Former ZeniMax Online devs type Ironroot Games following “traumatising” layoffs

In July 2025, ZeniMax Online Studios’ principal gameplay designer, Quentin Cobb, was one of many 1000’s laid off as a part of Microsoft’s brutal cuts throughout its gaming division. He subsequently, like so many recreation builders, discovered himself unable to seek out one other position in a tricky job market.

So he made the plain selection. “I thought, ‘Why don’t I make my own game?'” Cobb recollects. Hence in December 2025, Ironroot Games was revealed to the world, a brand new unbiased studio composed fully of veteran, laid-off AAA recreation builders, with Cobb as CEO and inventive director.

Ironroot is not the one new studio to be born from the ashes of Project Blackbird, the ZeniMax Online MMORPG that had reportedly been in growth since 2018, and that was cancelled as a part of Microsoft’s July cuts. In October 2025, the cannily named Sackbird Studios was introduced, an employee-owned indie studio composed of former Elder Scrolls Online and Project Blackbird builders. “I am good friends with [Sackbird co-founder] Doug Carroll, and we’ve spoken a few times,” Cobb says. “We’re both trying to help each other a bit and give each other advice.” ZeniMax Online founder Matt Firor, who left the studio following Project Blackbird’s cancellation, has additionally been informally guiding the brand new studios. “He’s given some great advice, given some great pointers,” Cobb says. “He’s been very encouraging and super helpful.”

But we have been right here earlier than, in fact. As a results of the seemingly countless video games trade layoffs over the previous 4 years – which have notably impacted the US, and notably the AAA sector – even skilled builders have struggled to seek out work, and the pure response (except for leaving the trade fully) is to go it alone. The previous few years have seen the launch of quite a few outfits helmed by AAA veterans, like Airlock Games, Last Arrow, Second Star Games, Giant Skull, Twisted Works, Fuse Games, Muddy Robot, and Maverick Games, to call a number of.

Yet it is a hostile setting during which to launch a brand new studio, with the trade gripped by not solely an ongoing funding disaster, but in addition a discoverability one, because it turns into more and more troublesome for a brand new recreation to face out among the many ever extra launched annually – all set in opposition to a background of faltering development.

But on the flip aspect, it is clear that the trade is transitioning. As the wheels come off the AAA mannequin amid spiralling budgets and ever-expanding workforce sizes, we’re seeing mid-priced or indie video games break by to promote thousands and thousands, like Clair Obscur or Peak. There’s a buzz of optimism and enthusiasm on the realisation that authentic concepts have an opportunity to succeed, and a rejection of the inflexible hierarchy and more and more secure considering of the AAA world.

“These folks that have come from ZeniMax Online Studios [are] exploring things that perhaps they would never be able to explore in AAA, because things are a little bit more tight, prim, and proper,” explains Elaine Gómez, Ironroot Games’ principal gameplay designer and studio tradition lead.

And Cobb, for his half, is revelling within the freedom afforded by his new studio, which was born “out of wanting to do our own thing, to creatively spread our wings, and really explore a kind of game that we would want to make together in a really collaborative environment.”

“You’re not just a cog in a machine,” Gómez provides.

A special approach of doing issues

“Working in corporate AAA studios for so long, as someone that wasn’t a lead or a director, you really get put into a box of ‘do this one thing, right, and just do that’,” says Cobb, who labored at Naughty Dog, Daybreak, and Sony earlier than becoming a member of ZeniMax Online. “I think working on a small indie team, what’s incredibly valuable is everyone’s voice, everyone’s experience. We really encourage this. I want to hear from anybody on the team about design and the story. Everyone has valuable opinions.”

“At the end of the day, that’s what we are striving to do: it’s people first,” Gómez says. “Because we’re people who find themselves making video games. The challenge shouldn’t be being made with out us. So if we’re not in a wholesome setting, and we do not really feel seen, if we do not really feel revered, we’re not going to make good things.

“And we have all felt that in some capacity in other studios. If you don’t feel good, you don’t feel energized, you don’t feel inspired.”

Part of making certain the setting stays wholesome, Cobb says, is making certain the challenge’s scope is practical.

“I think sometimes in big AAA studios it starts to get away from them a bit,” he explains. “And so I believe a giant lesson that I’ve discovered is sit down with the workforce and take into consideration what the sport is that we will make, that we will ship with the individuals we’ve got in an inexpensive time, with out stressing out, with out crunching, with out going loopy, and keep associates and ship a recreation.

“And I think that is definitely a big lesson we can take away from some of these AAA productions, is that [the project] just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And sometimes that’s not always better.”

As for what, precisely, Ironroot’s first challenge is, that is at the moment beneath wraps. “I’m dying to talk about it,” Cobb says. “But it’s just so early now that I don’t want to put too many details out there and then have to backtrack or change things.” All we all know at this level is that will probably be a “personal” indie recreation with a essentially small funds. “We’re aware of the budgetary challenges,” says Cobb. “It’s very apparent how tough it is right now.”

