“We’re a number on a ledger": ex-Elder Scrolls Online studio head says Microsoft cancelling Project Blackbird was a "missed opportunity"

Matt Firor "understood the reasoning behind" the decision, adjacent if helium didn't hold with it

Image credit: ZeniMax Online Studios

Last year, Microsoft cancelled an MMO that was successful the works astatine ZeniMax Online Studios, developers of The Elder Scrolls Online, arsenic portion of wider layoffs. It was codenamed task Blackbird, and pursuing its canning, ZeniMax Online laminitis Matt Firor resigned from the institution he'd worked astatine since 2007. Firor's present shed immoderate much airy connected his feelings astir the cancellation of the crippled helium "had waited [his] full vocation to create", arsenic good arsenic however Microsoft presently operate.

"How bash I consciousness astir it? I deliberation it's a missed opportunity," helium told MinnMax. "For me, for [ZeniMax], for Bethesda, for Xbox. I deliberation it would person been a fantastic game, but I recognize the reasoning that went into [the cancellation]. This is wherefore making games is ever a heartbreaking business." Explaining that the thought with Blackbird was to put connected gathering a caller motor aboriginal connected that would marque it easier and much cost-effective to adhd to the crippled and supply live-service enactment successful the agelong term, Firor explained:

We're a fig connected a ledger and if that fig is ample it is ripe for for investigation shall we accidental and that fig was ever large. Over the years we ever explained wherefore we were frontloading a batch of outgo and and what they were going to get for it. Eventually, the manufacture conscionable got to a constituent wherever it looked to the radical determination and elsewhere successful the manufacture that [Blackbird] was conscionable a precise ample stake and they needed to hedge their ample bets.

Firor went a spot deeper into however that firm mindset, portion not unsocial successful his mind, applies to ZeniMax and Bethesda's existent overlords. "A elephantine palmy video crippled connected the Microsoft level is frankly not that stimulating to them, right? They privation a concern that they tin look astatine that has numbers that spell up reliably each twelvemonth by a definite magnitude and this isn't Xbox," helium said. "This is similar each nationalist companies, right? They privation reliable, forecastable business. The amusement [and] the video crippled manufacture conscionable doesn't enactment that mode sometimes."

As for Blackbird itself, which is reported to person been a sci-fi noir looter and shooter with tons of vertical swooshing about, the seasoned developer besides explained that his determination to resign implicit its canning came from 2 places. "I needed to nonstop a connection that I didn't hold with it," helium said. "And second, it was a beauteous devastating blow. It's like, this is the crippled I came up with the conception for, right? I came up with the satellite plan for. Obviously, radical took it and ran with it and made it a 1000 times better." He besides asserted that successful summation to being bully fun, the aboriginal mentation his squad had gotten to a playable authorities was "much antithetic than thing other retired there".

Sadly, astatine slightest immoderate of the folks liable for making it were near successful limbo successful the contiguous aftermath of its cancellation, according to a connection the ZOS United-CWA national enactment retired successful July 2025.