The 9,000 workers shed from Microsoft’s games division saw not only massive losses in terms of workers, the end of content updates for other live titles, and the stepping down of Zenimax Online Studios’ Matt Firor, it also killed off Project Blackbird, a new MMORPG from ZOS that was in development for seven years. Now we’re all getting some more details about just what this game was looking like – and further learning about the lost potential above and beyond not seeing another MMO from the now well-seasoned MMO studio.
Anonymous insider sources reporting to True Achievements summarize Blackbird as “a blend of Destiny, Blade Runner, and Horizon Zero Dawn“: Players take up the role of Revenants aligned with one of five alien factions to explore the planet of Soteria, which has a side scorched by endless sun, a side covered in darkness and ice, and a habitable zone in-between known as the Twilight Band, all wrapped up in a shooter MMO game package.
The game was reportedly offering an open world to explore as well as a primary major city known as Exodus, along with four-player missions that could be taken up, a narrative surrounding a murder of a high-profile NPC and the secrets hidden in Exodus, a crafting and gathering loop, a heavy focus on traversal including the use of a grappling hook, and plans for player housing and PvP, though Blackbird was mostly angling as a co-op PvE title. Classes fit into a classic trinity makeup, with tanky Guns for Hire, environment controlling Tech Operators, and healers known as Augments; work on a skill system was being done just before the axe fell on the project.
What’s worse is the fact that testers and Microsoft execs who got their hands on the game were apparently blown away by Blackbird. According to one self-proclaimed tester, the MMO shooter was “fucking incredible” and garnered “some of the best reactions from folks who played it” according to him. “This is one of the cancelled games that, by literally every account, sounded like it would’ve been a slam dunk in literally every sense,” the poster claimed.
These assertions were reinforced by reporting from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, who shares insider accounts that said Microsoft CEO Phil Spencer had to have the controller taken away from him in order for a meeting about the game to continue. Schreier’s reporting also reaffirms the chaos that employees on the project were dealing with in the wake of the layoffs that affected the studio.
Meanwhile the Communications Workers of America (CWA) unions formed within Microsoft have expressed their frustration with the corporation and promised it would bargain with Microsoft to help affected workers represented by the union. “We are deeply disappointed in Microsoft’s decision to lay off thousands more workers, including union-represented CWA members, at a time when the company is prospering,” reads part of a statement from CWA president Claude Cummings Jr. “Right now, we are living through a moment of profound corporate consolidation and disruption. In times like these, union organizing is not just a tool for protections in the workplace; it is essential to workers’ survival, and one of the strongest defenses we have against unchecked corporate power.”
