Last year, Microsoft laid off 9,000+ people across the entire company, including its gaming division. The layoffs saw studios like The Initiative entirely shut down, while others like ZeniMax Online, King, and Rare were hit by major cuts and project cancellations. At the time of the layoffs, former and current ZeniMax workers aptly called the cuts "inhumane" and "disgusting," so it's uplifting to see yet another studio rise up out of these cuts, as former ZeniMax developers have come together to form a new studio, Ironroot Games.
Ironroot Games is the second studio to specifically come from former ZeniMax Online workers, after Sackbird Studios was formed in October 2025. The news of the new team comes from an interview with GamesIndustry.Biz, where Ironroot Games' chief executive officer and creative director, Quentin Cobb, says he is still trying to work through what happened at ZeniMax Online, where he was the studio's principal gameplay designer. Cobb also goes as far as to add the word "traumatic" to the list of ways to describe the cuts at ZeniMax and the cancellation of Project Blackbird.
"I thought it was going well, personally, and it was shaping up," said Cobb. "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. 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."
It's then no surprise that, after an experience like that, Cobb and fellow founding member, Elaine Gómez, who also acts as Ironroot Games' principal gameplay designer and studio culture leader, wanted to create their own space to try and avoid going through something like that again. Gómez is one of the few members of Ironroot who doesn't come from ZeniMax layoffs, but instead has their own self-described "traumatizing" triple-A layoff story from their time at former NetEase-backed studio, Worlds Untold.
"We didn't see it coming," Gómez begins. "We were told we were fully funded for the entirety of the number of years that this project 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."
Moving forward, part of how Cobb and Gómez are trying to build a better future for themselves and their coworkers starts with Ironroot's foundation as a developer-owned, "people-first" studio. "You're not just a cog in a machine," Gómez says.
"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," Cobb said when discussing how he intends to be incredibly transparent when it comes to how the team is paid and the studio's revenue-sharing structure. "I really feel very strongly that the people who make the game should earn the money that the game makes, period."
As for what the studio is working on, Cobb and Gómez are keeping that under wraps for now. "I'm dying to talk about it," said Cobb. "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." What they would say is that it is a "personal" game with a small budget.
While work on that first project may be a bit slower due to the studio being a small team and starting with some of its members, like Gómez, only working part-time to begin, it is heartening to see another team come up out of the mass layoffs that have plagued the industry over the last few years. Hopefully, studios like Ironroot Games and Sackbird Studios can help create a better future for the industry.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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