In July 2025, ZeniMax Online Studios’ principal gameplay designer, Quentin Cobb, was one of many hundreds laid off as half Microsoft’s brutal cuts throughout its gaming division. He subsequently, like so many recreation builders, discovered himself unable to search out one other function in a tricky job market.
So he made the apparent selection. “I believed, ‘Why do not I make my very own recreation?'” Cobb recollects. Therefore in December 2025, Ironroot Games was revealed to the world, a brand new unbiased studio composed completely of veteran, laid-off AAA recreation builders, with Cobb as CEO and artistic director.
Ironroot is not the one new studio to be born from the ashes of Venture Blackbird, the ZeniMax Online MMORPG that had reportedly been in improvement 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 Venture Blackbird builders. “I’m good pals with [Sackbird co-founder] Doug Carroll, and we have spoken a couple of occasions,” Cobb says. “We’re each attempting to assist one another a bit and provides one another recommendation.” ZeniMax Online founder Matt Firor, who left the studio following Venture Blackbird’s cancellation, has additionally been informally guiding the brand new studios. “He is given some nice recommendation, given some nice pointers,” Cobb says. “He is been very encouraging and tremendous useful.”
However we have been right here earlier than, in fact. On account of the seemingly countless video games business layoffs over the previous 4 years – which have significantly impacted the US, and significantly the AAA sector – even skilled builders have struggled to search out work, and the pure response (apart from leaving the business completely) 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, Final Arrow, Second Star Games, Big Cranium, Twisted Works, Fuse Games, Muddy Robotic, and Maverick Games, to call a couple of.
But this can be a hostile surroundings through which to launch a brand new studio, with the business gripped by not solely an ongoing funding disaster, but additionally a discoverability one, because it turns into more and more tough for a brand new recreation to face out among the many ever extra launched annually – all set in opposition to a background of faltering progress.
However on the flip aspect, it is clear that the business is transitioning. Because the wheels come off the AAA mannequin amid spiralling budgets and ever-expanding crew sizes, we’re seeing mid-priced or indie video games break via to promote hundreds of thousands, like Clair Obscur or Peak. There is 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 of us which have come from ZeniMax Online Studios [are] exploring issues that maybe they might by no means be capable of discover in AAA, as a result of issues are a little bit bit extra tight, prim, and correct,” 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 eager to do our personal factor, to creatively unfold our wings, and actually discover a type of recreation that we’d wish to make collectively in a extremely collaborative surroundings.”
“You are not only a cog in a machine,” Gómez provides.
A unique means of doing issues
“Working in company AAA studios for therefore lengthy, as somebody that wasn’t a lead or a director, you actually get put right into a field of ‘do that one factor, proper, and simply do this’,” says Cobb, who labored at Naughty Canine, Dawn, and Sony earlier than becoming a member of ZeniMax Online. “I feel engaged on a small indie crew, what’s extremely helpful is everybody’s voice, everybody’s expertise. We actually encourage this. I wish to hear from anyone on the crew about design and the story. Everybody has helpful opinions.”
“On the finish of the day, that is what we’re striving to do: it is individuals first,” Gómez says. “As a result of we’re people who find themselves making video games. The challenge isn’t being made with out us. So if we’re not in a wholesome surroundings, and we do not really feel seen, if we do not really feel revered, we’re not going to make good things.
“And now we have all felt that in some capability in different studios. When you do not feel good, you do not really feel energized, you do not really feel impressed.”
A part of making certain the surroundings stays wholesome, Cobb says, is making certain the challenge’s scope is reasonable.
“I feel generally in large AAA studios it begins to get away from them a bit,” he explains. “And so I feel an enormous lesson that I’ve realized is sit down with the crew and take into consideration what the sport is that we are able to make, that we are able to ship with the individuals now we have in an inexpensive time, with out stressing out, with out crunching, with out going loopy, and keep pals and ship a recreation.
“And I feel that’s positively an enormous lesson we are able to take away from a few of these AAA productions, is that [the project] simply will get greater and larger and larger. And generally that is not at all times higher.”
As for what, precisely, Ironroot’s first challenge is, that is at the moment below wraps. “I am dying to speak about it,” Cobb says. “Nevertheless it’s simply so early now that I do not wish to put too many particulars on the market after which need to backtrack or change issues.” All we all know at this level is that it will likely be a “private” indie recreation with a essentially small price range. “We’re conscious of the budgetary challenges,” says Cobb. “It is very obvious how robust it’s proper now.”
Half-time studio
The times of buyers throwing cash at video video games are lengthy gone, and therefore Ironroot Games is being cautious about its worker rely. At present, 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 foundation” because the studio will get off the bottom. Whereas Cobb and Gómez will not specify the variety of contributors, they verify it’s “in double digits.”
