteran Rare designer Gregg Mayles is leaving the company, and Blizzard’s Warcraft Rumble is winding down. Brenda and John Romero also announced this morning that Xbox has pulled funding from their project, leaving its future uncertain. A number of other games and teams are rumored to be impacted as well, though the full scope is still unknown.
This comes on the heels of Microsoft’s laying off 1,900 staff in January 2024, closing Redfall developer Arkane Austin and Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks months later, laying off 650 more individuals in gaming the following September, and then in May of this year Microsoft laying off an additional 6,000 people.
Image credit: zenimaxonline.com.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
