Last week, The Elder Scrolls Online studio Zenimax Online revealed in the game’s 2026 roadmap that it’s ditching the huge, annual expansions it’s been doing for years in favor of smaller, seasonal updates every three months. It’s not an unprecedented move by any means, with fellow Xbox Game Studios developer Rare taking Sea of Thieves in a similar direction a few years back. That said, with Microsoft’s brutal layoffs last year still fresh on the memory, it’s hard not to question… why now? After 11 years, why now?
Well, we don’t really have a hard answer to that question (Zenimax Online has said it’s to allow for “greater choice and variety”), but according to ESO executive producer Susan Kath, it has nothing to do with Microsoft’s downsizing, which heavily impacted Zenimax Online and resulted in the cancelation of what would’ve been its first new project in 12 years, Blackbird.
“Seasons is not in any way a response to that,” Kath told Rock, Paper, Shotgun. “We kicked off the Season work at least 12 to 14 months ago. We started making the changes in the team to move in this direction, knowing that this was our intent.”
That definitely tracks. While it’s not impossible for a studio to change course that quickly, the switch to seasons was probably decided a good deal before Microsoft’s layoffs hit Zenimax Online. And while you’d think a reduction in a studio’s workforce would negatively impact an online game’s development, Kath pointed out that the cancelation of Blackbird means 100% of the studio is now working on Elder Scrolls Online, instead of being divided like it was before. It’s a silver lining to an otherwise uniformly ugly situation, but a silver lining nonetheless.
“In some capacities, we actually increased the number of folks available as we came out of that because they weren’t managing two products anymore. They were only devoted to one title,” said Kath.
ESO’s first season, Season Zero: Dawn and Dusk, will run from April 2 to July 8 and will introduce “a new kind of zone experience while also laying the groundwork for future seasonal additions.”
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