I expressed concerns over the future of the game when Matt made the comment at the Amsterdam event about how they've made $2B over its life. To me, that was a giant red flag after the Microsoft acquisition. It was clearly a statement made to justify the studio's position under new ownership. But I was assured by many people on this forum that ESO "prints money" and was in no danger. (The video makes the same mistake I've seen others make, not distinguishing between revenue and profit. That number says absolutely nothing about profit, and profit is the only thing that matters.) Despite this assurance, player counts last Nov/Dec reached historic lows. But then, subclassing produced a big bump in numbers. However, it would seem that people have checked it out and decided it wasn't enough to hold their interest, and numbers are now back at December levels. Given the ongoing confusion from what will be continuing balance changes with PVE because of subclassing, continuing changes to PVP because of performance issues, and this dark cloud hanging over the studio, I expect more people to leave on their own because of the climate. It's all so sad and frustrating and predictable. I have gone through a merger-turned-corporate-raid nightmare myself, and I knew the other shoe would be dropping right around now. It takes a few years for these things to settle out. When you've had this done to you, unfortunately, you know what to look for.

Chrisilis wrote: »

Hopefully once they figure it out they'll let us know. We shall see.

They already did. They told us at around the beginning of the year how ESO is changing. They ended the chapter model. We can see the result in the game right now.

I keep repeating myself because I'm amazed that people can't see what's right in front of them. They didn't just change the name of the annual update for no reason. ESO has entered a new phase.

It's an 11 year old game, so this kind of thing is to be expected.

Desiato wrote: »

Imperial_Archmage wrote: »

I feel for the folks impacted by these layoffs, I really do, but at the same time I can’t help but ask myself what is that they were doing before they were fired? The so called “Season of the Worm” has been nothing but rehashed old content that adds nothing new to the game.

They made the decision not to develop a conventional chapter last year. The staff who would normally work on new assets for chapters were probably either assigned to other Bethesda projects or Blackbird.

Many of the affected employees actually came from another Zenimax studio that was shut down last year, Arkane.

Varana wrote: »

I will never cease to be baffled (and, to some extent, disheartened) by people defending this horrid workplace and corporate culture.
Regardless of whether the layoffs made economic sense - while I doubt it, there is the theoretical possibility that they did - the style of firing people, how this is done, is just terrible.
And I really hope more people in that industry start unionising.

I'm not president of the world, and Microsoft doesn't make the rules they operate in either. Right or wrong, this is how our society functions. I would say it's largely good as until recently, the world had seen unprecedented global prosperity. But nothing is perfect and some would say the wheels are coming off this wagon for complex reasons that are beyond the scope of the eso forums.

If Microsoft didn't function in a fiscally responsible way, they would actually be in violation of their fiduciary duty to their shareholders. You might imagine them to all be residents of an ivory tower, but many are also individuals a who are either part of mutual funds or shareholders themselves who count on dividends to fund their retirement.

The bottom line is they are making decisions that they think are best for their stakeholders. Every responsible company operates like this. I doubt anyone making these decisions likes them.

It should be noted that ZOS employees are part of a union and though they can no longer access work systems, the last we heard the affected employees are still being paid with benefits.

Regardless, this is how our society functions and you can't blame a company for operating within its rules. If they didn't, they themselves would eventually be the target of an acquisition by another corporation that does.

I agree with everything you said here - and unfortunetly you're going to take heat for speaking the truth.

This is just how business operates. Two things can be true - you can absolutley feel gutted for the people who get caught up in the wash - you can also believe that MS (and companies in general) have a duty to make as much money as possible for their shareholders.

None of us will ever know the full scope/situation about BB and the reasons why it got cancelled. I will say... a game in dev for 7 years with nothing public to show for it is concerning no matter how amazing the game apparently was (I'm killing to have a Destiny 2/ESO mix up that would have been insane).

It's also true that when the economy is booming companies almost always over hire. Every job I've ever had.. when the economy is good.. the business is making top profits.. they always..always..always over hire. There ends up being so many jobs where you're like... wait what do you do.. do we really need 10 people doing that job 2 people were doing 3 years ago? You notice more people standing around talking... more meetings that end up accomplishing nothing...so it's understandable that at some point (regardless of how good profits are or not) that companies thin the heard a bit.

