A new report delves into the behind-the-scenes chaos caused at Elder Scrolls Online studio ZeniMax by Microsoft’s mass layoffs earlier this month. Staff say the manner in which the corp let go of around 9k staff was “inhumane” and has left those who remain facing an incredibly tough future.
An unannounced MMO in development at ZeniMax, codenamed Project Blackbird, was one of the games cancelled by Microsoft as part of the corporate bloodletting, with Rare’s Everwild and The Initiative’s Perfect Dark reboot also being canned. Just last week, the ZeniMax Online Studios United (ZOSU) union said they’re still fighting on behalf of workers at the studio left in limbo by Blackbird’s cancellation.
The staff Game Developer spoke to for the report paint a horrifying picture of the day that saw Microsoft jettison all of those people and projects. They claim staff were removed from company communications such as Slack and email before human resources had even made contact to inform them whether they’d been let go. “It was so sad seeing people so distraught and confused and not knowing if they would have a job by the end of the day – or even if the layoffs were done by the end of the day,” said current ZeniMax worker and ZeniMax Workers United – CWA union member Page Branson.
“It’s not okay. It wasn’t normal,” added ZeniMax senior QA tester and fellow ZeniMax Workers United member Autumn Mitchell. “I don’t care how many times they do it to try and make it seem normal — it’s not. The way they do it is inhumane. I don’t care how much they say that it’s dignified or they want to do it in a respectful way – it’s not.”
“Making it so that people have to rush to type a goodbye message into Slack to their colleagues that they’ve been working with on various projects, that have been making your corporation money for 15 years, is disgusting,” the QA tester continued.
Both Branson and Mitchell believe the cuts at ZeniMax, which Game Developer report have affected “hundreds” of workers, would have been worse if a significant number of the studio’s staff hadn’t unionised. As is, they say the layoffs have seen key developers be let go, leaving those who remain facing a bleak future.
“A lot of practical knowledge just disappeared overnight,” Branson said. “Everyone left now has to pick up the pieces as best they can. The [dwindling] morale and general confusion of it all has extended into our general workflow. We used to have very, very reliable people working on things and they’re no longer there. They were integral. I feel like they were numbers on a sheet that got cut, but the real application of what they were doing was integral to making everything run correctly.”
“This carcass of workers that remains is somehow supposed to keep shipping award-winning games,” Mitchell added, later likening the situation to having to keep on working while “looking at a graveyard”.
We’ve reached out to Microsoft for comment.