“We consciously know that some of us could get new jobs subsequent week, in two months, and the time that they may give to Ironroot will probably be totally different,” Gómez explains. “I feel that is why that quantity is within the air, and that is completely okay. No person is obligated to be part of one thing voluntarily.”
Gómez, who can be the founder and artistic director of Midnight Hour Games, dedicates 10–15 hours every week to Ironroot, and acknowledges that, till the studio finds its toes, they anticipate the workforce to “ebb and movement.”
“It is working with of us’ schedules and their priorities in life, however nonetheless attempting to make this recreation collectively, this prototype, put these concepts in-engine,” Gómez explains. “[We’re] aware of individuals’s lives and the truth that it is vital for folk to guarantee that they’re paying their payments. As a lot as we’d love Ironroot to try this, we’re getting there, however we’re setting ourselves up for achievement so as to have the ability to do this.”
As soon as sufficiently funded, Cobb has large plans for the Ironroot’s fee construction, hoping to replicate the studio’s open philosophy by being “as totally clear as attainable with the crew” about funds.
“I actually really feel very strongly that the individuals who make the sport ought to earn the cash that the sport makes, interval”
Quentin Cobb
“My plan is to share a very open e-book as to all the cash coming in and going out, who’s getting paid what, and be utterly clear,” Cobb explains. “We’re a small crew. I haven’t got any motive to cover something, so I wish to share that with the crew as we begin to get funded and we begin to earn cash.”
Cobb additionally plans to supply a income share to all Ironroot Games workers, along with their base wage. “I have not ironed every little thing out fairly but, however my plan is to have a particularly reasonable and equitable pay construction for income share, in order that the individuals making the sport really receives a commission,” Cobb explains. “The CEO or the highest few individuals within the crew taking a big portion of the income, and the crew getting scraps, is frequent follow in company America and it is disheartening. I actually really feel very strongly that the individuals who make the sport ought to earn the cash that the sport makes, interval.”
Whereas pay transparency is helpful to an open work surroundings, Gómez, who can be the president of nonprofit assist organisation Latinx in Gaming, additionally believes wage is an usually forgotten side within the dialog round equality – and one thing Ironroot Games desires to make sure is positioned on the forefront.
“We worth not simply your work, however you as an individual, your experience, and we wish to just be sure you have sufficient to do what you wish to do, so as to reach your profession, whether or not you keep right here or not,” Gómez says.
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Once more, it is about placing individuals first. “We wish to construct a neighborhood the place individuals really feel like they are often a part of one thing that is greater than themselves, that they’ve some of us right here that they will belief if one thing goes improper, that you’ve got an ally, that you simply needn’t stroll on eggshells. All of these items that now we have skilled, we wish to undo them. We wish to create an area the place of us really feel valued, the place they really feel heard.”
Earlier than all that may occur, nonetheless, Ironroot Games must get funded. “Making an attempt to fundraise on this surroundings is tremendous difficult,” Cobb says. “And attempting to place the sport in a means that will probably be enticing to money-minded individuals is hard. Games are actually fascinating as a result of they’re an artwork form, and we as artists try to create one thing that we consider in and really feel is efficacious. However we additionally have to package deal that and promote it. It is bizarre. It’s a must to create artwork, however then it’s worthwhile to promote the artwork to earn cash to make extra artwork.”
Survivors of the meat grinder
That steadiness between the necessity to earn cash and the necessity to keep true to a creative 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 business, the Ironroot crew 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 did not see it coming,” Gómez says. “We had been instructed we had been totally funded for the whole thing of the variety of years that this challenge was going to be on.
“We had been doing nice. We handed our prototype flags with flying colors. All people was proud of our work. After which abruptly it was like, proper earlier than Thanksgiving, 2024, ‘Hey, all people, we’re simply gonna rip the band-aid off.'”
“You wrap your identification up into your work. It is robust for that to get flushed down the bathroom”
Quentin Cobb
Cobb, in the meantime, remains to be processing the abrupt cancellation of Venture Blackbird. “I believed it was going properly, personally, and it was shaping up,” he says. The emotions are nonetheless uncooked. “A factor that I wrestle with is you wrap your identification up into your work. It is robust for that to get flushed down the bathroom. I used to be there for nearly 5 years. It is gone. All gone.”
“It was a shock, and, to be trustworthy, extraordinarily traumatic,” Cobb continues, visibly emotional. “There are lots of people nonetheless battling the ramifications of what occurred that day. Blindsided is an understatement, that is for positive. It was a tricky day, one thing that I will always remember.”
Employment will at all times be considerably precarious within the hit-driven world of video games, and it is simple that beginning a brand new studio is tremendously tough within the present surroundings. However by going it alone, not less than Cobb and the remainder of Ironroot Games will probably be controlling their very own future this time round.