I'd also say the Microsoft is at record profits argument.. is kind of.. interesting. Their game pass and how they "make profits" from it... do a deep dive and the math doesn't exactly math. I don't think Xbox is as profitable as they claim.

LadyGP wrote: »

nathamarath wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

Blackbird was an internal ZOS pet project that only started to make progress recently, after ESO was set on its new path. This has been leaked previously and we can deduce the decision to end chapters had to happen last year because the content pass lacks new art assets. It is probably why the anniversary tour was cut short.

They would have made the decision to end chapters independent of outside considerations.

It was cut short because MS has no sense of flair for the history, tradition and being of the companies incorporated. For the same reason seasons was introduced. It is MS' distribution habit including naming to unify it with their own flavour.

I'd argue seasons were introduced because they knew they were phasing down on content (and their resources and personel were shifting to other projects), they knew they were slowly transitioning to a more maintenance mode approach, and they knew they had a ton of technical debt built up over the years (how many posts are there where people say stop adding new things and fix the bugs/balance, etc etc).

Moving to seasons gives them a second to take a breath and do just that. I don't think seasons really had anything to do with Microsoft. Why would it? They make lamost all their money from ESO+ and then the big content drops that they sell for (too much money IMO).

ESO+, crowns, and crown crates are how ESO is so dang profitable. Everything else is just penies on the bottomline.

Again with this "ESO is profitable" business, and not just profitable, but "dang" profitable. To my knowledge, all that's ever been said about the company financials is Rich's "$2B" statement, but that was revenue, not profit. We actually have no idea how profitable the game is. It could be losing money, for all we know, and recent cut backs in the scope of content may be a reflection of that. Am I nuts? I've googled this several times. The only comments about how "successful" this game is stem from that single statement, and a back-calculation that it has averaged $15M/mo in revenue since the start. I don't know about you, but $15M/mo doesn't sound like a lot of income for a company the size of ZOS to me. Does anyone have an actual source about actual profits?

And where do you get your notion that they "make almost all of" their money from ESO+? Where have they ever said that, either? MMO population says ESO has about 65K daily players. If half of them have Plus, that's 33K subscribers for, say, $13/mo, which is roughly $450,000/mo. That's 3 or 4 FTE's. That's covering almost nothing. I would argue that Crown store sales are the bulk of revenue. It certainly feels that way to me, in the way it's promoted.

Expanding the estimation about full-time employee costs, if there were 600 people at the studio pre-layoffs, averaging, oh, I don't know, $150K burden -- which is probably way too low -- that's $90M/12 =$7.5M per month in salaries alone. There's the building, and legal, and travel, and everything else to consider as well. So now you see my problem with considering that a back-calculated $15M/mo to be significant in terms of profitability.

Tazzy wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

This is how people are let go from corporations and most serious businesses. It is necessary to avoid sabotage from distraught/angry employees acting on impulse. When one is at work when the decision is made for them to be let go, they are escorted out of the building. Of course not everyone would act with malice, but because it's a realistic possibility for fired employees to act like this, it is a necessary security precaution.

Might be the case in the US, where I live (Germany), you only can be fired without notice, due to serious misconduct by employees.
Termination must be in writing and within a certain period, specified in the employment contract.
In addition, the number of years with the company and the age of the employee are also taken into account.

Even in that case, I would bet standard corporate policy would still be the same with immediate lockout. Employees taking terminations badly isn't an uncommon thing. It's not just sabotage to be concerned about but also data and IP theft. Sometimes it's just mail abuse by creating drama or CCing spam to the entire company.

In the last corporation I worked for, even if someone gave two weeks notice, they were locked out of the systems and the building immediately and paid to stay home for two weeks.

Tazzy wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

Even in that case, I would bet standard corporate policy would still be the same with immediate lockout. Employees taking terminations badly isn't an uncommon thing. It's not just sabotage to be concerned about but also data and IP theft. Sometimes it's just mail abuse by creating drama or CCing spam to the entire company.

In the last corporation I worked for, even if someone gave two weeks notice, they were locked out of the systems and the building immediately and paid to stay home for two weeks.

