Bethesda, the parent company of Zenimax Online Studios, today announced that the developer of The Elder Scrolls Online has laid off a small portion of its staff in the months following the games official launch. A developer suffering the loss of staff following release is not unheard of, and it actually quite the norm in the MMO world as teams move from building worlds of massive proportion, to supplying smaller content updates.
“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 PR and marketing boss Pete Hines said in a
statement issued to GameSpot. “Now that we are nearly six months
post-launch, we have a thriving online community in a game that runs
smoothly. We have adjusted staffing to meet the ongoing needs of the
studio, which continues to operate with a large workforce.”
The Elder Scrolls Online launched in April of this year but didn’t quite get the positive response that was hoped. The developers have since rolled out a number of impressive content updates which certain research suggests is largely responsible for the retaining of 800,000 subscribers as reported in June. The new Subscriber Loyalty system was also recently released, offering exciting incentives for those that subscribe to the game for long periods. Despite the loss of staff Bethesda have vowed to continue their support of ESO:
“We
remain strongly committed to The Elder Scrolls Online, and continue to
invest heavily to develop new content for PC and Mac players, prepare
the game for its console launch, and handle our planned expansion into
important international territories,” Hines said. “As for customer
service, we continue to operate large support centers in Hunt Valley, MD
and Galway, Ireland.”
With the PC & Mac version seemingly stable, the player base looks forward to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 release some time in the next few months.
Source: GameSpot