Part-time studio

The days of buyers throwing cash at video video games are lengthy gone, and therefore Ironroot Games is being cautious about its worker depend. Currently, the studio consists of a mixture of contributors who’re being paid primarily based on the character and scope of their work and those that are contributing on a “deferred basis” because the studio will get off the bottom. While Cobb and Gómez will not specify the variety of contributors, they verify it’s “in double digits.”

“We consciously know that some folks may get new jobs next week, in two months, and the time that they can give to Ironroot will be different,” Gómez explains. “I think that’s why that number is in the air, and that’s totally okay. Nobody is obligated to be a part of something voluntarily.”

Gómez, who can be the founder and inventive director of Midnight Hour Games, dedicates 10–15 hours every week to Ironroot, and acknowledges that, till the studio finds its toes, they count on the workforce to “ebb and flow.”

“It’s working with folks’ schedules and their priorities in life, but still trying to make this game together, this prototype, put these ideas in-engine,” Gómez explains. “[We’re] conscious of people’s lives and the fact that it’s important for folks to make sure that they’re paying their bills. As much as we would love Ironroot to do that, we are getting there, but we’re setting ourselves up for success in order to be able to do that.”

Once sufficiently funded, Cobb has massive plans for the Ironroot’s cost construction, hoping to mirror the studio’s open philosophy by being “as fully transparent as possible with the team” about funds.

“I really feel very strongly that the people who make the game should earn the money that the game makes, period”

Quentin Cobb

“My plan is to share a completely open book as to all the money coming in and going out, who’s getting paid what, and be completely transparent,” Cobb explains. “We’re a small team. I don’t have any reason to hide anything, so I want to share that with the team as we start to get funded and we start to earn money.”

Cobb additionally plans to supply a income share to all Ironroot Games workers, along with their base wage. “I haven’t ironed everything out quite yet, but my plan is to have a very fair and equitable pay structure for revenue share, so that the people making the game actually get paid,” Cobb explains. “The CEO or the top few people in the team taking a gigantic portion of the revenue, and the team getting scraps, is common practice in corporate America and it’s disheartening. I really feel very strongly that the people who make the game should earn the money that the game makes, period.”

While pay transparency is useful to an open work setting, Gómez, who can be the president of nonprofit assist organisation Latinx in Gaming, additionally believes wage is an usually forgotten facet within the dialog round equality – and one thing Ironroot Games desires to make sure is positioned on the forefront.

“We value not just your work, but you as a person, your expertise, and we want to make sure that you have enough to do what you want to do, so that you can succeed in your career, whether you stay here or not,” Gómez says.

Again, it is about placing individuals first. “We want to build a community where people feel like they can be part of something that’s bigger than themselves, that they have some folks here that they can trust if something goes wrong, that you have an ally, that you don’t need to walk on eggshells. All of these things that we have experienced, we want to undo them. We want to create a space where folks feel valued, where they feel heard.”

Before all that may occur, nonetheless, Ironroot Games must get funded. “Trying to fundraise in this environment is super challenging,” Cobb says. “And trying to position the game in a way that will be attractive to money-minded people is tough. Games are really interesting because they’re an art form, and we as artists are trying to create something that we believe in and feel is valuable. But we also need to package that and sell it. It’s weird. You have to create art, but then you need to sell the art to make money to make more art.”

Survivors of the meat grinder

That stability between the necessity to generate income and the necessity to keep true to an inventive imaginative and prescient isn’t going to go away, but it surely’s admirable that Ironroot desires to alter issues up and transfer away from outdated practices – even when the financials stay considerably precarious in these early days. Like just about each developer within the trade, the Ironroot workforce has loads of horror tales about being summarily dismissed by earlier employers.

Gómez, who is likely one of the few members of the studio to not come from ZeniMax, recollects her “traumatising” expertise on the NetEase-backed Worlds Untold, the place she labored as a principal gameplay designer on an unannounced action-adventure till the studio was shuttered in November 2024.

“We didn’t see it coming,” Gómez says. “We have been advised we have been absolutely funded for everything of the variety of years that this challenge was going to be on.

“We were doing great. We passed our prototype flags with flying colours. Everybody was happy with our work. And then all of a sudden it was like, right before Thanksgiving, 2024, ‘Hey, everybody, we’re just gonna rip the band-aid off.'”

“You wrap your identity up into your work. It’s tough for that to get flushed down the toilet”

Quentin Cobb

Cobb, in the meantime, continues to be processing the abrupt cancellation of Project Blackbird. “I thought it was going well, personally, and it was shaping up,” he says. The emotions are nonetheless uncooked. “A thing that I struggle with is you wrap your identity up into your work. It’s tough for that to get flushed down the toilet. I was there for almost five years. It’s gone. All gone.”

“It was a shock, and, to be honest, extremely traumatic,” Cobb continues, visibly emotional. “There are a lot of people still struggling with the ramifications of what happened that day. Blindsided is an understatement, that’s for sure. It was a tough day, something that I’ll never forget.”

Employment will all the time be considerably precarious within the hit-driven world of video games, and it is simple that beginning a brand new studio is tremendously troublesome within the present setting. But by going it alone, a minimum of Cobb and the remainder of Ironroot Games might be controlling their very own future this time round.