Firor said the axing was the reason he quit
Former ZeniMax Online boss Matt Firor says the axe job on his seven-year Project Blackbird project pushed him out, and he is not steering any of the spin-off efforts.
For those who came in late, Project Blackbird, meanwhile, had been in development for more than seven years when it was chopped.
ZeniMax Online Studios’ creative director, Ben Jones, said in November 2022 that it was a new IP, with around 200 developers assigned to it. Then Microsoft’s latest round of layoffs hit, with cuts framed as freeing up cash for AI investment, and Blackbird was suddenly off the perch.
The cancellation stung more because it sounded like the game was finally turning into something tangible. ZeniMax Online Studios, lead graphics programmer Alex Tardif said as much publicly, and other reports backed the idea that it was starting to come together.
Bloomberg reported that Microsoft Gaming, chief executive Phil Spencer enjoyed a March playtest so much the controller had to be pried from his hands. Reporter Jason Schreier also said he watched a vertical slice video and came away impressed, which is not his default setting.
Later details painted Blackbird as an online third-person sci-fi shooter set on Soteria, a tidally locked exoplanet split into ice, fire and a habitable Twilight Band. Players would have been Revenants running co-op missions for alien syndicates, building rank and reputation in a noir-tinged space hustle.
Matt Firor has broken months of silence to confirm that cancelling the Project Blackbird game directly led to his resignation.
In a LinkedIn post, ZeniMax Online Studios founder and former studio head Matt Firor said: “Right off the top – and to answer the most commented question I get – I am not directly involved in any of the projects that former members of the ZOS team have spun up. I am advising some of them informally, but I am not leading them. They are in good hands with their respective leaders, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with.”
He also addressed the obvious follow-up about why he walked. Firor said: “Answering the second-most common question – about what led my leaving ZOS – the most obvious explanation is the correct one. Project Blackbird was the game I had waited my entire career to create, and its cancellation led to my resignation. My heart and thoughts are always with the impacted team members, many of whom I had worked with for 20+ years, and all of whom were the most dedicated, amazingly talented group of developers in the industry.”
Firor went on to praise The Elder Scrolls Online’s team and community, saying he now plays as “an anonymous community member”, which is one way to dodge corporate Zoom calls.
Some of the laid-off developers have already formed Sackbird Studios to build something new, while the project they wanted to make is still sitting in the Microsoft bin with a seven-year label on it.
