The cancellation of the long-awaited ZeniMax Online Studios (ZOS from now on) MMORPG codenamed Project Blackbird and the subsequent departure of studio founder and head Matt Firor shocked the development team, which is understandably still reeling.
Hundreds of developers lost their jobs, including ZOS Lead Graphics Programmer Alex Tardif, who had worked at the company for over ten years and was featured in an exclusive The Elder Scrolls Online tech interview with Wccftech in August 2021. Following the dire news, Tardif shared some thoughts on LinkedIn, stating that the MMORPG was ‘heading in a great direction’ and the new engine he and the other graphics programmers had been working on had ‘found its footing’.
Our project got cancelled. We’d been working on a new engine + MMO for some time now, and despite some troubles along the way, the project was heading in a great direction and our tech had found its footing. Of the high notes of our tech was undoubtedly our new renderer, made by one of the best damn graphics teams around. If you see any of them looking for work in the coming days/weeks, they have my full throttled endorsement. An entire team of humble, hardworking, self motivated and passionate devs bleeding with talent. You could not go wrong hiring any of them.
Now, I’m the first to be entirely flummoxed at the news. As someone who spent thousands of hours in The Elder Scrolls Online, I was very much looking forward to this new game by ZOS, and I’m extremely sad about all the job cuts. On the other hand, if one wanted to play devil’s advocate for a second, it is also true that the project had been cooking for over seven years and they didn’t have anything to show for it, at least to the public. Even the fact that tech had just about ‘found its footing’ isn’t exactly inspiring in that regard – likely, Microsoft decided that they weren’t willing to spend any more resources on such a slow-going project.
Again, though, it’s a shame, as so few triple-A MMORPGs are being built nowadays. We’re down to less than a handful that are being worked on by Western developers now.
