Matt Firor founded Zenimax Online in 2007 and helped Bethesda lead Ancient scrolls online in one of the best MMORPGs on the market. He left abruptly last summer when Microsoft laid off dozens of people at the studio amid a broader bloodbath within the company and canceled the upcoming online multiplayer game he and others were working on, Merle Project. He recently broke his silence on the reason for his departure, confirming what fans have long suspected.
“Project Blackbird was the game I had waited my entire career to create, and its cancellation led to my resignation,” Firor wrote in a January 1 post on LinkedIn which he then shared on Bluesky. “My heart and thoughts always go out to the team members involved, many of whom I worked with for over 20 years and all of whom were the most dedicated and incredibly talented group of developers in the industry.”
The post never directly mentions Microsoft or targets decision-makers at Xbox, which acquired Zenimax Online in 2021, but the move clearly left a very bad taste in the mouths of many veteran developers. Some of Firor’s former colleagues later founded Sackbird Studios to work on their own multiplayer game. “With internal funding and full creative control, the studio is focused on creating bold, character-driven experiences without corporate compromise,” they said. written last year.
Bloomberg reported that Blackbird was an ambitious loot shooter mixing elements of Fate And Blade Runner with the structure and quests of an MMORPG. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer reportedly played a version of the game last March and loved what he saw, making its eventual cancellation even more perplexing. The layoffs and job cuts came as Xbox game studios were would have been loaded with a controversial 30% profit margin despite being forced to make all their games playable for free on Game Pass.