Then I must have worked at different companies than you over the past few years. I have never experienced such behavior from the companies I have worked for, nor have I heard of anything like this from customers or acquaintances.
I can hardly imagine that employees in our country are less upset than in the US, when they are fired. But no one (or at least very few employers - perhaps those from other countries...) seems to assume that their fired employees want to deliberately harm them after being dismissed.

It's very common in North American businesses, especially with certain roles or access levels.

ThetaSigma wrote: »

[snip]

Do you imagine they're any better?

All they have done to the gamimg industry is buying and firing, making nothing for anyone, not even for themselves (except maybe financial reports).

[edited to remove quote]

Tazzy wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

It's very common in North American businesses, especially with certain roles or access levels.

But even if it is common business-practice, as a European I find it strange and I am glad that things are usually different here, because I consider such behavior against former employees as disrespectful.

That's one of the many advantages of being in the EU, EU Employment Laws. Even my own country, the UK, has kept those very same regulations. Even though we have unfortunately left the EU.

Though I have been retired for fifteen years, I also have never experienced such treatment. That's even during the Thatcher years, which was bad in their own right. Hiring and firing rules were still abided by. It just happened more often. Even today I am not aware of such treatment, though It could happen in the defence sector, I just don't know.

Even if an ex-employee went down the destructive route, they would be open to prosecution for criminal damage.

Tazzy wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

This is how people are let go from corporations and most serious businesses. It is necessary to avoid sabotage from distraught/angry employees acting on impulse. When one is at work when the decision is made for them to be let go, they are escorted out of the building. Of course not everyone would act with malice, but because it's a realistic possibility for fired employees to act like this, it is a necessary security precaution.

Might be the case in the US, where I live (Germany), you only can be fired without notice, due to serious misconduct by employees.
Termination must be in writing and within a certain period, specified in the employment contract.
In addition, the number of years with the company and the age of the employee are also taken into account.

Which is how it should be everywhere, imo. You give them notice so they don't even have to come in that day that lets them know their last day will be x. They don't even have to experience the lockouts, which they will know are coming, because they have been notified. It's just basic respect to not treat your employees like criminals.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Besides, this thread is not about that. It is about our feelings about how the employees at ZOS have been treated. And I think they should have been given notice.

They are still being paid with benefits!!

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

nathamarath wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

Blackbird was an internal ZOS pet project that only started to make progress recently, after ESO was set on its new path. This has been leaked previously and we can deduce the decision to end chapters had to happen last year because the content pass lacks new art assets. It is probably why the anniversary tour was cut short.

They would have made the decision to end chapters independent of outside considerations.

It was cut short because MS has no sense of flair for the history, tradition and being of the companies incorporated. For the same reason seasons was introduced. It is MS' distribution habit including naming to unify it with their own flavour.

I'd argue seasons were introduced because they knew they were phasing down on content (and their resources and personel were shifting to other projects), they knew they were slowly transitioning to a more maintenance mode approach, and they knew they had a ton of technical debt built up over the years (how many posts are there where people say stop adding new things and fix the bugs/balance, etc etc).

Moving to seasons gives them a second to take a breath and do just that. I don't think seasons really had anything to do with Microsoft. Why would it? They make lamost all their money from ESO+ and then the big content drops that they sell for (too much money IMO).

ESO+, crowns, and crown crates are how ESO is so dang profitable. Everything else is just penies on the bottomline.

Again with this "ESO is profitable" business, and not just profitable, but "dang" profitable. To my knowledge, all that's ever been said about the company financials is Rich's "$2B" statement, but that was revenue, not profit. We actually have no idea how profitable the game is. It could be losing money, for all we know, and recent cut backs in the scope of content may be a reflection of that. Am I nuts? I've googled this several times. The only comments about how "successful" this game is stem from that single statement, and a back-calculation that it has averaged $15M/mo in revenue since the start. I don't know about you, but $15M/mo doesn't sound like a lot of income for a company the size of ZOS to me. Does anyone have an actual source about actual profits?

And where do you get your notion that they "make almost all of" their money from ESO+? Where have they ever said that, either? MMO population says ESO has about 65K daily players. If half of them have Plus, that's 33K subscribers for, say, $13/mo, which is roughly $450,000/mo. That's 3 or 4 FTE's. That's covering almost nothing. I would argue that Crown store sales are the bulk of revenue. It certainly feels that way to me, in the way it's promoted.

