Elder Scrolls Online Team Hit With Layoffs

[Steven Bogos]

Elder Scrolls Online Team Hit With Layoffs

Despite the layoffs, Bethesda stresses that it still intends to "invest heavily" in the future of The Elder Scrolls Online

Zenimax Online Studios, the studio behind Bethesda Softwork's Elder Scrolls MMO, The Elder Scrolls Online [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/reviews/11316-The-Elder-Scrolls-Online-Review-Levels-1-20], has just been hit with a round of layoffs. But, before you rush off to ebay your deprecating Elder Scrolls Online character, Bethesda did stress that despite the layoffs, it still intends to "invest heavily" in the game's future.

"As is the norm for games of this type, we had ramped up a large workforce to develop a game of vast scale, and ramped up our customer service to handle the expected questions and community needs of The Elder Scrolls Online at launch," Bethesda VP of PR and Marketing Pete Hines told Joystiq. [http://www.joystiq.com/2014/09/03/elder-scrolls-online-layoffs-bethesda-zenimax/?ncid=rss_truncated]

"Now that we are nearly 6 months post launch, we have a thriving online community in a game that runs smoothly," Hines continued, stating that the studio has adjusted staffing to meet the ongoing needs and continues to operate with a large work force.

"We remain strongly committed to The Elder Scrolls Online, and continue to invest heavily to develop new content for PC players, prepare the game for its console launch [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/134319-Elder-Scrolls-Online-Console-Version-Delayed-Six-Months-Update], and handle our planned expansion into important international territories. As for customer service, we continue to operate large support centers in Hunt Valley, MD and Galway, Ireland," he stressed.

Source: Joystiq [http://www.joystiq.com/2014/09/03/elder-scrolls-online-layoffs-bethesda-zenimax/?ncid=rss_truncated]

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[RJ 17]

Give it another could months and it'll be what it was always destined to be: just another failed MMO. I don't think we can even blame WoW anymore since it's been bleeding subscriptions quite profusely for a while now. At this point the MMO's that are coming out are just bad games.

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

Hopefully this is not some kind of domino falling preparing for the end for ESO, it's a nice little game, not as amazing, innovative, or awesome as they'd want you to believe it's no wow killer but people need to stop trying to build a wow killer and offer something different. I played the beta and I never subscribed because it's fun but not real fun. however I want this game to succeed I mean lots of MMOs change drastically in their first year. so it'd be nice to see this thing get a chance to become something rather than wither in the first stretch.

 

[JayRPG]

Last time I checked, their online community was a little far from "thriving".

Good luck with it anyway, Bethesda.

 

[Sight Unseen]

I was just reading the Joystiq article. Why did Bethesda go to them? Why not Gamespot? Or anyone else?

Anyway, OT: I really wanted to try and give ESO a go, but I can't bring myself to. All I hear is bad things, with perhaps a splashing of meh. While I know lay offs after launch and people being reassigned to different areas of a large company when they aren't needed on the scale they were during design and production, is totally normal, I can't help but feel... Less than confident. That they go out of their way to stress customer service at the end of their statement just reminds me of the countless threads I've seen shitting on it.

Ah well. Maybe one day, Bethesda. But you're pretty low on the list.

It's come a LONG way since launch. I've been playing it for more or less the past 4 months and all of the major bugs are fixed, the bots are gone, the combat is more responsive and less glitchy, and the new content is exciting. And they announced a ton of awesome-looking features that are coming up like a justice system (thieves guild and dark brotherhood included), spell crafting, a giant PVP dungeon within the ruins of the Imperial City, and several other cool sounding things. There's also still a lot of people playing it in almost all zones from my experience.

The game is far from perfect, but it's gotten a lot better since its rough launch.

If you're not turned off by the idea of paying a subscription, I'd actually say that now is a pretty good time to jump in. You can buy the base game for pretty cheap on Amazon, and there's IMO more than enough content to play for months if you don't play it like you'd play a normal MMO and rush to endgame. IMO it's definitely worth buying a cheap version from amazon and giving it a go. The first month is free and you could fit in a ton of playtime in that month to find out whether it's for you or not.

Last time I checked, their online community was a little far from "thriving".

Good luck with it anyway, Bethesda.

