nothisispatrick6528: The beatings will continue until morale improves

Wurstbrot03: Didn't play ESO myself but a friend did for a long time. Told me that the running "joke" in the community was that ESO's profit was used to subsidize all other investments by Bethesda/Zenimax, except for ESO itself.

nemesis7884: to be fair, the game has been around for over 10 years, made 2 billion revenues (afaik this makes it the most profitable "bethesda" game ever, more than Skyrim), is one of the biggest and most profitable mmos around, made / makes i think 15m a month....so it definitely has been extremely successful...

dennisbliek60: Man if this game did not have the worst combat system known to man , it would be so good.

Jammet: Mortym has Khajiit if you have food.

Jammet: The Elder Scrolls Online has generated an estimated $2 billion in total revenue since its 2014 launch, averaging roughly $200 million per year and holding remarkably steady at about $15 million in monthly revenue for over a decade, with no publicly reported year-by-year gains or losses, I think the game is doing fine actually, it's Microsoft just simply being ... Microsoft. (The info is from Matt Firor's GDC talk from "10 years of Tamriel" and some linkedin bits and pieces from 2024).

anonymousmouse1032: I feel like I know some stuff about this Mort. They actually were making money even with the larger team, per the leaked Microsoft case files like a year or so ago. The canceled game was also extremely loved but Microsoft is in no mood for games right now. They have said they have as many people roughly as they did when they launched Orisinium DLC, so it isn't nobody but it does also still suck big time that they are being punished while technically succeeding. On a side note, the canceled project was called Blackbird and now some of the let go people made a company called Sackbird.

Relhio: Thing is, I highly doubt Zenimax will come out and say "yeah, the studio's been put in a terminal state, we won't be allowed to grow the team from now on and we'll slowly bleed out until Microsoft decides it's not worth us running this service anymore", let's be real. The game won't shut down, but it will just drag itself for 3-5 more years with minimal content until it will be put in maintenance mode.

It was stabbed and left to bleed out, just to make whatever it can until it inevitably dies.

TheSkaara: Nick Giacomini said his goal was to update the game for 30 years. That’s 18 more years to go, and will depend on the players support. The most likely scenario is that Asha Sharma shuts it down before anything else so I’m not worried.

ankujo8924: Not my main MMO but I have nearly 500 hours in the game and am playing it right now. Really hope they keep it going.

NiZANOo: Another mort vid to go with my coffee , LETS GOO

AraDMiller: See I loved the game back in the day but overtime I just fell out of love with it? Don't even know when it happened I just stopped getting on as much and then not at all.

thealkemistlab1199-9: Dude....I'm still waiting on another Morrowind dlc. They could at least do a top down rpg like divinity or path finder.

bomber3165: Part of me want ESO to keep going as one of the few old school MMOs around, but it's also greedy feeling and not (at least when I played it) a great game.

doctorlolchicken7478: ESO stopped being good at least 4 years ago. Content additions were a lot weaker. Monetisation just got worse. It's well past its prime.

Hauke-ph5ui: Here's something else a CEO/leadership with no real understanding of gaming might think: Hey we have 2 MMOs, one is the industry leader (World of Warcraft) and the other one, while still a big one compared to the rest of the market, is considerably smaller (ESO). So lets focus on the big game, slowly wind down the smaller game and the players will transition to the game that's left. That would be a mindset I'd expect from corpo suits who don't understand that the lore of the world is what matters to many gamers.

ltcinsane: Microsoft: Hmmmm this game is providing recurring revenue .... but it is not bringing in ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD .. as we'd like ... so ... it must die in future!. Also sadly i wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these cuts are due to Microsoft buying Activision-Blizzard & ... well, throwing 100's of billions of dollars at Ai & what not. 'Hey your game has been doing okay for over a decade .. but because the Microsoft CEO made some poor bets with the company money .. you game is getting killed'.

magillagrodd: You should check out the Guild war series. Especially Guild wars reforge. I think you would enjoy that.

onatgz: my future is posting free comments, like this one.

rknowling: Thankyou Mortym.

My thoughts and good wishes abide with all those affected by the layoffs.

I also have played ESO a lot, although not for a long time, and my RL reflex issues meant I mostly solo'ed.

Yet I retain a deep love for many aspects of that world.

Formoka: I don’t tend to play multiplayer, but I still always feel the need to kind of tip my hat in respect when it seems like another multiplayer experience is going to be shut down. It sucks how temporary those type of games become over time. My heart breaks any time I lose the ability to play a single player game, I can’t imagine how it feels to lose a world where you made real friends.

rofalmatt: They should make it offline single player with co op!

CreativeExcusesGaming: As a player and creator for the game, from my perspective the previous leadership of the studio and game ran the game into the ground with extremely long and slow development timelines that stuck to a single formula for way too long.

And now, it’s a bit too late. The new leadership that came in, Nick G, seems great, and things were looking up even if they were still moving at a snail’s pace. But now it seems that snail’s pace is going to get even worse which is extremely unsatisfying.

This isn’t the end of the game, but by 2027 they need a completely new strategy utilizing actually more frequent updates (seasons are fake, all the content get’s shipped with the updates and arbitrarily unlocked as time progresses) to keep the game going.

nemesis7884: I still really enjoy the game and thought they were now on a good track...hopefully they can make it another 10 years

KettleninjaAM: I just started playing again and I missed it so much so hopefully it keeps going

briankelly1240: Thanks for covering this! The Fallout 76 video made me excited to see your thoughts on ESO as well (and maybe even play like you are for Fallout 76 right now)

enternius: On the topic of MMOs eventually dying, and since I know you played Guild Wars 2, I'm curious if you're aware of Guild Wars 3 being on the horizon.

Even after GW3 releases, they're still basically going just as hard on GW2 after the fact, and I mean they still even support GW1 at this point. Obviously different teams are working on different games but I think it's really exciting and encouraging that you can play basically any of the games in that entire series and they're still all supported and getting new content.

Aug 04 2026

Buy ESO Gold