The effects of Microsoft’s recent layoffs are already being felt in The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO), as ZeniMax Online Studios has confirmed changes to the game’s premium services due to reduced staffing. Just weeks after hundreds of employees were laid off across ZeniMax Media, the studio announced it is shutting down the Web Crown Store and scaling back its monthly Crown Store Showcase blog.
The update highlights how workforce reductions are beginning to impact the long-running MMORPG’s day-to-day operations, even as the game continues its new seasonal content model. Earlier this month, Microsoft laid off 379 employees across ZeniMax, marking the second major round of cuts affecting the publisher in two years.
ZeniMax cites reduced team bandwidth
In a post on the official The Elder Scrolls Online forums, Community Manager Kevin Gbolie explained that the changes are intended to help the remaining team manage its workload.
“To help manage workload, we have decided to remove the Web Crown Store from the official elderscrollsonline.com website.”
Players will still be able to purchase Crowns through the website, but browsing and buying Crown Store items will now require logging into the game.
Gbolie also confirmed that the monthly Crown Store Showcase will continue but in a simplified format.
“Due to team bandwidth…the blog will be more list-like than anything else.”
Community resources will also be affected
The Crown Store Showcase has long served as a useful resource for players, especially community projects like the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP), which relied on its high-resolution item screenshots for documentation.
Responding to community feedback, Gbolie acknowledged the importance of those assets while explaining the team’s current limitations.
“The team responsible for the blog and those screenshots doesn’t have the capacity to provide those at the scale we could before. But we will provide what we can for now and adjust from there.”
While these changes do not affect the in-game Crown Store itself, they illustrate how Microsoft’s latest layoffs are beginning to impact ongoing support for one of Xbox’s biggest live-service games. With The Elder Scrolls Online continuing to receive seasonal content updates, players will be watching closely to see whether additional services or community features are affected in the months ahead.