I have no idea where you heard this from, but I've been playing ESO until the end of August ( my GF and I are taking a break from the game for a month or two, but not because of anything to do with the game) and there's still highly populated areas in all zones during prime hours. It's hard to gauge how many are playing because of the megaserver technology, but I've never had problems of over OR underpopulation in all my playtime (about 200 hours)

 

[Scorpid]

Nothing spells long term success like firing the people that will make content for your MMO but you're still going to throw lots of money at it.

 

[Sight Unseen]

Nothing spells long term success like firing the people that will make content for your MMO but you're still going to throw lots of money at it.

Or you know, maybe they're letting go of support staff and the bot banning crew now that they're no longer needed. The article never says what kind or how many people got let go, so it could mean only a handful of redundant positions got cancelled. I wouldn't go all doomsday preachy yet until more info surfaces.

Hopefully this is not some kind of domino falling preparing for the end for ESO, it's a nice little game, not as amazing, innovative, or awesome as they'd want you to believe it's no wow killer but people need to stop trying to build a wow killer and offer something different. I played the beta and I never subscribed because it's fun but not real fun. however I want this game to succeed I mean lots of MMOs change drastically in their first year. so it'd be nice to see this thing get a chance to become something rather than wither in the first stretch.

ESO isn't trying to be a WOW killer. It's doing it's own thing. I don't understand why so many compare ESO to WOW. It's a completely different game with a completely different focus. ESO is focused on good quests, stories and exploration, and large scale, open world 3 way siege PVP. WoW is focused on raids and small scale 2 faction PVP.

 

[Remus]

Nothing spells long term success like firing the people that will make content for your MMO but you're still going to throw lots of money at it.

Or you know, maybe they're letting go of support staff and the bot banning crew now that they're no longer needed. The article never says what kind or how many people got let go, so it could mean only a handful of redundant positions got cancelled. I wouldn't go all doomsday preachy yet until more info surfaces.

This seems to be the default position for a lot in the Escapist forums. Any sign that the game might not be doing as well, or just standard business as usual post-launch wind-down and immediately people here jump to "I told ya so! That game sucks! 1 week until F2P!" It gets really tiresome for what is otherwise a great forum community. I still play the game for hours every day, still enjoy it. I have 2 veteran characters now, one of which I've been spending some extensive time in PvP since the servers were reshuffled. I have a nightblade in waiting for when the justice system, thieves, and assassins guilds are introduced, which have been previewed and are definitely coming, along with pvp within the Imperial city, currently heavily guarded by daedra. I'm in multiple guilds that have 50+ active members each during peak hours. So contrary to the naysayers, the game is far far from dying or simply dropping to F2P, sorry to disappoint everyone.

 

[Sight Unseen]

Nothing spells long term success like firing the people that will make content for your MMO but you're still going to throw lots of money at it.

Or you know, maybe they're letting go of support staff and the bot banning crew now that they're no longer needed. The article never says what kind or how many people got let go, so it could mean only a handful of redundant positions got cancelled. I wouldn't go all doomsday preachy yet until more info surfaces.

This seems to be the default position for a lot in the Escapist forums. Any sign that the game might not be doing as well, or just standard business as usual post-launch wind-down and immediately people here jump to "I told ya so! That game sucks! 1 week until F2P!" It gets really tiresome for what is otherwise a great forum community. I still play the game for hours every day, still enjoy it. I have 2 veteran characters now, one of which I've been spending some extensive time in PvP since the servers were reshuffled. I have a nightblade in waiting for when the justice system, thieves, and assassins guilds are introduced, which have been previewed and are definitely coming, along with pvp within the Imperial city, currently heavily guarded by daedra. I'm in multiple guilds that have 50+ active members each during peak hours. So contrary to the naysayers, the game is far far from dying or simply dropping to F2P, sorry to disappoint everyone.

It's not just the Escapist that falls victim to it. The ESO subreddit is kind of freaking out right now too and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a bit concerned by the news too. It's just too soon to tell though since not enough details are out yet.

I agree that the game seems healthy from what I've seen of it. My gf and I are taking a little break (we wanted to play Divinity: Original Sin and some other games together and then go back) but we've both had a great time together playing it.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Understandable I guess. If workers are just sitting around doing practically nothing then there's no point in paying them.