Expanding the estimation about full-time employee costs, if there were 600 people at the studio pre-layoffs, averaging, oh, I don't know, $150K burden -- which is probably way too low -- that's $90M/12 =$7.5M per month in salaries alone. There's the building, and legal, and travel, and everything else to consider as well. So now you see my problem with considering that a back-calculated $15M/mo to be significant in terms of profitability.

The more I think about it, the more it seems obvious that Microsoft cut ZOS' unannounced MMO because the revenue from ESO simply couldn't support another whole game being developed at the company, regardless of how promising it might have been. I guess that implies that ESO has been profitable enough for the past many years to support a whole other team developing another game inside the company up to this point, but no longer.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Besides, this thread is not about that. It is about our feelings about how the employees at ZOS have been treated. And I think they should have been given notice.

They are still being paid with benefits!!

Good. They should have also been given notice IMO.

Technically speaking.. if they're still getting paid, and still receiving benefits.. then they have been given notice. They're currently in the "you've been notified" portion of being let go.

For those of us who want to be able to continue to support the game amidst all this, it could be challenging.

I’ve already done all of the new season content and am running out of things to do. I usually spend my time in Cyrodiil, and could entertain myself there indefinitely, but the combat imbalances due to former classes, OP gear and subclassing, with ball groups thrown on top, can make it really frustrating. Some days I just log out because I can’t do anything.

New players have a whole world to explore, but those of us who have kept up all these years aren’t excited about overland questing, running pledges, and such anymore because we have done that so many times before. If we get less new content this year and even less than that next year, we need to feel like the future will be better. I doubt they are looking that far ahead though. So it’s just wait and see at this point.

Desiato wrote: »

Chrisilis wrote: »

Hopefully once they figure it out they'll let us know. We shall see.

They already did. They told us at around the beginning of the year how ESO is changing. They ended the chapter model. We can see the result in the game right now.

I keep repeating myself because I'm amazed that people can't see what's right in front of them. They didn't just change the name of the annual update for no reason. ESO has entered a new phase.

It's an 11 year old game, so this kind of thing is to be expected.

Let's not forget that some people in these forums had been complaining for years about how the annual chapter releases had become formulaic in structure-- every year, there was a new dungeon DLC in Q1, a chapter in Q2, another dungeon DLC in Q3, and a zone DLC concluding the year-long story in Q4. To be sure, there were also people who defended that formula and said they liked the year-long stories. But if I remember correctly, there were even some people posting polls about this topic.

ZOS responded by announcing that the year-long story formula was going to be changed up by making story arcs spanning multiple years. Naturally, some people reacted negatively to that announcement.

Also, there had been people complaining for years that there were too few bug fixes. Again, some people suggested dropping one of the quarterly DLCs each year for a release of bug fixes, and even posted polls in these forums about that topic.

ZOS responded by announcing that the Q3 and Q4 DLCs would focus more on fixing bugs and adding new game systems. It may have been part of the decision to do away with year-long story arcs and do more story arcs that span multiple years-- I'm hazy on the specifics-- but my point is, it was more or less something that people had been suggesting in these forums, and of course some people reacted negatively to it.

I could go on.

The card game that a vocal percentage of the playerbase loves to hate on and has said ZOS needs to delete from the game? A response to people in these forums asking ZOS to incorporate Legends into ESO (which I don't think would have worked) or add some kind of "tavern game."

The first version of the Vengeance test where we had very limited templates of skills and sets to reduce the calculations the server needs to deal with? A response to people in these forums voicing their opinions about how unbalanced PvP is, how ZOS needs to balance PvE and PvP separately, praising other MMOs where PvP and PvE have separate gear sets, etc.

And etc. (Destructible bridges.) And etc. (Update old zones with new graphics.) And etc. (You get the idea.)

It seems to me that ZOS has been bending over backwards for years listening to the playerbase and trying to give the people some workable version of what have they been asking for. And whenever ZOS has announced some change that's essentially a response to suggestions or complaints in these forums, somebody starts yelling about "maintenance mode."

It seems to me like it's tiime for the players to go look in their bathroom mirrors for answers.

@SeaGtGruff When you put it that way you certainly have a point.