Farewell, Blackbird
On Wednesday morning, employees at the video-game maker ZeniMax Online Studios noticed something strange. The executive producer and creative director of their next big game — code name: Blackbird — no longer had active accounts on their internal chat program, Slack.
It was already public news that ZeniMax's parent company, Microsoft, was planning mass layoffs, including deep cuts in the gaming division. But there were no indications that the studio's own project might be in jeopardy. Back in March, they had delivered a demo of Blackbird to executives, including Microsoft Gaming Chief Executive Officer Phil Spencer, and had received rave reviews, according to people familiar with the project.
Shortly after the disabled Slack accounts were discovered, the company scheduled a "project update" meeting for 11 a.m. US East Coast time.
During the meeting, they got the news. Blackbird was being "shelved indefinitely." (Translation: it was canceled.) Shortly afterward, the rest of the team also lost their Slack accounts.
The next few hours were marked by chaos and confusion as employees found themselves in a kind of limbo status, waiting to see what was going on. There were no emails and no messages from management or HR. Members of the team believed they had been laid off, but many had not yet received any official word from the company