Still waiting on a price drop though Zenimax. I can't justify dropping £50 ($82) on it and also keep paying a monthly subscription fee of £9 ($15). The Elder Scrolls franchise just isn't worth that much to me. I'm happy to just play Skyrim. It cost me either £10 or £15 for the game and all the DLC and I get all the mods I want for free.

 

[Hiramas]

Understandable I guess. If workers are just sitting around doing practically nothing then there's no point in paying them.

Still waiting on a price drop though Zenimax. I can't justify dropping £50 ($82) on it and also keep paying a monthly subscription fee of £9 ($15). The Elder Scrolls franchise just isn't worth that much to me. I'm happy to just play Skyrim. It cost me either £10 or £15 for the game and all the DLC and I get all the mods I want for free.

The game is 28 bucks on amazon right now and you can find it as low as 15 bucks if you keep looking.
I recommend a try, there are 30 days with the initial purchase and it was a good game a few months ago and is even better now.
If you pay 30 bucks and play 30 days you got more playtime out of it than out of most games in the end.

 

[agent9]

From what I gathered ESO was a big mess. People mining dungeons for loot drops preventing other players from succeeding, you can't help people on missions you've completed, and a whole host of other issues. what is the point of ESO if it's single player skyrim with people that occasionally get in the way of your progress because they kill the damn boss before you get there.

I like FF14's approach. You have a party that goes through an instance of a dungeon together and each class has x% chance to roll and win loot (both need and greed). you have fate's which are pretty much like large scale boss battles in some instances and you can generally get in and still get a gold or silver medal (mostly gold for me). There is enough ways to make gill/gold and you get a chocobo regardless (i think you still need to shell out money for the horse but I could be wrong). anyway, I wouldn't be sad to see it go. Bethesda should stick to single player until it works out the mechanics behind a good MMO.

 

[iseko]

I don't understand the hate. It is a great game. And the number of people playing it is still way up there. Any level area is crawling with people. And you have loads of stuff to keep you busy after your reach VR12. Its a great game. I wonder if a lot of people who are bashing on it have actually played it?

 

[List]

News like this just make those vultures circling around this, shouting "free-2-play!", more excited...

 

[SecondPrize]

Step 1. Remove resources from game
Step 2. Tell people you're going to 'invest heavily' in game
Yeah, I don't know how that works out.

 

[Sanunes]

I am not going to say this is "doom and gloom" for Elder Scrolls Online, that would be my getting an email with "Please, please, please come back here is a discount if you do" email. What I am thinking is that the game isn't as successful as they anticipated and have to cut back on support staff because they aren't needed.

For me I probably won't go back to the game because of the bad first impression it left on me for it felt like a MMO that was punishing me for wanting to group with friends.

Now of course even if they do eventually go "free-to-play" there might be a turn around financially like The Old Republic which in 2013 was the fourth highest grossing MMO (behind WoW, Lineage 1, and Tera: Online).

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Understandable I guess. If workers are just sitting around doing practically nothing then there's no point in paying them.

Still waiting on a price drop though Zenimax. I can't justify dropping £50 ($82) on it and also keep paying a monthly subscription fee of £9 ($15). The Elder Scrolls franchise just isn't worth that much to me. I'm happy to just play Skyrim. It cost me either £10 or £15 for the game and all the DLC and I get all the mods I want for free.

The game is 28 bucks on amazon right now and you can find it as low as 15 bucks if you keep looking.
I recommend a try, there are 30 days with the initial purchase and it was a good game a few months ago and is even better now.
If you pay 30 bucks and play 30 days you got more playtime out of it than out of most games in the end.

Just checked and you're right, it's only £15 ($24) on Amazon.

But the subscription thing still bugs me. If I want to get invested* in that game it's gonna cost me £9 a month. And from what I've heard it's another fairly generic MMO.

*Seriously why would you play an Elder Scrolls game without wanting to get invested.

 

[AwesomeDave]

ESO was a terrible attempt to make money by blanketing a generic MMO with a bit of an TES tinge to it, invented because they couldnt figure out how to make people pay sub fees for Skyrim. I hope it dies and burns in the bad-MMO layer of the hells where it belongs.