379 developers in total are impacted across Zenimax.

Image credit: Zenimax Online Studios

Multiple members of Zenimax Online Studios' senior leadership are being cut from the company, as part of sweeping Xbox layoffs that have resulted in over 200 redundancies from the Elder Scrolls Online developer.

In a new report by Game File, 14-year studio veteran Joe Burba is leaving the company, after being appointed studio head last July following the last suite of layoffs. Joining him is Elder Scrolls Online executive producer Susan Kath, game director Rich Lambert, and production director Ala Diaz. They are leaving as part of the layoffs announced earlier this month.

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This was revealed as part of a Maryland WARN letter obtained by Game File, which lists the roles of 379 employees whose jobs were cut by Microsoft, split between Zenimax Media Inc (Bethesda development and publishing) and Zenimax Online Studios (The Elder Scrolls Online).

The four notified workers still present at the company of a plan to transition to a new leadership team, formed of employees raised from the ranks of remaining staff. This will reportedly take place "over the next few months", with the four remaining in their roles during this period of change.

Zenimax Online Studios will now be led by Josh Henderson, who previously worked as the head of business operations. He's joined by Nick Giacomini, who was promoted to game director of the Elder Scrolls Online last August.

It was just over a year ago that Zenimax Online Studios suffered significant layoffs as part of widespread Microsoft cuts, which resulted in over 9,000 staff cuts company-wide. This resulted in not only the departure of then studio head Matt Firor, but the cancellation of an MMO called Project Blackbird. Many of the developers impacted by this cancellation broke off to form a new employee-owned developer: Sackbird.

Despite being ravaged by deep staffing cuts two years in a row, Zenimax has insisted that this isn't the end for the MMO. According to both the associate design director and associate director of community management, the team is now at a similar size to when it released both Wrothgar and Summerset. All the while Xbox has justified these cuts and others with its plan to overhaul its studios, with hopes of creating more games in its big franchises.

What this new information reinforces is that Zenimax Online Studios has once again been tackled by the wider business strategy of Microsoft and Xbox. The Elder Scrolls Online has remained popular in a brutal MMO landscape for years, but how it'll manage having suffered such cuts remains to be seen.

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